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| I see you. |
If you thought Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Susie Q” was an original, but never felt 100% sure about that, raise your hand.
The Hit
There’s definitely something sexy about it. The trance-like groove of the guitar figure, the blues-inspired lyric that borders on romantic mantra, the steady (unflagging) rhythm: put it all together and you get something damn close to a metaphor in musical form.
To stick with a persistent theme in this series’ early chapters, Dale Hawkins’ label (Checker Records) totally slept on his “Susie Q,” sitting on it for months before they released. Somewhere in the middle of stewing in his frustrations, Hawkins complained about it to a friendly DJ from Shreveport, Louisiana. The DJ rose to the occasion with a passive-aggressive masterpiece:
“Hawkins credits Shreveport disc-jockey Chuck Dunaway with helping Chess see the light. ‘I had sat there for three months waiting for 'em to put it out and [Dunaway] said, “Dale, let's just send it up to [Jerry] Wexler.” We sent a copy up to Atlantic and a few days later Jerry called and said, “I love it. I'll take it.” Then I explained to him, “Mr Wexler, Mr. Chess has got the thing and he hasn't released it. I had signed the papers with him.” He said, “What? You call him and tell him that he should either sh** or get off the pot.” “You want me to say it just like that?” He said, “That's all you got to say.” I called Mr. Chess and told him that. There was a little pause--and to hear Leonard pause during a conversation was something to talk about--and he said, “I'll call you back tomorrow.” Three days later, it was on the street. That's how fast it worked.’”
To their credit, Chess kept Hawkins’ single aloft once it took off by way of a “rolling marketing” strategy that involved pushing it in one market, and then moving on to the next one before that first market dried all the way up. While that stroke of genius didn’t come all the way off (Philistines), “Susie-Q” never became a monster hit. It topped the R&B charts – something that’s relevant to the larger story – but never went higher than No. 11 on the Pop charts and it didn’t stay long. And yet, it lingered in the musical culture for a couple decades...not unlike Dale Hawkins.
The Hit
There’s definitely something sexy about it. The trance-like groove of the guitar figure, the blues-inspired lyric that borders on romantic mantra, the steady (unflagging) rhythm: put it all together and you get something damn close to a metaphor in musical form.
To stick with a persistent theme in this series’ early chapters, Dale Hawkins’ label (Checker Records) totally slept on his “Susie Q,” sitting on it for months before they released. Somewhere in the middle of stewing in his frustrations, Hawkins complained about it to a friendly DJ from Shreveport, Louisiana. The DJ rose to the occasion with a passive-aggressive masterpiece:
“Hawkins credits Shreveport disc-jockey Chuck Dunaway with helping Chess see the light. ‘I had sat there for three months waiting for 'em to put it out and [Dunaway] said, “Dale, let's just send it up to [Jerry] Wexler.” We sent a copy up to Atlantic and a few days later Jerry called and said, “I love it. I'll take it.” Then I explained to him, “Mr Wexler, Mr. Chess has got the thing and he hasn't released it. I had signed the papers with him.” He said, “What? You call him and tell him that he should either sh** or get off the pot.” “You want me to say it just like that?” He said, “That's all you got to say.” I called Mr. Chess and told him that. There was a little pause--and to hear Leonard pause during a conversation was something to talk about--and he said, “I'll call you back tomorrow.” Three days later, it was on the street. That's how fast it worked.’”
To their credit, Chess kept Hawkins’ single aloft once it took off by way of a “rolling marketing” strategy that involved pushing it in one market, and then moving on to the next one before that first market dried all the way up. While that stroke of genius didn’t come all the way off (Philistines), “Susie-Q” never became a monster hit. It topped the R&B charts – something that’s relevant to the larger story – but never went higher than No. 11 on the Pop charts and it didn’t stay long. And yet, it lingered in the musical culture for a couple decades...not unlike Dale Hawkins.
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| Dude was raw... |
The Rest of the Story, Briefly
He came into the world Delmar Allen Hawkins, Shreveport, Louisiana August, 1936, but the story of his musical career starts with his grandfather. His grandparents loom large in his story due to the fact they raised him, both before and after his parents – a “hard-drinking musician” (Delmar “Skipper” Hawkins) and his hard-working mother (Estelle Taylor Phillips) – divorced. Hawkins grew up poor, picking cotton until he was 13, but his grandfather regularly took him around Shreveport’s musical venues – despite the fact he served as a sheriff for a day job. Per Hawkins’ latter-day reveries:
“You'd get to hear Elmore James in the back and Hank Williams in the front. Also, we all had to go to church.... They had a Pentecostal church just down the street and I loved to hear 'em play and sing.... I got to go up and sing with 'em sometimes.”
Whether from by blood or his grandfather’s influence, Hawkins got the bug bad: he sold newspapers to buy his first guitar at age seven and getting slipped in through the back door to play gigs with his friend/guitarist James Burton by age 15 or 16. That was illegal, of course, but Hawkins played well enough that people who ran the night clubs on Shreveport’s Bossier Street kept opening that back door. He took a hitch in the Navy to get the hell out for a while and, as he put it, “try to learn something,” but he returned to Shreveport and started knocking around local musical institution Stan’s Record Shop. Hawkins liked the work and did well at it – as a bonus, he knew enough about R&B that he could direct people to the right record if they could sing or hum him a couple bars – but that also introduced him to this story’s primary antagonist, Stan Lewis.
There’s no question Lewis took advantage of Hawkins – he finagled the rights to most of his music as his “manager” – but Lewis also did Hawkins a solid by connecting him to the right people. For instance, Chicago’s Chess Records almost certainly wouldn’t have signed Hawkins, but for Lewis’ connections. For the record, they signed him to their subsidiary, Checker Records, making Hawkins one of the only two white artists they ever signed (Hawkins’ theory: they thought he was black.) Even if it took Chess a while to figure out “Susie-Q,” they let Hawkins record quite a few sides. To borrow a quote (from Musician Guide):
“Hawkins's work at Checker veered between brilliant blues-with-a-beat excursions like ‘My Babe,’ ‘Tornado,’ ‘Wild, Wild World,’ ‘La-Do-Dada,’ and ‘Don't Treat Me This Way,’ to such white teen-pop tunes as ‘A House, a Car, and a Wedding Ring’ and ‘Class Cutter (Yeah, Yeah).’”
In keeping with the theme of the series, none of those went anywhere helpful. With his music career stalled and a pregnant wife to support – to flag a touching side note, Hawkins remembers taking the job due to the way he was raised - Hawkins returned to Stan’s Records and an offer to do some production work for Lewis’ in-house, KWKH (radio) label, Paula Records. With his fear of becoming an insurance salesman spurring him on (his words, not mine), he proved more than ready for the job. By working connections the same way Lewis did for him, Hawkins “self-promoted” Joe Stampley and the Uniques’ “Not Too Long Ago” into a 700,000 copy seller.
That success pushed Hawkins into his second act as a producer – and, again, he was good at it. His good run with Stampley continued through into the 1960s and beyond: his production credits (before and after my arbitrary marker) include Willie Dixon’s “My Babe,” Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby” [Ed. – He’s an upcoming chapter], the Five Americans’ “Western Union,” and John Fred and His Playboy Band’s “Judy in Disguise.” He parlayed those triumphs into a steady gig as RCA Records’ A&R (“Artists & Repertoire”) lead for the West Coast in LA, where he had a hand in Nilsson’s famous (and awesome) “Everybody’s Talkin’” and Michael Nesmith’s “Joanne.” Unfortunately, a booze/amphetamine habit came with the job. Tired of burning the candle at both ends (with age serving as one more), Hawkins returned to Shreveport and sobered up.
That moves the story to the 1990s and things generally improved from there. Hawkins never gave up entirely on his own music, even if he never put out studio albums at a career-sustaining clip (the full discography: Oh! Suzy-Q (1958), LA, Memphis & Tyler, Texas (1969); Wildcat Tamer (1999), Back Down to Louisiana (2007)). He also continued to tour more or less to the end – he got hit with a colon cancer diagnosis in 2005, and died in 2010 – but that felt like a sidebar to the project that seemed to become Hawkins’ third act. When a bunch of money came his way due to MCA Records’ purchase of his entire Checker Records catalog, Hawkins converted that money into Hawk’s Nest Studios in 1995. And that detail segues nicely into the first of the...
3 Points of Interest
1) Hawkins Was a Good Dude
After wrestling his drug demons into a cage, Hawkins got involved in teen crisis intervention. And, for five years, he madeHawk’s Nest Studios part of that project. As he told Gary James Famous Interviews a decade (maybe?) before he passed:
“Most of my time is spent as Director of the Arkansas Crisis/Suicide Intervention Center. One of our fundraising projects for the teen suicide hotline is a state talent search. Talent contests take place around the state, and then the local winners come in for the state finals. I take the state winner into the recording studio and produce them, on a couple of tunes. The contest is now 5 years old and so far we have had some terrific winners and contestants.”
2) A Producer’s Ear
That Hawkins came from a musical family hardly hurt – after his father, he had a brother (Jerry) and a cousin (Ronnie) who played in rockabilly outfits as well – but Dale Hawkins also had a talent for finding talent, hence his success(es) as a producer. The story starts with James Burton – i.e., the author of “Susie-Q’s” famous guitar figure (and amazing solos; better on the original, seriously) - but Hawkins worked with his share of heavies:
“Hawkins also proved himself adept at finding remarkable guitarists whose work would impact the world of rock for decades to come. James Burton and bassist Joe Osborne went on to enliven recordings by Bob Luman, Ricky Nelson, and Elvis Presley, among many others. Roy Buchanan, who played for Hawkins's first cousin Ronnie for a spell, became the standard for rock and blues guitar during the early 1970s. Kenny Paulsen's twangy riffs transformed Freddie Cannon's ‘Tallahassee Lassie’ and many others into first-rate rockers.”
“Of all the guitar-slingers he worked with, Hawkins has the greatest appreciation for the lesser known Carl Adams, who can be heard on ‘Tornado’ and ‘Little Pig.’ Adams, who later had the fingers blown off of his left hand, played with a searing technique; according to Hawkins, ‘Roy [Buchanan] learned an awful lot from Carl.’”
A theory of Hawkins’ influences – e.g., Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Lonnie Johnson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe – explains some of that.
3) About that Famous Cover
“Creedence Clearwater Revival released a version on their debut album in 1968. The band's only Top 40 hit not written by John Fogerty, it peaked at number 11 for one week in November 1968. This song was their first big hit. The album version clocks in at 8:37. The single is split into parts one and two on its A and B sides, respectively. The jam session during the coda is omitted in part one. Instead, it fades out with the guitar solo right before the coda, which fades in with part two on the B-side.”
Creedence’s “Susie Q” has never been a favorite – and I’d argue Hawkins’ did a better version – but kudos to them for giving the listener the time it takes to flip the LP to seriously contemplate whether or not they really want to hear the rest of the song.
Sources
Wikipedia – Dale Hawkins
Musician Guide bio (best source for my money)
The Guardian (2010, obituary)
50ThirdAnd3rd bio
Gary James Famous Interview (fwiw, I’m 90% sure this is the same guy from Classicbands.com)
The Sampler
First, forgive me for getting this far into the post without mentioning that Dale Hawkins was “often called the architect of swamp rock boogie” even once. With a nod to “Susie-Q,” part of me wonders what kind of career Creedence would have had without Hawkins paving their way.
As noted above, Hawkins spent the bulk of his life producing, but, I gotta say, the man put out some stellar tunes. His career came in several phases – and he veered pretty hard into country for his later albums (and yet they’re still good...even if his spin on “Hound Dog” on L.A., Memphis and Tyler, Texas crash-landed for me) – but he has a strong catalog. The Chess stuff, in particular, ranks high in my personal pantheon of rockabilly.
I got most of the songs from that era from a collection on Spotify titled Presenting Dale Hawkins (which I highly recommend). To mop on the songs on the sampler not already linked to above:
“See You Soon, Baboon,” (his first minor hit, a call-back to “See You Later Alligator”), “Every Little Girl,” “Mrs. Merguitory’s Daughter,” “Sweetie Pie” and the (for me) genuinely brilliant, “Someday, One Day” and “Who” (fucking stupid algorithms!)
I shorted the rest of the catalog, perhaps consciously even if I enjoy most of the singles. In the very loose order of release:
L.A., Memphis, & Tyler Texas: the title track, and “Little Rain Cloud”
Wildcat Tamer (which the critics liked, fwiw): the title track, “Goin’ Down the Road” (good swamp, there), and “Born in Louisiana.”
The Crackling Blues of Dale Hawkins: a severely olde tyme (talking late 1920s) “Any Time is Loving Time,” a nice piano-driven ballad called “The Same Old Way” and more on-brand singles, if with a garage vamp motif, “Peaches” and “Liza Jane.”
For what it’s worth, I thought Dale Hawkins was an incredible listen. His production career proved he had a great ear, but, even with a decade or three between them, the man put out some great songs. Based on all the above, he comes off a musician’s musician to me – i.e., someone for the audiophiles rather than the mass market.
Till the next one...which I’m pretty excited to write about, honestly.
He came into the world Delmar Allen Hawkins, Shreveport, Louisiana August, 1936, but the story of his musical career starts with his grandfather. His grandparents loom large in his story due to the fact they raised him, both before and after his parents – a “hard-drinking musician” (Delmar “Skipper” Hawkins) and his hard-working mother (Estelle Taylor Phillips) – divorced. Hawkins grew up poor, picking cotton until he was 13, but his grandfather regularly took him around Shreveport’s musical venues – despite the fact he served as a sheriff for a day job. Per Hawkins’ latter-day reveries:
“You'd get to hear Elmore James in the back and Hank Williams in the front. Also, we all had to go to church.... They had a Pentecostal church just down the street and I loved to hear 'em play and sing.... I got to go up and sing with 'em sometimes.”
Whether from by blood or his grandfather’s influence, Hawkins got the bug bad: he sold newspapers to buy his first guitar at age seven and getting slipped in through the back door to play gigs with his friend/guitarist James Burton by age 15 or 16. That was illegal, of course, but Hawkins played well enough that people who ran the night clubs on Shreveport’s Bossier Street kept opening that back door. He took a hitch in the Navy to get the hell out for a while and, as he put it, “try to learn something,” but he returned to Shreveport and started knocking around local musical institution Stan’s Record Shop. Hawkins liked the work and did well at it – as a bonus, he knew enough about R&B that he could direct people to the right record if they could sing or hum him a couple bars – but that also introduced him to this story’s primary antagonist, Stan Lewis.
There’s no question Lewis took advantage of Hawkins – he finagled the rights to most of his music as his “manager” – but Lewis also did Hawkins a solid by connecting him to the right people. For instance, Chicago’s Chess Records almost certainly wouldn’t have signed Hawkins, but for Lewis’ connections. For the record, they signed him to their subsidiary, Checker Records, making Hawkins one of the only two white artists they ever signed (Hawkins’ theory: they thought he was black.) Even if it took Chess a while to figure out “Susie-Q,” they let Hawkins record quite a few sides. To borrow a quote (from Musician Guide):
“Hawkins's work at Checker veered between brilliant blues-with-a-beat excursions like ‘My Babe,’ ‘Tornado,’ ‘Wild, Wild World,’ ‘La-Do-Dada,’ and ‘Don't Treat Me This Way,’ to such white teen-pop tunes as ‘A House, a Car, and a Wedding Ring’ and ‘Class Cutter (Yeah, Yeah).’”
In keeping with the theme of the series, none of those went anywhere helpful. With his music career stalled and a pregnant wife to support – to flag a touching side note, Hawkins remembers taking the job due to the way he was raised - Hawkins returned to Stan’s Records and an offer to do some production work for Lewis’ in-house, KWKH (radio) label, Paula Records. With his fear of becoming an insurance salesman spurring him on (his words, not mine), he proved more than ready for the job. By working connections the same way Lewis did for him, Hawkins “self-promoted” Joe Stampley and the Uniques’ “Not Too Long Ago” into a 700,000 copy seller.
That success pushed Hawkins into his second act as a producer – and, again, he was good at it. His good run with Stampley continued through into the 1960s and beyond: his production credits (before and after my arbitrary marker) include Willie Dixon’s “My Babe,” Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby” [Ed. – He’s an upcoming chapter], the Five Americans’ “Western Union,” and John Fred and His Playboy Band’s “Judy in Disguise.” He parlayed those triumphs into a steady gig as RCA Records’ A&R (“Artists & Repertoire”) lead for the West Coast in LA, where he had a hand in Nilsson’s famous (and awesome) “Everybody’s Talkin’” and Michael Nesmith’s “Joanne.” Unfortunately, a booze/amphetamine habit came with the job. Tired of burning the candle at both ends (with age serving as one more), Hawkins returned to Shreveport and sobered up.
That moves the story to the 1990s and things generally improved from there. Hawkins never gave up entirely on his own music, even if he never put out studio albums at a career-sustaining clip (the full discography: Oh! Suzy-Q (1958), LA, Memphis & Tyler, Texas (1969); Wildcat Tamer (1999), Back Down to Louisiana (2007)). He also continued to tour more or less to the end – he got hit with a colon cancer diagnosis in 2005, and died in 2010 – but that felt like a sidebar to the project that seemed to become Hawkins’ third act. When a bunch of money came his way due to MCA Records’ purchase of his entire Checker Records catalog, Hawkins converted that money into Hawk’s Nest Studios in 1995. And that detail segues nicely into the first of the...
3 Points of Interest
1) Hawkins Was a Good Dude
After wrestling his drug demons into a cage, Hawkins got involved in teen crisis intervention. And, for five years, he madeHawk’s Nest Studios part of that project. As he told Gary James Famous Interviews a decade (maybe?) before he passed:
“Most of my time is spent as Director of the Arkansas Crisis/Suicide Intervention Center. One of our fundraising projects for the teen suicide hotline is a state talent search. Talent contests take place around the state, and then the local winners come in for the state finals. I take the state winner into the recording studio and produce them, on a couple of tunes. The contest is now 5 years old and so far we have had some terrific winners and contestants.”
2) A Producer’s Ear
That Hawkins came from a musical family hardly hurt – after his father, he had a brother (Jerry) and a cousin (Ronnie) who played in rockabilly outfits as well – but Dale Hawkins also had a talent for finding talent, hence his success(es) as a producer. The story starts with James Burton – i.e., the author of “Susie-Q’s” famous guitar figure (and amazing solos; better on the original, seriously) - but Hawkins worked with his share of heavies:
“Hawkins also proved himself adept at finding remarkable guitarists whose work would impact the world of rock for decades to come. James Burton and bassist Joe Osborne went on to enliven recordings by Bob Luman, Ricky Nelson, and Elvis Presley, among many others. Roy Buchanan, who played for Hawkins's first cousin Ronnie for a spell, became the standard for rock and blues guitar during the early 1970s. Kenny Paulsen's twangy riffs transformed Freddie Cannon's ‘Tallahassee Lassie’ and many others into first-rate rockers.”
“Of all the guitar-slingers he worked with, Hawkins has the greatest appreciation for the lesser known Carl Adams, who can be heard on ‘Tornado’ and ‘Little Pig.’ Adams, who later had the fingers blown off of his left hand, played with a searing technique; according to Hawkins, ‘Roy [Buchanan] learned an awful lot from Carl.’”
A theory of Hawkins’ influences – e.g., Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Lonnie Johnson, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe – explains some of that.
3) About that Famous Cover
“Creedence Clearwater Revival released a version on their debut album in 1968. The band's only Top 40 hit not written by John Fogerty, it peaked at number 11 for one week in November 1968. This song was their first big hit. The album version clocks in at 8:37. The single is split into parts one and two on its A and B sides, respectively. The jam session during the coda is omitted in part one. Instead, it fades out with the guitar solo right before the coda, which fades in with part two on the B-side.”
Creedence’s “Susie Q” has never been a favorite – and I’d argue Hawkins’ did a better version – but kudos to them for giving the listener the time it takes to flip the LP to seriously contemplate whether or not they really want to hear the rest of the song.
Sources
Wikipedia – Dale Hawkins
Musician Guide bio (best source for my money)
The Guardian (2010, obituary)
50ThirdAnd3rd bio
Gary James Famous Interview (fwiw, I’m 90% sure this is the same guy from Classicbands.com)
The Sampler
First, forgive me for getting this far into the post without mentioning that Dale Hawkins was “often called the architect of swamp rock boogie” even once. With a nod to “Susie-Q,” part of me wonders what kind of career Creedence would have had without Hawkins paving their way.
As noted above, Hawkins spent the bulk of his life producing, but, I gotta say, the man put out some stellar tunes. His career came in several phases – and he veered pretty hard into country for his later albums (and yet they’re still good...even if his spin on “Hound Dog” on L.A., Memphis and Tyler, Texas crash-landed for me) – but he has a strong catalog. The Chess stuff, in particular, ranks high in my personal pantheon of rockabilly.
I got most of the songs from that era from a collection on Spotify titled Presenting Dale Hawkins (which I highly recommend). To mop on the songs on the sampler not already linked to above:
“See You Soon, Baboon,” (his first minor hit, a call-back to “See You Later Alligator”), “Every Little Girl,” “Mrs. Merguitory’s Daughter,” “Sweetie Pie” and the (for me) genuinely brilliant, “Someday, One Day” and “Who” (fucking stupid algorithms!)
I shorted the rest of the catalog, perhaps consciously even if I enjoy most of the singles. In the very loose order of release:
L.A., Memphis, & Tyler Texas: the title track, and “Little Rain Cloud”
Wildcat Tamer (which the critics liked, fwiw): the title track, “Goin’ Down the Road” (good swamp, there), and “Born in Louisiana.”
The Crackling Blues of Dale Hawkins: a severely olde tyme (talking late 1920s) “Any Time is Loving Time,” a nice piano-driven ballad called “The Same Old Way” and more on-brand singles, if with a garage vamp motif, “Peaches” and “Liza Jane.”
For what it’s worth, I thought Dale Hawkins was an incredible listen. His production career proved he had a great ear, but, even with a decade or three between them, the man put out some great songs. Based on all the above, he comes off a musician’s musician to me – i.e., someone for the audiophiles rather than the mass market.
Till the next one...which I’m pretty excited to write about, honestly.
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