The Band (or at least its original formation) said goodbye 40 years ago this week, during a star-studded Thanksgiving blowout in San Francisco, captured in all its gaudy mid-’70s glory in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz. In addition to the Band’s own set and various guest appearances, Scorsese filmed Band members, lounging comfortably in their Malibu recording studio, reminiscing about their early days as rock‘n’roll nobodies, playing dive bars and juke joints from Arkansas to Ontario. From guitarist Robbie Robertson in particular, these dues-paying anecdotes start to feel like the rock equivalent of the “I walked to school five miles barefoot in the snow uphill” parental cliche. And in Robertson’s new memoir, Testimony, many of the same stories are trotted out. Didja hear the one about the time they played Jack Ruby’s Dallas club just a few months before the Kennedy assassination?
Robertson’s often eyeroll-eliciting mythmaking isn’t all gravitas-boosting bluster, however. The years leading up to the Band’s epochal 1968 debut, Music From Big Pink, tell a fascinatingly tangled tale that—despite several boxed sets and compilations—has yet to be properly told. For several years now, a Canadian label has teased the release of From Bacon Fat to Judgement Day, a collection that would gather together eight discs worth of rare and unreleased early material, but it’s yet to see the light of day. Until it does, here’s a dive into the music of the Band before they became the Band.
“Bo Diddley,” Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks
Four-fifths of the Band were Canadian born, but the roots of the group are in rural Arkansas, where, in the late ’50s, Levon Helm (born Lavon) discovered he liked sitting behind a drum kit much more than sitting behind a tractor. Still in his teens, Helm joined up with Ronnie Hawkins, a hell-raising rockabilly singer with the ability to drive an audience wild with his onstage antics. “He had an instinct for crowd psychology and could start a rumble if he wanted to just by flicking his wrist,” Helm wrote of Hawkins in his autobiography This Wheel’s On Fire. “It was his power he had over people. We’d hit that Bo Diddley beat, Hawk would come over to the front of the stage and do his kick, that camel walk, and the thing would just take off.” That electrifying vibe is clear on the Hawks’ raw debut single, “Bo Diddley,” with Hawkins gleefully riding Helm’s irrepressible rock‘n’roll rhythm—a beat that, no matter where the Band traversed, was always lurking in the background. For a visual complement, check out the Hawks’ lip-synched (but still thrilling) 1959 appearance on “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand,” where Helm looked even younger than his 18 years.
“John Henry,” Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks
Hawkins and co. were a popular live attraction (especially on the Canadian circuit), but by the early '60s, rockabilly was already a throwback sound. This led to some interesting, if unappreciated, innovations, particularly on 1960's Folk Ballads of Ronnie Hawkins, an early attempt at blending trad-folk chestnuts with an energetic Sun Records style. It’d be a stretch to say this album (which includes Robbie Robertson’s on-record debut) had any influence on the folk-rock boom that came later in the decade, but this rollicking cover of “John Henry” offers a preview of the Band’s powerful fusion of American song forms. They were discovering, even at this early stage, the depth and possibilities of the American South's musical canon.
“Leave Me Alone,” Canadian Squires
That growing ambition to move beyond a crowd-pleasing rockabilly/R&B repertoire created a rift between the Hawks (which now included future Band members, bassist Rick Danko, keyboardist Garth Hudson, and pianist Richard Manuel) and their leader. “When the music got a little too far out for Ronnie’s ear, and he couldn’t tell where to come in singing, he’d tell us nobody but Thelonious Monk could understand what we were playing,” Robertson claimed in Barney Hoskyns’ definitive Band bio, Across the Great Divide. That’s overstating the case a bit based on the recorded evidence: the Hawks’ first effort without Hawkins (recorded under the fortunately short-lived name the Canadian Squires) is more proto-garage rock than proto-jazz rock. However you may classify it, 1964's “Leave Me Alone” is great stuff—a tough Robertson original, vicious both in sound and lyrics: “Trouble! Fight! Almost every night,” Helm and Manuel yowl in tandem. “Bad man don't come around, or I'm gonna lay your body down.” It’s a few years early, but it wouldn’t sound out of place on Lenny Kaye’s classic Nuggets comp.
Levon & the Hawks live in Port Dover, Ontario, 1964
Away from Hawkins, the group maintained a heavy touring regimen, and we can get a blurry sonic snapshot of Levon & the Hawks live via a lo-fi tape recorded at Pop Ivy’s in Port Dover, Ontario. To give you an idea of how glamorous this particular gig was, Levon suggests that the crowd grab themselves a cob of corn in between songs. The Hawks’ stage show is primarily tried-and-true material—Richard Manuel digs deep into Ray Charles’ “You Don’t Know Me” and “Georgia,” while Robertson is showcased on a slow blues tune unimaginatively titled “Robbie’s Blues.” There’s even a fast-paced run-through of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme, complete with a flute solo. Though there’s plenty of energy and talent on display, ultimately it’s a workmanlike set with only flashes of the brilliance and originality to come. Maybe the most interesting thing here is Hudson’s organ solo, finding bits of Bach in the blues, showing off an overactive musical imagination.
“The Stones I Throw,” Levon & the Hawks
“All of the reach and none of the poetry of Big Pink and The Band are present on ‘The Stones I Throw,’” wrote Greil Marcus in Mystery Train of this 1965 Levon & the Hawks seven-inch. Robertson was even less generous in his assessment years later in Across the Great Divide, saying: “We didn’t know what was going on, and we didn’t have any control over it. They just whipped us into the studio and we had to cut a few songs in an afternoon. We just kind of feebled our way through things and got the hell out of there.” But this Robertson original, carried by Hudson’s swirling organ and Manuel’s assured vocal, sounds pretty sharp to these ears. It’s certainly not hard to hear why Bob Dylan, a few months later, would recruit the Hawks as his backing group.
“Moulty,” The Barbarians
Thanks to The Basement Tapes Complete, The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge, and the just-released 1966 Live Recordings (not to mention a limited copyright protection release), virtually every note recorded of Dylan and the Hawks together in the studio, in the basement, and onstage throughout the 1960s has now been officially issued. But the Hawks weren’t just backing up Dylan during this period. One of the strangest side trips the group took was to serve as uncredited session players for “Moulty,” a left-field novelty hit released in early 1966. To the Hawks, this autobiographical recitation by the Barbarian’s one-handed drummer, Victor "Moulty" Moulton, must have felt a million miles away from the culture-shifting music they were making with Dylan. But they seem to be having a good time all the same, joining in enthusiastically on the triumphant chorus.
“I Got You Babe” + “Be My Baby,” Tiny Tim
Even stranger still is the session with Tiny Tim, the falsetto-voiced ukulele player who found surprise success in the ’60s with his “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” single and various appearances on “Laugh-In.” Recorded in 1967 for the soundtrack to the countercultural flick You Are What You Eat, the almost-Band indulge their inner Wrecking Crew on the recent hits “I Got You Babe” and “Be My Baby,” with Tiny Tim warbling along in his inimitable way. However much Robertson’s more serious songwriting vision would dominate their future work, the goofy sense of humor here (as well as on the Basement Tapes with Dylan) is a useful reminder that the Band wasn’t just a sepia-toned Americana throwback. They were about to make a big splash with Big Pink, finally breaking into the mainstream, but their irreverent spirit wasn’t gone just yet.