Ronnie Hawkins, rock’n’roll showman who spawned the Band and made a film with Bob Dylan – obituary

Ronnie Hawkins, who has died aged 87, was a rock’n’roller with a wild stage act who hosted John and Yoko at his farm, made a movie with Bob Dylan and put together the group that would become the Band; in 1992 he played at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, a fellow fan of the blues from Arkansas.

Hawkins liked to put on a show on stage, and one of his many nicknames was “Mr Dynamo”. Black performers in the South showed him many of his moves, including his “Camel Walk” – a precursor of Michael Jackson’s “Moonwalk” – which he copied from a black musician named Half Pint who worked shining shoes in Hawkins’s father’s barber shop. “Ronnie was like this animal, lunging around, being very Neanderthal, very primitive about it,” recalled his former guitarist Robbie Robertson. “It was explosive.”

“The Hawk”, as he was also known, lived fast on the road, and was the inspiration for the heartless cad in Gordon Lightfoot’s song Go-Go Round, about “a go-go girl in love with someone who didn’t care” – but he kept his personal life separate and was married to the same woman for 60 years.

Ronald Cornett Hawkins was born on January 10 1935 in Huntsville, Arkansas, two days after Elvis Presley; a few years later the family moved to Fayetteville. His mother Flora (née Cornett) was a churchgoing teacher, while his father Jasper was, by his son’s admission, an old-fashioned, hard-drinking, brawling redneck with all the prejudices of the Old South. But he spawned a son who loved black music.

Hawkins did have some of his father’s habits: as a teenager he made spare cash using a souped-up old Ford to run bootleg liquor into the dry areas of Oklahoma, and used some of that money to buy a part-interest in a bar when he started the first of many groups to be called the Hawks.

His tolerant, more conventional side came from his mother: not only did he finish high school, something most rockabilly stars never achieved, but he went on to study physical education at the University of Arkansas. He had been a gymnast in high school and was a champion swimmer and diver at university. During his studies his band played at fraternities and sororities.

He enlisted in the US Army, but having already trained in the Reserve he was required to serve only six months. He formed a group with some black soldiers there, the Black Hawks, then back in Arkansas he formed a new Hawks outfit, who were joined by a teenage drummer, Levon Helm.

They played in the US southern states and in Toronto bars, and in 1959 had two hit singles, Forty Days reaching the Top 50 and Mary Lou the Top 30. There was an appearance on American Bandstand, the TV show that launched hits and careers, and there was talk of Hawkins as the new Elvis.

His success in Canada persuaded him to move up north, and he settled in Ontario. The Hawks broke up, though Helm stayed on board, and they were joined in time by Robbie Robertson, along with Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko – new Hawks in what would become the classic Band line-up.

Hawkins rehearsed long hours and demanded the highest standards: “Often we would go and play until one am and then rehearse until four,” Robertson recalled. They stayed with him until 1964, when they began working for Bob Dylan, and in 1967 they became the Band.

“He built us up to the point where we outgrew his music and had to leave,” said Robertson. “He shot himself in the foot, really, bless his heart, by sharpening us into such a crackerjack band that we had to go on out into the world.”

Hawkins became a wealthy man, buying a Rolls-Royce and a 200-acre farm at Stoney Lake in Ontario. In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed there while they organised their peace campaign, with its celebrated bed-ins. She had 16 phone lines installed, Hawkins said; they left him with a lot of memories and an unpaid telephone bill for $9,000.

One of those memories involved them falling asleep with the bath running, he recalled – “our new ceilings came in on us.”

In 1976 he was reunited with the Band in The Last Waltz, their final gig (filmed by Martin Scorsese and released two years later), and the same year he played Bob Dylan in the singer’s film Renaldo and Clara, a mixture of concert footage, interviews and dramatised vignettes. Four years before that he had appeared in Heaven’s Gate alongside his friend Kris Kristofferson, who revelled in his stories and said he had “the vastest sense of humour”.

Always more at home on stage than in the studio, Hawkins carried on touring into this century. Becoming a permanent resident in Canada, though he never took citizenship, he would winter in Arkansas, spending time with his friends Jerry Lee Lewis, and Alice Walton of the Walmart family.

In 2002, October 4 was declared Ronnie Hawkins Day in Toronto, partly in recognition of his support for research into schizophrenia and of other charitable work. In 2013 he was appointed as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada.

Ronnie Hawkins is survived by his wife Wanda, and by their daughter and two sons.

Ronnie Hawkins, born January 10 1935, died May 29 2022