'Well, I was coming out of Kitchener one time, I guess this was back in the mid-sixties." The voice on the other end of the line is jubilant, hearty, and delivered in the rich Arkansas-meets-Ontario drawl that could only belong to Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins.
"And I come across this old tour bus broken down by the side of the highway, and it's the Guess Who. They was just about gettin' started round that time, already had a little television show out of Winnipeg.
"So anyways, that Kitchener area is really good for food. They make these special pigtails in barbecue sauce. Enough cholesterol to stop up the arteries of a Dino-saurus Rex" (and here he lets out a trademark guffaw that would make Santa envious.)
"I must've had about a dozen boxes of these pigtails to take home, just to heat and serve, and I asked if anybody on the bus was hungry, because them pigtails was still warm. And Randy Bachman, the guitarist, he was religious or somethin', and wasn't supposed to eat pork." (Bachman is a Mormon.)
"But he didn't ask if they was pork till after he had eaten four or five boxes. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I remember that well."
Rompin' Ronnie, who is being honoured with Ronnie Hawkins Day in Toronto today (and getting a tribute concert tonight, a key to the city and a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame), has a million of these kinds of stories. In his nearly half-century of performing, he's played virtually every club, juke joint, beer hall and concert hall in the country, ever since he came up from his native Arkansas to Southern Ontario in the late fifties. And he's ready to tell his tales at the drop of a hat, calling them "Ronnie Hawkins stories" in a kind of weird, third-person way and punctuating each one with huge, rolling peels of laughter.
You'd never believe that Hawkins had recently been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas, and that doctors have only been able to remove part of the tumour because of the cancer's location in a major artery running through the organ.
And that this diagnosis, and the ensuing operation, came hard on the heels of heart surgery, a quadruple bypass, mere months before. Talking to Ronnie, you get the sense that this just provides more fodder for the retelling.
It seems both odd, ironic and somewhat disheartening that this veteran, prototypical rocker, who was born just two days after Elvis Presley and whose life story parallels the history of rock music itself, has suddenly regained his fame predominantly because of his ill health.
It seems that every major newspaper in the country has come calling. Film crews and camera crews from the TV networks are clamouring for his profile, all heading towards Hawkins's long-time country retreat in Stoney Lake, Ont., located about two hours north of Peterborough in the Kawartha Lakes chain.
But if the sudden re-interest in Hawkins bothers him at all, he certainly doesn't show it. The attention is just another opportunity for Hawkins's amiable cornpone shtick. "Suddenly, I'm getting more press than Osama bin Laden," he jokes. "If I'da known I coulda gotten all this attention, I'da done this years ago. But," he jokes, "my body's been like this for about 10 years now. I been hangin' in there taking more drugs than The Rolling Stones. When I was in hospital, I learned how to control that drip. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. They put more stitches in me than the Frankenstein monster.
"Oh, I tell you these doctors up here, Jesus would have had to have broke a heavy sweat to beat this bunch."
And so it seems that suddenly everybody is realizing how much they love Ronnie Hawkins and how much the country owes to him for his contribution to our popular culture. Born in 1935 in Fayetteville, Ark., Hawkins apprenticed on the roadhouse rock circuit in the southern U.S., backing the likes of Carl Perkins and Conway Twitty on piano.
In 1958, he moved to Canada, which he calls "the promised land," playing a never-ending string of one-nighters throughout Southern Ontario, but focusing on Toronto's Yonge Street strip. He was backed by his band The Hawks, a revolving-door outfit that at one time or another has included the likes of Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko (who went on to become The Band), Domenic Troiano, Roy Buchanan, Larry Gowan, Duane Allman and countless others.
When asked if he ever regretted his decision to move to Canada, he responded with his typical gleeful abandon. "Are you kidding?" he roared. "I've always said Canada is the promised land. Back in Arkansas, our history books didn't tell us nothing about Canada. They said there was nothing here but Eskimos, Indians, igloos, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and those five girls that was born" (the Dionne Quintuplets, presumably).
"Levon Helm's dad said, 'Boys, you be careful up there, they'll stick a knife in you for a dollar.' But we came through the burned-out part of Dee-troit, into Windsor, and everything was so clean and new. The 401 was brand-new then. When we got to Toronto, we spent an hour just looking up at the Royal York Hotel. Biggest thing we ever saw. We decided there and then we was gonna play there one day. We did, but it was 40 years later. But we broke every attendance record they had."
A few weeks ago, a private party was held for Hawkins in which, as Hawkins noted, "guests flew in from all over the world, England, Cuba, everywhere." Included on the guest list was former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a big Hawkins fan, and, of course, Arkansan native son. "I'm gonna tell you something," Hawkins laughed. "Just between you and me, I was shocked. Hell, I'm a bar act. I'm The King of Yonge and Dundas, and I couldn't believe it when I walked in that room and saw the ex-president and Paul Anka and David Foster. The big boys. And they did this song, musta rehearsed it because they sang it in harmony. It was done to Paul Anka's My Way, but with naughty lyrics. And when they came to the chorus, they were all quiet, and the President, right there at the end, he gets this sheepish look and sings . . . I did it . . . Hillary's Way. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha."
Hawkins also reported how the Arkansas group later came up to Hawkins's home. "We got this phone call, and it was the Secret Service, saying that Mr. Clinton wanted to come up. Wonderful, but you talk about raising windows and hiding roaches . . . ha, ha, ha, ha . . . it looked like a beehive on benzedrine . . . ha, ha, ha . . . we really had some fun."
Tonight at Massey Hall, a tribute to Ronnie Hawkins will be held, an event with a star-studded lineup that will include performances and appearances by the likes of Jeff Healey, Kris Kristofferson, The Tragically Hip, Levon Helm and many others. But while Hawkins will be attending, he won't be performing. For once, his voice takes on a serious tone when he notes, "I won't be able to sing or anything . . . I cain't hardly get upstairs. And I certainly can't get enough wind to hit those high notes."
But the serious tone doesn't last long . . . perhaps 20 seconds. "But I hope I can heal up soon," he asserts. "If it's time to go, it's time to go. But if it ain't, let's go have some fun." The Tribute to Ronnie Hawkins concert is at Toronto's Massey Hall tonight at 8. For information call: 416-870-8000.