Fayetteville’s Rockwood Club, which was owned in the early 1960s by rockabilly legend and Huntsville native Ronnie Hawkins, featured Hawkins’ band, The Hawks, on many occasions. Stories about their wild shows have always been great fodder. This 1959 lip-synced performance from Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beechnut Show may be some indication how crazy those concerts actually were. (Note a very young Levon Helm on the drums.)
Ronnie, Levon, Jimmy Ray “Luke” Paulman on guitar, Jimmy “Lefty” Evans on bass, and Willard “Pop” Jones on Piano. Usually thought of as the first version of The Hawks, tho it actually post-dates the Fayetteville version, that included Harold Pinkerton and Herman Tuck.
I remember Ronnie and Robbie Lane starting on Saturday afternoon at the Concord Tavern in Toronto They were brought back twice for the afternoon and went over so big they got the Saturday night gig for quite a while before they went downtown Yonge St