⬇️ TED HAWKINS ⬇️
(9CD)
Ted Hawkins (October 28, 1936 – January 1, 1995) was an American
singer-songwriter born in Biloxi, Mississippi. He was an enigmatic figure
for most of his career. He split his time between his adopted hometown of
Venice Beach, California, where he was a mostly anonymous street
performer, and Europe and Australia, where he and his songs were better
known and well received in clubs and small concert halls.
Hawkins was born into a poor family in Mississippi and had a difficult
early life. He was sent to a reform school when he 12 years old. As a
teenager he drifted hitch hiking, and stole his way across the country for
the next dozen years, earning several stays in prison including a
three-year stint for stealing a leather jacket as a teenager.
Along the way, he picked up a love of music and a talent for the guitar.
"I was sent to a school for bad boys called Oakley Training School in
1949", he wrote in a brief piece of autobiography. "There I developed my
voice by singing with a group that the superintendent's wife had got
together". After reform school, he ended up in the state penitentiary and
was released at 19. "Then I heard a singer whose name was Sam Cooke. His
voice did something to me."
For the next ten years or so he drifted in and out of trouble around the
country, living in Chicago, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and Newark. In the
middle of the mid-1960s folk music boom Hawkins set out for California to
try for a professional singing career. He recorded several tunes without
commercial success, worked at odd jobs, and took up busking along the
piers and storefronts of Venice Beach as a way to supplement his
income.
Hawkins made ends meet by developing a small following of locals and
tourists who would come to hear this southern black man, sitting on an
overturned milk crate, play blues and folk standards and a few original
songs in his signature open guitar tuning and raspy vocal style. Hawkins
claimed the rasp in his voice came from the damage done by years of
singing in the sand and spray of the boardwalk.
A series of record producers and promoters would "discover" Hawkins over
the years, only to be thwarted by circumstance and Hawkins's
unconventional life. The first of these was the musicologist and blues
producer Bruce Bromberg, who approached Hawkins about a recording contract
in the early 1970s. Hawkins tentatively agreed and recorded some dozen
songs for Bromberg, but again he got in legal trouble and spent much of
the next decade in prison and addicted to heroin.
Bromberg lost contact until 1982, when he re-located Hawkins and got him
to agree to release the previously recorded songs as an album, Watch Your
Step, which was released by Rounder Records. This debut album was a
commercial failure but received rave reviews (notably a rare five-star
rating in Rolling Stone). Following the release of the album, Hawkins
dropped out of sight again for a time, reuniting with Bromberg in 1985 for
a second album, Happy Hour.
This album featured more original songs by Hawkins and was again ignored
in the U.S.; however it won acclaim and sales in Europe. Andy Kershaw
encouraged Hawkins to come to the United Kingdom, and he moved to
Bridlington in 1986 and enjoyed his first taste of musical success,
touring Europe and Asia. In 1990, he was deported back to the United
States, under "unpalatable" circumstances, by the British Government.....
(Wikipedia)
NEW!
1982-Watch Your Step @FLAC+
1986-On The Boardwalk (The Venice Beach Tapes) (MISSING! Looking For ...)
1995-Songs from Venice Beach @320
1998--Love You Most of All More Songs from Venice Beach @FLAC+
2001-Nowhere to Run @FLAC
1982-Watch Your Step @FLAC+
On The Boardwalk
(The Venice Beach Tapes)
(MISSING ! Looking for it ...)
The Next Hundred Years
TDHK-1994-The Next Hundred Years @ALAC
Songs from Venice Beach
1995-Songs from Venice Beach @320
(Thanks to Tpee)
Love You Most of All
More Songs from Venice Beach
1998--Love You Most of All More Songs from Venice Beach @FLAC+
The Final Tour
TDHK-1998-The Final Tour @FLAC
The Ted Hawkins Story
Suffer No More
TDHK-1998-The Ted Hawkins Story Suffer No More @320
Nowhere to Run
2001-Nowhere to Run @FLAC
The Unstoppable Ted Hawkins
TDHK-2003-The Unstoppable Ted Hawkins @ALAC
Happy Hour
TDHK-2019-Happy Hour @FLAC
4 comments:
Yes, I remember reading of the deportation in the local paper at the time. I'm not sure if he was jailed or just deported for child sex offences.
Thank you for your amazing posts. Curious if you have "Songs from Venice Beach" from 1995, three years before "More Songs..." Thank you so much and no worries at all if not.
Hi,
I do my best but some gems are "very hard to find" ! Sorry !
All the Best Blues
Chris-France
Amigo Chris muchas gracias por hacerme conocer a este artista genial.Salud y buena vida para ti.
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