Ronnie Hawkins obituary

When Ronnie Hawkins was recruiting musicians to play in his band, the Hawks, he was crudely honest with them about what to expect.

You will be playing some tough joints where “you have to puke twice and show your razor to get in”, he told them, adding that they wouldn’t earn much but would have more success with women than Frank Sinatra.

The comment was typical of the rough-and-tumble, larger-than-life rock’n’roller whose career began in the 1950s and who mentored dozens of rock musicians who went on to find fame in their own right. Most celebrated among them were the early 1960s iteration of the Hawks: they would back Bob Dylan when he controversially “went electric” and they later became the Band, whose songs such