ONE

STARED OUT THAT train window

into the darkness,

till I near went stone blind.

I patted out a rhythm on my knee and smiled to myself. Sounded like a song from the very place I was headed.

I was spellbound, gazing out the train window at silhouettes of passing towns, a blur of nocturnal landscapes streaming by. Only the lights were changing. Small-town shadows stirring quietly, city neon coloring the night sky, one scene blending into another. I’d been awake for many hours, but I was too wound up to sleep, too nervous. No, too buzzed! Me and that train were headed to the holy land of rock ’n’ roll, to the fountainhead, where the music I loved grew right out of the ground. This was a southbound train.

Spring, 1960, sixteen years old. I was traveling from Toronto, Ontario, to Fayetteville, Arkansas, toward my chance to try out for a job playing with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, the most wicked rock ’n’ roll band around. Ronnie was a big rockabilly recording artist, an amazing showman with a fresh, Frankie Laine–type voice. The Hawks were a powerhouse band with perfect casting: they looked as authentic as they sounded—sideburns, slicked-back hair, Memphis cool, one part country gentlemen, three parts southern wild men.

I kept staring out that passenger-car window in wonderment. I’d never been this far from home before. Every time the train whistle blew, a chill ran through me. I tried to close my eyes but couldn’t sleep. This was all too new, too unimaginable, too dreamlike, because, it occurred to me, people from my background didn’t hardly know how to dream.

I REMEMBER THE exact day it all turned around for me. I had just stepped out the side door of St. Theresa’s Catholic grade school when it hit me: a vicious combination of driving wind, burning ice needles to the face, and blinding snow. You couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you.

The public school lay between my school and my house, and it was plainly understood that you took your life in your hands with the kids who went there if you cut through that school yard. But in this storm I had to risk it. The sleet was pushing me to the ground every few steps. So I set myself on a direct line for enemy territory, hoping none of those tough older kids could possibly be out in this blizzard; I thought, Even Eskimos don’t go out in this.

But then I spotted a figure in the distance. I was already halfway across the school yard, no turning around now. As I got closer, I saw that the guy was big, and he was coming toward me. My heart was pounding from wading through the snow and being pushed back by the wind, and now from fear. He stumbled toward me, shielding his face with his scarf, like a mask. Oh man, what does he want? But when I reached him he merely stuck out his hand, holding a paper flyer, and gestured for me to take it. I blinked. Then I took the paper, stuffed it in my pocket, and kept moving.

By the time I reached the side door of my house I looked like a zombie who had just crossed the Arctic Circle. My mother was there to greet me, saying, “Goodness, get in here, you must be frozen!” While hanging up my coat, she pulled the flyer out of my pocket and read it aloud. “‘Music Lessons: Accordion, Violin, Spanish and Hawaiian guitar.’ Oh, are you interested in taking lessons?”

I shook the snow from my hair. “Sure, anything if it means I never have to walk through a blizzard like this again.” I was already drawn to music and now wondered if maybe it could help me find a way out of this frozen hellscape. “But not accordion,” I added. “Lawrence Welk and all …”

She laughed—“Okay, big dreamer”—and handed me a hot chocolate.

This was a turning point. I just didn’t know it yet.

AS THE TRAIN idled at the Buffalo border crossing from Canada into the States, an immigration officer walking through the carriage asked me where I was going. It was a tricky moment: if I mentioned anything about a job, he’d turn me back. I was trembling inside, but with a straight face I told him I was going to visit my brother and his family in Arkansas. He glanced at my birth certificate, then looked me dead in the eye. I just about swallowed my gum. After a pause he said, “Have a good trip,” and walked on.

As the train pulled away from the station and we crossed into the U.S., a wave of sadness came over me as I remembered what I’d had to do to get the money to make my way south. Ronnie was looking to replace the guitarist or the bassist in his band, and he had told me, “Come on down here and we’ll see if it works out.” This was my chance to convince him I was his man, so I thought it best not to ask him for any train money; nor did I want to bother my mother, who’d given me a rough time about quitting school.

In the end there was only one thing to do: I had to sell my prized 1958 Fender Stratocaster with the original classic sunburst body. She was a real beauty. I’d worked so hard to get her, saving up for months. But now I had to do whatever it took to get to Arkansas. I was on a mission, but leaving that beloved Strat behind cut deep.

The first time I saw Ronnie and the Hawks perform, it was a revelation. I was only fifteen and Ronnie was playing the Dixie Arena in the west end of Toronto; the band I was in, the Suedes, was opening. We’d been playing around Toronto for a few months, and opening for Ronnie Hawkins was the biggest thing we’d ever done. After that night, I would look at music in a whole different light.

We had a strong lineup of players in our own group. Our drummer then was Pete “the Bear” De Remigis. He had a unique rolling-and-tumbling feel to his playing and hummed along unconsciously while he played, like a human kazoo. Pete Traynor, or “Thumper,” played bass. I’d known him since I was thirteen, when we played together in the Rhythm Chords, the first band I ever hooked up with. We called him Thumper because of the way he manhandled the instrument. Pete would play and stare at you steadily, hardly ever looking at his hands. It made for a strange and powerful musical connection. Sometimes it got so intense I had to look away.

Scott “Magoo” Cushnie, our piano man, was twenty-one, and he had more musical training than the rest of us, as well as a sharp sense of humor and a fascinating inventory of slang words that he never shied from busting out. Some of them he invented and some could be attributed to his devotion to the popular, off-the-wall Bob and Ray radio show. I played lead guitar and sometimes sang, but for the Dixie Arena gig we had Johnny Rhythm on vocals. Johnny was part street hustler, part show-bar rock ’n’ roll impersonator, but the guy could sing like a bird. That night we played pretty good, and from the stage we could see Ronnie and his boys checking us out, which made us all reach a little higher.

But when the Hawk took the stage the whole atmosphere changed. The audience, which had been lingering around chatting, now crowded the front of the stage. Suddenly you could taste something raw and authentic in the air. The band was all dressed in black and red outfits. When they exploded into their first song, “Wild Little Willie,” the Hawk prowled the stage like a caged animal. He soared over Will “Pop” Jones’s piano, growling a primitive war cry and miming a cranking motion behind Will’s back like an organ-grinder winding up his monkey. Will was oblivious—he was living inside the music, chewing gum to the rhythm, sweat flying, eyes crossed, head thrown back, hands pumping those ivories. Jimmy Ray “Luke” Paulman’s Gretsch “Country Gentleman” guitar with its flat-wound strings poured on the rhythm. When Luke fired into a solo the Hawk had a chance to spin, flip, camel walk—the original version of the moonwalk—then tumble and land at Luke’s feet. Toward the end of the solo, Ronnie would come back in singing like he was driving a mule train, and when he did the Hawks would settle into a slippery, swift locomotion behind his vocal.

Lefty Evans on bass was the only thing that kept the band grounded, or they might have become airborne and floated away. It was the most violent, dynamic, primitive rock ’n’ roll I had ever witnessed, and it was addictive.

In the center of it all was a young beam of light on drums. Teeth gleaming, laughing, bleached hair glowing, whole body shaking, drumsticks twirling, pushing those red sparkle drums with a hawk painted on the bass drum like a white tornado. It was the first time I saw Levon Helm, and I’d never seen anything like it.

After the show I hung out while the Hawks packed up their guitars and drums, leaning in just to hear those southern accents, so rare up in Canada. I desperately wanted some of this mojo to rub off on me. They were playing at the club Le Coq d’Or in Toronto for a couple more weeks, and I hung around them as much as I could without getting in the way, trying to make myself useful. Their road manager, Colin “Boney” McQueen, let me help out, doing stuff he didn’t want to do, but I didn’t care: this was biblical and I was fast becoming an apostle of the church of rockabilly.

One afternoon at the Warwick Hotel, where musicians, strippers, and small-time con men stayed in downtown Toronto, I overheard Ronnie say, “Boys, I need some new songs. We’re going in the studio next month.”

A bell went off in my head. I had written some tunes for the little bands I’d been in, but this could be a breakthrough. I ran home, grabbed my guitar, went to my room, and stayed up all night trying to write something that Ronnie could wrap his voice around—hopefully something reminiscent of Gene Vincent’s “Woman Love.”

By morning I had finished two songs. That day, I taught them to Johnny Rhythm, who could sing them in a style similar to Ron’s, and soon we were playing them for the Hawk himself. He listened to both songs with a little smirk on his face, but when we finished he stood up and said, “Play those again.” Damned if they didn’t sound better the second time around. Ron pointed a finger at me and declared, “I’m going to record both of them songs.”

I tried not to get too excited in front of him, but inside I was overflowing. “Not bad for a fifteen-year-old, right?” I mumbled out of nervous joy. Ron just pointed his finger again and said, “I’ll be keeping an eye on you, boy. You might have some talent.” When it came to finding good material this incredibly funny showman became stone serious, and it was fascinating to see him turn on a dime.

When Ronnie returned to Toronto a few months later, he brought his new album, Mr. Dynamo, and presented me with a sealed copy. “Both your songs are on here, turned out pretty good.” I tore open the LP and looked at the record label, thrilled to see their titles there—“Someone Like You” and “Hey Boba Lu.” But when I looked for my name, I saw that the songwriting credit read “Robertson, Magil.” Who was this “Magil” guy? What was this all about?

Ronnie laid it out for me: “Magil” was an alias used by a man named Morris Levy: the power behind Roulette Records, nightclub owner, business partner to the legendary rock ’n’ roll disc jockey Alan Freed, and mobster known for having a recording artist hung by the ankles out the window of his office building. “See that Cadillac convertible parked down there?” he’d say. “I can let go and drop you down into that car … or you can walk down there with the keys and drive away. All you have to do is sign the papers.” When you recorded for Roulette, Morris Levy usually got a piece of the songwriting. “Magil” was his credit.

I started to protest but Ron said, “Son, in this business there are certain things you don’t even question. There are some ol’ boys in New York City you don’t want to mess with.” I had heard such stories of the ruthless rock ’n’ roll music business floating around, but I still couldn’t help feeling like “The Fool” from the Sanford Clark song for not standing my ground.

A few days later, Ronnie came to me with an idea, one that would take me to New York City. If I could write songs for him, he said, maybe I also had an ear for other songs that would be good for him to record. Like many artists at that time, he didn’t write much of his own music and was in constant search of new material. So with Levon doing most of the driving—daytime, nighttime, it didn’t matter to Levon—we set off to New York. A friend of Ron’s, Dallas Harms, who had written a couple of popular songs, came along. I felt as if I were part of an official song-search mission.

Crossing the bridge into Manhattan gave me chill bumps. I had never seen so many lights, so many movie theaters, so much neon, so many ladies of the night. I couldn’t take it all in quick enough. We stayed at the Times Square Hotel on 42nd Street, and the next day Ronnie, with me in tow, hailed a cab. “Is Levon coming?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s not his thing,” Ronnie said. “He’ll play it better than anybody, but he ain’t a song person, or he wouldn’t still be singing ‘Short Fat Fanny’ every night.” Ron chuckled and slapped my knee as the taxi pulled away. “Son, that’s what I brought you for. We gotta find me some good material.”

We headed for the Brill Building. With its high entranceway and gold doors, 1619 Broadway was like a temple for tunesmiths. It was the Tin Pan Alley of its day, just north of Times Square, the eleven-story heart of the music industry, a warren of small and large production offices humming with songwriters, musicians, music publishers, and producers. Inside, a guy from the record company took us around to the different music rooms making introductions: Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Otis Blackwell, and, oh yes, the outrageous singer-songwriter Titus Turner, who had just had his own hit on the King label with “Return of Stagolee.” They were all tickled by Ron’s stories and cutups. “Boys, I’ll tell ya,” he crowed, “there ain’t no difference between me and Elvis Presley except maybe looks and talent!”

The Hawk headed off for a meeting elsewhere in the building, and now it was my job to listen to tunes by these brilliant songwriters to see if there might be something up his alley. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, but I tried to act as if it was all business as usual. First I went to Otis Blackwell’s writing room, a small space with just a spinet piano against one wall. Otis, looking a bit worn, sat down on the piano bench, motioned me over, and proceeded to tell me how Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis completely screwed him on his song “Don’t Be Cruel” while touchingly accompanying this story on the piano. Okay, I thought, if it can happen to Otis Blackwell, it can happen to anyone. I’m not the only one getting shafted on songwriting, and Morris Levy isn’t the only one doing it. Otis sang a little tune he’d been working on called “Honeymoon Cottage.” A sweet song, but I was hoping for something more rocking, like his classic “Great Balls of Fire.”

Doc and Mort were incredibly obliging, and very much wanted to find just the right tune for Ronnie. Mort said, “Give us a little time. See what we can come up with.” Give them time? These were the guys who wrote “Save the Last Dance for Me.” “Yes!” I said. Please take your sweet little time.

Leiber and Stoller were the hottest songwriters around. They had written “Hound Dog” and “Kansas City” before they even hit their stride. I sat in their writing room as they tried to remember something that might suit Ronnie. First they refreshed their memory on a couple of his hits, “Mary Lou” and “Southern Love.” They sang me one idea and I could barely breathe. It was amazing—not just the song, but the fact that Leiber and Stoller were sitting there playing it for me. “That was terrific, yeah,” I gushed when they’d finished. “You got any more?” At this they paused. Jerry looked at Mike, looked at me, and said, “Who are you again?”

After I’d listened to tunes from all these songwriters, the Hawk said we were going up to the Roulette Records offices to meet with Morris Levy. Good, I thought, I’ll be able to get to the bottom of this whole “Robertson, Magil” songwriting matter.

Levy’s office looked like a scene out of a Damon Runyon story. Outside the door, tough guys in dark suits with broken noses looked us over. As we entered, a blond receptionist resembling Veronica Lake or Joi Lansing, her hair falling smoothly over one eye, barely glanced at us. Count Basie poured out of the speaker in the background. Morris welcomed Ronnie with his gravelly gangster voice (what happens to mobsters in their childhood that makes their voices go all gruff and raspy?). “Come on in, come on in, you wild man. I get such a kick outta this guy,” he announced.

Ronnie started right in with his routine. “Hey, hoss, how you doing? I wanted to stop by and see if there was any papers you wanted me to sign so those boys outside don’t have to hang me out the window.”

Morris chuckled. “Don’t believe those stories. I’m a sweetheart, you know that.”

“Sure, I know that,” Ronnie parried, “but does Frankie Lymon know that?” They both bent over laughing.

After a few more jibes, Ron did a little camel walk across Morris’s Oriental rug and we all sat down. Ron gestured to me and said, “Morris, this is the kid I was telling you about. Think he might have a lot of PO-tential.”

Levy looked over at me, nodded his head, and growled, “Yeah, he’s a nice lookin’ kid. If you had to do time, it’d be good to bring him along. I bet you don’t know whether to hire him or fuck him.” At that moment I decided to forgo bringing up any dispute over the “Robertson, Magil” songwriting issue.

AS MY TRAIN made its way through the Midwest, the conductor’s song had a beautiful cadence to it, rhyming off the names of passing cities and towns. The farther south we got, the sweeter it sounded. When the conductor called out, “St. Louis, Missouri, gateway to the West,” all I could hear playing in my head was “Saint Louis Blues” and “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis.”

A bus carried me from Missouri into Arkansas, and in Fayetteville, Ronnie Hawkins’s home base, I asked the driver to let me off in front of the Starlite Motel. I saluted him, descended the steps with my old suitcase, and put my feet on solid ground. The air smelled like Ozark pines and fried food. I was here.

A voice called out from across the road as the bus pulled away, “Welcome to the South, boy!” I looked up and there was my old bandmate Scott “Magoo” Cushnie. I couldn’t have been happier to see anyone. Scott had joined Ronnie’s band a couple weeks earlier and helped persuade the Hawk that I was worth a tryout. He grabbed my arm and said, “Come on, Ronnie and some of his local-yokel friends are over in his room.” As we approached I could hear howling laughter. “Check it out,” said Scott. “These people are insane.”

When we pushed open the door, everybody went quiet. They stared at me as if I were a full-blown alien. Ronnie took one look at my clothes and said, “Well hell, son, people down here never seen a Canadian hobo before. What in the world is that coat you’re wearing?”

“It’s reversible,” I said, and everybody burst out laughing, Ronnie the loudest.

“Son, we’re going to have to get you some damn clothes, immediately if not sooner. I can’t be seen with anybody dressed like that ’round here. I’m much too good-looking and sophisticated myself.”

The next few days I quietly but quickly adjusted to the surroundings. The local Fayetteville characters were classic, a rogues’ gallery of wild southern types and small-time legends. Herman “Killer” Tuck, who had played drums for Jerry Lee Lewis, owned a furniture store in town. Chester, a mentally challenged fellow in a wheelchair, would yell bizarre phrases at girls walking by on the main drag—“Whoocha, baby, whoocha!”—prompting the store owners to threaten to push his wheelchair down the hill if he didn’t stop scaring away the customers. And Don Tyson, the owner of Tyson’s Chickens, loved four things: making money, rock ’n’ roll music, having a few laughs, and pretty girls—though not necessarily in that order.

My favorite, though, was Dayton Stratton, whom Ronnie called Blinky. Together they were partners in the local Shamrock Club. Dayton was one of the sweetest, most gentlemanly people you ever met, but saints preserve you if you caused trouble in his club. He would first ask you, extremely polite and kindly, to leave the premises. If the trouble continued, he would start blinking and stammering. Then, like lightning, his feet would leave the floor and he would pound you several times about the head, so fast, so hard, you didn’t know what had happened. Invariably, people who pushed too far with Dayton went down. Whether they were huge Razorback football players from the University of Arkansas or big, tough redneck farmboys, it didn’t matter. You did not make trouble in Dayton’s backyard.

Ronnie took me to his favorite Fayetteville clothing store and dressed me and groomed me. When it came to music, though, the expectation was that I’d quickly learn to measure up. The band rehearsed at the Shamrock in the afternoons and sometimes gigged there at night. I wasn’t sure where I fit into the mix just yet, but they let me sit on the side, near the front of the stage, and take it all in. Technically I wasn’t old enough to get into a club like this, but since I was with their coolest export at the time, Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins, the doorman never batted an eye.

I soaked up everything I could, fast as I could, especially when it came to the band’s personnel. The guitarist I was trying out to replace, Fred Carter Jr., was ten years older than me. He hailed from Winnsboro, Louisiana, and had played with Ron’s cousin, Dale Hawkins, of “Suzie Q” fame, and Roy Orbison. Fred was an experienced and accomplished musician, definitely the real thing. Levon Helm, who was probably twenty by then, already struck me as a veteran. He knew the ropes and had music in his bones. He was just born that way: the real real thing.

The presence of my old bandmate Scott gave me a boost of confidence and comfort in this strange new world. He seemed to roll smoothly with the routine. He wasn’t as thunderous on the keys as Will “Pop” Jones, the piano man he had come down to replace, but he played his heart out. I liked the swing he gave the groove, not at all choppy or hardheaded.

Lefty Evans, a right-handed bass player, had a more traditional sound. It bugged Levon, who wanted something more driving, more eighth notes, more exciting, but Lefty’s real calling was country music. Levon teased him about it. “How can you sing, play bass, and hold your nose at the same time to get that nasal twang in yer voice?”

Every day opened my eyes a bit wider to the Hawks’ world. It became pretty obvious to me early on that in Arkansas they had their own rules when it came to sexual activity. It was understood that there was going to be some hanky-panky, but with whom seemed shockingly circumstantial: it was par for the course to see someone’s sister or wife or neighbor slipping in or out of Ronnie’s or Levon’s motel room in the afternoons. Sometimes Ron would whisper under his breath, “Boys, I’ll tell you, I had a little encounter this afternoon with what’s-his-name’s sister-in-law and she nearly devoured me. Got scratches all over my back to show for it.” Later that night we would see the sister-in-law and her husband at the gig near the front of the stage, cheering Ron on. I was baffled—but also couldn’t wait to get acquainted with the local customs.

SOON WE HEADED out for the Mississippi Delta, Levon’s home turf. The six of us rolled in Ronnie’s big Caddy, towing our instruments behind us in a trailer decorated on each side with a painting of a hawk holding drumsticks. Along Highway 540, Scott and I fell silent at the particular beauty of the Arkansas countryside, rolling hills of green on green as far as the eye could see. We turned onto Route 40, where we passed the town of Conway, namesake of Harold Jenkins, a singer with an incredible vocal range who found much greater success after changing his name to Conway Twitty.

We were headed to Charlie Halbert’s Rainbow Court Inn Motel in West Helena. Ron described Charlie as a good old boy who loved music and liked to help out musicians. He also owned the Delta Queen ferryboat, which went from Helena over to Clarksdale, Mississippi, home and breeding ground of a lot of great bluesmen. Memphis was seventy miles upriver and was the center of music in the universe, as far as I was concerned. This whole area was a great mystery to me: How could Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Jimmy Reed, Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Johnson, and on and on, all come from this particular place? What magic potion was in the water around here?

Shortly after we settled in at the Rainbow, Ronnie went to England to do a TV show and promote his new record. He took Levon with him, leaving Fred behind to familiarize Scott and me with Ron’s repertoire. But I soon discovered Fred had little interest in showing me anything. He constantly avoided my efforts to learn from him, “Nobody ever showed me nothing,” he would say, “so why should I show you?”

What was his deal? Was I a threat to him? Or was I nothing at all? Scott had already sat in with the Hawks and was familiar with some of the tunes, but I had barely a clue. To make it worse, Lefty Evans had decided to leave the Hawks too. He’d spoken quite seriously about becoming a preacher. “Preachers make some damn good money down here,” he’d inform us with remarkable sincerity. His departure meant double trouble for me: now my challenge was to learn all the songs on bass and guitar. Which meant that I’d have to learn to play the bass—I had never really played it in my life. I wondered if Scott might have exaggerated my relationship with the Fender Precision Bass to Ron to help get me the tryout, but now wasn’t the time to get confessional.

I tried to hustle Fred a little. “You can’t blame me for wanting to learn from a master. Throw me a bone. I just don’t want to let Ronnie down.” Scott thought Fred was being a jerk and shrugged it off with a “who needs him” attitude, but I couldn’t afford to think like that. I needed to absorb everything I could while Ronnie was gone. This was rockabilly boot camp.

In the meantime I tried to soak up as much local flavor as possible. Before he left for England, Ronnie had taken us to the Delta Supper Club in West Helena, a local dance joint where everybody went to hear music. Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Conway Twitty, and Ronnie all played here on occasion. The Delta Club was very basic and unglamorous—some tables, a dance floor, a funny-looking shell-shaped bandstand, a few neon signs, and a bar of legend that had been chainsawed down the middle by an angry patron. All kinds of folks came here; I noticed that down south older people and young people all went to the same clubs. Age didn’t matter; it was all about the music, and who was playing it.

Scott and I ventured over there after dinner one night when we heard that Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men might be playing. He scored us some beer, though I hadn’t yet developed a taste for alcohol. We got to talking with a couple of young girls who were dancing in front of us—they simply could not fathom that we were from faraway Canada. Scott and the two girls got a little tipsy and we all ended up back at the Rainbow Inn.

The Rainbow had a number of well-furnished bungalows—ours, which we shared with Fred, had a living room where we could set up our instruments, a kitchen area with a bar, and two comfortable bedrooms. We were having a few laughs with the girls when Fred came back. He paused in the doorway for a moment, looked around, and liked what he saw. “Well, hello there. Where did you fine young things come from?” Suddenly he was all funny and charming, flashing his powerful dimples. He ended up embracing the girl I was with in a long, slow hug, speaking softly in her ear. Over her shoulder, he waved me good-bye. I’d been snookered. I stepped out for a bit, and when I came back both bedroom doors were locked. When I knocked, Fred called, “Go away, I’m busy.” The night ended for me on a chair in the living room among empty beer cans and full ashtrays.

A couple of nights later Scott and I were waiting for a table at Nick’s Café, the place everybody went for a late bite, when I noticed a striking girl grooving to the song playing on the jukebox. As I looked closer I could see that she might be an American Indian. I drew a breath, went over, and started gabbing about what a cool jukebox they had at Nick’s. She said her name was Emma, and she turned out to be from the Kiowa Nation. I told her my mother was Mohawk, from Six Nations. “Mohawk! You’re Mohawk? How come you don’t have one of those scary haircuts?” We had an easy connection, and while the boys were sampling the chicken-fried steak, Emma and I sat by the river talking. She had the sweetest laugh. Miss Emma and me, we both felt the shimmer.

At the end of the week, Fred said he was driving over to Sun Records in Memphis to let Sam Phillips know he’d be available for session work in the near future. He asked if I wanted to come. Sun Records? The label that discovered Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash? With the yellow label that was black in the beginning? The center of the universe? Yes, I wanted to go to Sun Records.

We hit the road and Fred pointed out pieces of music history along the way, like the Plantation Inn, Miss Annie’s Place, and the Cotton Club in West Memphis, and then we drove over the Memphis-Arkansas Memorial Bridge into Tennessee. He dropped me off on Beale Street at the Home of the Blues record store while he went to make an appointment at Sun. Home of the Blues was just up the street from the Lansky Brothers, where only eight years earlier a seventeen-year-old Elvis working at the Loew’s State Theatre had bought his first suit from Bernard Lansky, and where Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash got their sharp outfits. To me these were more than just shops: they were historic landmarks. I had heard of Home of the Blues only on fifty-thousand-watt southern radio stations that on cold, clear nights could beam all the way up to Canada.

The inside of the shop featured wall-to-wall record covers and rows and rows of records, ones you could never get up north and many I’d never heard of. I spent nearly my whole first week’s paycheck on Warren Smith, Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Roy Orbison, Little Walter, Charlie Rich, Howlin’ Wolf, Don Gibson, T-Bone Walker, Little Junior Parker, Ray Charles, Mahalia Jackson, and the Swan Silvertones. I was going to my music school, and to church. When Fred picked me up on Beale Street later and saw all my bags of records, his eyes went wide. “Boy, what did you do, buy out the store?”

“They’ve got everything you want and stuff you didn’t know you wanted,” I told him. I felt proud and equipped.

As we headed back to Sun Records for Fred’s appointment, I was flushed with excitement. Inside I took a seat in a little lobby area while Fred was escorted to an office. The pictures of legendary Sun recording artists hanging up and down the hallway made me feel I was stepping into a rock ’n’ roll cathedral. A man came out of the recording studio, and as the door swung open I thought I saw Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano. Must be imagining it, I thought, but then the door to the control room opened and from the speakers I heard that voice and that piano—Jerry himself. So real I could barely stand it.

Back in West Helena, Scott pored over the jackets on my new LPs, commenting on the cool or corny artwork, and I cut my thumb on the plastic opening all the albums. I had found the holy grail. Those records played day and night on Ron’s record player, which was worth its weight in silver. I always listened with a guitar and bass within reach and many times fell asleep playing along.

The next night I brought Emma, the beautiful Kiowa girl I had met at Nick’s Café, back to the Rainbow Inn. We fell into each other’s arms, went directly to Fred’s bedroom, and locked the door. Scott was already asleep in the other bedroom.

Emma and I were deep in the throes of enchantment when Fred returned. He knocked sharply on the bedroom door with a sense of authority. I said, “Go away, busy right now.”

He knocked again.

“Go away, thank you, I’m busy.” Emma put her hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter.

When we surfaced in the morning, Fred was stretched out on the living-room couch with a cushion over his head to shield his eyes from the daylight.

Not sure why, but after that Fred started sharing some of his guitar knowledge with me. That afternoon he was changing his guitar strings and decided to show me how he used one banjo string for the high E and moved all the regular guitar strings down one place, meaning the A string was now the low E. It made all the strings much more bendable. He said it was a trick he had learned when he was playing the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show out of Shreveport, where country music and the blues met and got hitched. I was taken with the way he used a flat pick and two National finger picks on his middle and third fingers. I started trying that too. You could grab hold of the strings in a more deliberate way, steel on steel, and I even tried them playing bass—which might’ve been a first.

Fred finally started going over all the tunes with us, showing us where the live arrangements were different from the records. I was lapping it up, grateful for his generous turn. I’d been using a spare guitar and bass, but he suggested we go over to the guitar store in Memphis and check out some new equipment. Ronnie was always open to getting new gear for members of his band. He let you pay it off, a little out of your paycheck every week.

And then news came over the wire that on Friday night it was going down: Howlin’ Wolf and his band were playing at the Cotton Club in West Memphis. I had just bought his record with the gray cover and a picture of a wolf howling, called Moanin’ in the Moonlight, the one with “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline),” “Smoke Stack Lightning,” and of course “Evil,” a real heart-warmer. Yes, Chester Burnett, known as Howlin’ Wolf, was badass. I suggested we could piggyback a stop at the Cotton Club with our trip to the musical instrument store. But Fred wouldn’t commit, mainly because I was too young to get into the club.

On Friday afternoon we “motorvated” over to Memphis and the O.K. Houck Piano Company, a place of true beauty. Guitars ran up and down the walls forever, as I had imagined in a dream. I tried out a red Gibson 335 semi-hollow-body, like Chuck Berry played. The body was a little bulky, but I liked it. The sound was smooth and wide, different from solid-body Fenders, Gibsons, and Gretsches, which had a tighter, brighter sound. James Burton, Roy Buchanan, and Fred all played Fender Telecasters, maybe because they had all come through the Louisiana Hayride school. These guitars were lighter in weight and didn’t kill your shoulder when you had to play long hours in a club. I strapped on an unusual white Fender six-string bass with a tremolo bar, a halfway point between a bass and a guitar. This was new and different. I wanted it.

Back in the car Fred said the magic words. “Let’s give it a shot. Let’s go see Howlin’ Wolf. If they stop you at the door, you can wait outside and just listen. I’ll go in and tell you how great it was.” I hoped he was kidding.

As we approached the entrance to the Cotton Club on Broadway Street, a huge African American bouncer looked at me and said, “How old’re you?”

Fred answered for me. “He’s with me, and we’re musicians from over in Helena playing with Ronnie Hawkins. We’re just here to listen to some good music.”

The bouncer asked if we had any booze with us, and we both shook our heads no. “Well, make sure he don’t drink any,” he said, pointing at me.

We entered a music haven: a combination bar, restaurant, dance hall, and juke joint. The odor of stale cigarette smoke, perfume, liquor, and spicy food hung thick in the air. The crowd was almost entirely black, and I was too new to know whether it was cool for Fred and me to be here. Wolf and his band were already in the middle of their set, sweat glowing on their faces. Wolf’s stage attire was a white shirt and dress pants, but on him it looked like straight-arrow blues. Above the stage a blue spotlight shining down on his face made him look like a haunted man, but this was no voodoo; this was hoodoo and the spirit of the “new blues,” different from the traditional folk blues of Josh White or Big Bill Broonzy. This was down, dirty, and hard.

I was tripping over myself trying to get closer to that sound and fury. Wolf’s vocal style came from another planet, sliding from his big growlin’ tone into his pinched bullhorn stinger, then just as quickly lifting us with his hoot-owl falsetto. And those guitar parts from Hubert Sumlin, king of the blues riff—to hear them live was like hearing them for the first time. On Howlin’ Wolf’s records the music came bursting out of the speakers with a powerful authority, but when the band played live it had a surprisingly delicate blend. All the parts sounded beautifully balanced.

I was mouth breathing, my jaw hanging down. Fred looked at me and broke out laughing but I was locked in. This was Wolf in his element, in his backyard, with his devotees egging him on. When they hit the last blast of their set, the house lights came on and it was like snapping out of a spell. That night was the most frightening musical experience I’d ever had, and it felt way too good.

RONNIE CAME BACK from England with a deeper, more worldly look in his eyes. It sounded as if he and Levon had had a bloody good time. Ronnie kept preaching of England’s glories. “Boys, if we could spend some real time over there, we could be big, we could stir it up big time. They love our music and I don’t think they’ve got much music of their own, or maybe it’s not very good.”

Levon confessed he’d caught a case of albino crabs there. “Never seen anything like it,” Ronnie said. “I swear, they were white. Hard to see those little albino suckers.”

During the trip they’d run into Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, who were touring there. I’d played Gene’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula” on the jukebox at the soda shop across from my high school nearly every day—just hearing about Ron and Levon seeing him was enough to give me a rush. “Gene was singin’ good,” Ron told us, “but he looked to me like he was missing his band, the Blue Caps.” Not long after Ron and Levon got back, Eddie and Gene were in a car wreck while they were still on the road in England. Eddie was killed, and Gene was terribly hurt. The news devastated us. They were true rock ’n’ roll heroes in our book.

I could tell Ronnie was trying to figure out if it was worth the trouble hiring an underage Canadian kid like me, who might bring down the law if I got caught by an inspector. It was virtually unheard of to consider hiring a sixteen-year-old to play in these nightclubs, where you had to be twenty-one. Levon was Ronnie’s go-to guy, his musical ears. It was his job to figure out whether I could play worth a damn enough to take the risk of getting busted. But slowly I was convincing him. When we practiced, he could see we wanted to go musically to the same place. He could feel my hunger. When he saw the records I had bought while he was in England and heard how blown away I was by his meeting Eddie Cochran, he saw how much this southern music meant to me, how deep it was in my soul. All this made me feel like I was starting to get through to Levon, not just musically but on a personal level.

Then one day Levon said, “Hey, Robbie, come with me. Let’s go visit my folks. I’m gonna show you Marvell, Arkansas, gateway to Indian Bay.” We’d be driving up in Ron’s big white ’59 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. He smiled. “That’ll turn some heads.”

On the way he searched the radio dial, lit a Winston cigarette, told me about local legend Sonny Boy Williamson, and drove, all at the same time. Sonny Boy had a show on Helena radio station KFFA. “That’s over on Cherry Street, 1250 on the AM dial,” Levon told me. “At twelve fifteen King Biscuit Flour presents Sonny Boy Williamson and his King Biscuit Boys. Brought to you by Sonny Boy Cornmeal!” Levon mouthed the sound of a blues harp. “Wah-oo-whaaa! And that’s just how the show gets started.” He laughed. “They call it West Memphis Blues!”

It just sounded so good, all of it. To my ears, this was poetry coming to life. The names of the towns and rivers, the names of all these characters, everything had its own rhythm down here. Images and sounds started getting stuck in my head. I was sixteen years old and very impressionable.

Levon told me about all the folks I’d be meeting. “There’ll be Jasper Diamond—that’s Daddy—who you’ll see is a one of a kind. And Mama, her name is Nell, but we all call her Shuck.” I wondered why they called her Shuck but didn’t want to interrupt. “Then there’s Modena, my older sister. She might be there with her husband, Ralph. My younger sister Linda, that’s who I played music with. She played washtub bass and I played guitar and sang. We were called the Jungle Bush Beaters. And my little brother Wheeler, he’ll be there for sure.” I felt privileged to have Levon introduce me to his family and show me his old stomping grounds.

When we arrived at his house, the first thing I noticed was how the house was raised well above the ground. “The water can get pretty high around here,” Levon pointed out. “Sometimes you need a little boat to get to where you’re going. They don’t call it the Delta for nothing.”

His sister Linda was the first one to burst out the front door, laughing and yelling, “Lavon, there you are! Hi, y’all. So nice to meet you!” Next came Levon’s mom, with her arms stretched out toward her boy. “You better come here and hug my neck, right now.” Then Jasper Diamond, smiling, coughing, and blowing cigarette smoke. “What kind of car is that you drivin’?” he hollered. “That’s the biggest damn car I ever seen.”

“Yeah, it’s a beauty,” Levon said, grabbing Wheeler’s crew-cut head. “Look at this big old boy.” As we chatted, Modena came out of the kitchen, shaking a spoon with joy. “Somebody’s got to keep this food from burning!” she called out. As they swarmed Levon, you could tell how much they loved their guy.

We sat down to an authentic, health-be-damned southern meal. Real corn bread, fried chicken, wilted greens, ham, biscuits and gravy, iced tea, pecan pie, the works. I looked around the table and felt a deep warmth and contentment—good people, good food. Levon had brought me into his world; it was all new to me, and wonderful.

We moved to the living room for an after-dinner smoke, everybody moaning about how full they were. As I sat down on the couch, Diamond passed wind like a foghorn. He looked back toward the kitchen and called out, “Hell, Robin, was that you? Sound like you stepped on a big ol’ bullfrog.”

“Diamond, you stop that,” said Shuck. “You’re embarrassing poor Robbie.” But Diamond was grinning from ear to ear and knew he had me going. He jammed his cigarette out in the ashtray, coughed, and asked me, “Robin, tell me something. They got many niggers up there in Canada?”

I was stunned for a moment. “No,” I told him, “we got mostly ‘ofays’ up there.” Levon laughed out loud.

“Well, we got eight colored to one white round here,” Diamond explained, lighting another cigarette, thumbnail on match. “I ain’t saying anything bad about niggers. I know some hardworking, good folks, but we got some bad ones too. When I was sheriff here, I’d be throwing one too many of those drunk old boys in the pokey every Saturday night.”

“Daddy, you better quit that,” Linda chimed in. “You’re ’bout to scare young Robbie all the way back to Canada.” She reached for a mandolin and handed it to Diamond. “Here,” she said, laughing, “stop talking and sing something.”

Diamond looked around the room and smiled like he had pulled a rabbit out of his hat. He hit a couple chords on the mandolin and started singing an old-time story song. The timbre of his voice was gentle and deep-rooted. Levon passed me a guitar and motioned for me to play along. I did, and it made everybody sit back, just right. Levon had told me on the drive out, “My mama and daddy worked so hard all their lives, growing cotton. One of these days I’d like to give them some comfort and easy living. They deserve it.” I saw what he meant.

BACK AT THE Rainbow Inn, Ronnie had worked out a rough timeline with Fred, who had agreed to stay in the band until things were up and running with the new inexperienced blood he was trying out. When Levon and I returned, we ran over some of the tunes from the repertoire, including many songs from Ron’s first two albums, like “Mary Lou,” “Forty Days,” “Southern Love,” and “Someone Like You,” which was one of the tunes I had written for him. Ron was not known to be shy about making his band rehearse relentlessly. Levon showed me driving rhythm parts on the bass, twin-string and upper-octave stuff, playing it Chuck Berry style. I practiced on my own too and ran over the songs until my fingers were bleeding. I couldn’t have been happier.

The Hawk was becoming half pleased with the possibilities of a lineup that featured Magoo, Fred, Levon, and me on six-string bass. This band was starting to have confidence and a “look,” something that Ron was always very conscious of. He said, “If my band is good-looking, that’ll bring the girls into the clubs … and sure enough the boys will follow.” Fred was a handsome man with a weathered complexion and a more mature, southern manner, old-fashioned in many ways and proud of it. Levon was the opposite. He looked young, shiny, and magnetic with his blond hair, gleaming smile, and highly contagious laugh. Ronnie himself always had a unique, sharp style. He looked the part, mischievous and dangerous in a lovable way—a lethal combination. Magoo had thick glasses creeping down his nose and a blind man’s smile. He looked a bit overly educated in Ronnie’s eyes, but he sure could rattle those ivories.

Ron saw me as more of a work in progress, but he went out on a limb and offered me the job. “I can see how hard you’re working, and you’re hungry,” he said. “I like that.”

“Great, thanks!” I gushed. “What’s the pay gonna be like?”

“Well, son,” he said, “you won’t make much money, but you’ll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.”

TWO

A COUPLE DAYS later Ronnie announced that Harold “the Colonel” Kudlets, his booking agent, had called: we were booked for two weeks in London, Ontario, at the Brass Rail Tavern, then three weeks at Le Coq d’Or in Toronto. Ron liked playing up in Canada because the hours were easier and we made more money. This was exciting news: I’d be returning to my homeland a member of the Hawks. But nothing was certain: Magoo and I were still inexperienced Canadians trying to make it in a southern band, and Ron could boot us at any time. And while I was bangin’ it out on the bass for now, I was sleeping with my guitar.

As we packed up at the motel for the drive, Charlie Halbert came over to say good-bye. I told him that his Rainbow Court Inn had to be one of the hippest places ever. He patted me on my back all fatherly and said, “Well, you’re young and you ain’t been anywhere, but I’m sure the Hawk is getting ready to show you places you never dreamt of.”

Levon arranged our instruments in the trailer methodically so that nothing would get damaged. We had three Fender Bassman amps, the amp of choice around these parts, one each for Fred, Magoo, and me. Levon put his red sparkle Gretsch drums in their black cases inside the front of the trailer, the amps at the back, and the guitar and bass cases in the middle, and sat the suitcases on top. It made for a tight, secure fit. Our whole musical lifeline was back there in that trailer, hitched under the bumper with two safety chains to the back of Ronnie’s white Caddy.

alive