October 2025 marks sixty years since Bob Dylan set out on his 1965/66 World Tour with the Hawks, a turning point that changed not only his own path but the sound of rock music itself. In this first of a two-part piece, author Scott Shea traces how Dylan made the leap from folk troubadour to electrified bandleader and found in the Hawks the grit and muscle he needed to face down the divided audiences of the mid-sixties. As Shea shows, it was a moment when Dylan risked everything for growth, and in doing so, gave rise to one of the most enduring stories in modern music history.
Electric Shock
In 1965, Bob Dylan embarked on one of the boldest journeys in modern musical history when he performed his songs, some new and some old, with full-band arrangements and set out on a world tour with a rock and roll band. There aren’t many other examples that compare; Bruce Springsteen releasing the folk/rockabilly “Nebraska” album in 1982 after nearly a decade of releasing straightforward rock and roll, culminating in his first Top 10 hit, “Hungry Heart,” and the Byrds going fully country in 1968 with “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” are two of the closest parallels. These are similar because they initially confused many older fans, but many adapted fairly quickly and attracted new listeners. At first glance, Bob’s move seemed reckless and crazy, but it was something he needed to do to grow as an artist, and whether his old fans joined him on this journey or not was irrelevant to him. However, to accomplish this, he needed a band— a good one— and one with balls. When he went electric at Newport, he was backed by some of the session musicians who played on his records, but they weren’t a true band. They hadn’t gone through the rigors together, and that was key because on this world tour, he knew many fans might be confrontational, and these guys needed to hold the line.
Dylan’s early life has been well-documented. Libraries and bookstores are littered with titles that examine nearly every facet of his life, and the award-winning 2024 movie, “A Complete Unknown,” does a great job of bringing the story of his rise to fame to life. However, for a quick refresher, he was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, and grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota. As a youngster, he was a musical sponge who soaked up the sounds of the Grand Ole Opry on WSM and was equally as fascinated with crooners Johnnie Ray and Frank Sinatra and was prime age for the early rock and roll sounds of Little Richard, Elvis and Buddy Holly. But he was most captivated by Depression era folk singer Woody Guthrie, who blew out of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and into the underground left-wing communist folk movement and brought to the masses by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and Victor Records.
Bob’s love of Guthrie inspired him to teach himself guitar and piano, and he joined several local groups, including a touring version of a young Bobby Vee and his group, the Shadows. By 1960, he took the stage name Bob Dylan and split for New York City in search of Guthrie, who was laid up in a hospital battling Huntington’s disease. After being taken in and mentored by Greenwich Village denizens Pete Seeger and Dave Van Ronk, Bob emerged as a fresh and authentic folk balladeer as well as an incredibly prolific and trailblazing songwriter. By 1962, he was signed to Columbia Records and had inspired many of his generation to trade their rock and roll pompadours for Dutch boy caps and acoustic guitars. Before going semi-electric on his 1965 LP “Bringing It All Back Home,” he’d released three other folk albums, with two being full-on topical, and many of their deep tracks, as well as his publishing demos, getting picked over by his fellow folk singers. When the Beatles disrupted the American musical landscape in 1964, many young folk singers were inspired to go electric and brought their folk training with them. The Byrds, a group of ex-folkies, struck first by reaching into Bob Dylan’s bag and rearranging “Mr. Tambourine Man” into an exciting rock and roll burner. This was followed by Cher’s folk-rock arrangement of “All I Really Want to Do” and the Turtles’ take on “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” The Byrds hit the #1 spot and the other two went Top 10. It set Bob to thinking.
At the height of all the madness that surrounded Bob in 1965, he had precious little time to think about who’d accompany him on this crazy tour, and the severity of his fans’ reaction probably didn’t hit him until getting booed at the Newport Folk Festival in late July 1965. He couldn’t count on the session musicians to stick together through something like this, and Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, who contributed greatly to the sound on “Like a Rolling Stone,” had commitments of their own. Time was his enemy, and he had to come up with something and quickly.
Mojo Man
It all started in the Mississippi Delta in the late 1950s with a belated rockabilly Arkansan named Ronnie Hawkins, who was tearing it up with a raucous stage act imbued with spit curls, back flips and camel walks. The state of Arkansas was a little-known hotbed of musical talent from Johnny Cash to Charlie Rich and Conway Twitty, who all walked a razor-thin line between country and rock and roll, and the Hawk, as Ronnie was known to his friends, was ready to carve out his place next to them. He was a hillbilly renaissance man who started as a teenage bootlegger and attended the University of Arkansas. He almost graduated, but dropped out at the age of 21 when the music bug bit him. Ronnie came from a family full of honky tonk belters who sang throughout Arkansas and Oklahoma, and, as a pre-teen, sang at the state fair, where he shared a stage with Hank Williams, who, according to him, was too drunk to perform to his fullest capability. By the time he jumped into the fray at age 21, the Hawk’s voice had matured into a twangy Southern swirl, and he could belt out vulgar one-liners faster than Henny Youngman on speed and turn around and quote Shakespeare whenever the mood struck him.
His band, the Hawks, started in 1956 as a ragtag group of Arkansas boys who could shake, rattle, and roll with the best of them. Over two years, he narrowed it down to Luke Paulman on guitar, his brother George Paulman on bass, Willard “Pop” Jones on piano, and 18-year-old Levon Helm on drums. These guys played like maniacs. Ronnie put together an incredible live show, which has been preserved forever by their performance of “Forty Days” on Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, easily found on YouTube. One by one, original members left and were replaced by the likes of Jimmy Evans, Stan Szelest, Rebel Payne, and the talented guitarist Fred Carter Jr., whom Ronnie stole from his cousin Dale Hawkins, the writer and original singer of the classic “Susie Q.” All hailed from the dark, fertile soil of the Arkansas-Louisiana boot.
Around the time Ronnie and his band were growing their reputation, a Canadian promoter named Harold Kudlets was building a pipeline from Toronto to the Mississippi Delta that pumped rock and roll into the Great North. The first act he broke was Arkansas rockabilly singer Conway Twitty who started in the Flamingo Lounge in Hamilton, where he wrote his monumental debut hit, “It’s Only Make Believe” with his drummer, Jack Nance. His next target was Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks, who were tearing up the club scene in the American Southwest and had recently scored a Top 5 hit in Canada with “Forty Days.” Kudlets booked them into the Golden Rail Tavern in Hamilton, the Brass Rail in London, Ontario and Le Coq D’Or on Yonge Street in Toronto. Ronnie became a huge draw and the toast of the town, often holding degenerate court at a swanky hotel called the Frontenac Arms on Jarvis Street with groupies, mafiosos and other ne’er-do-wells. The club scene was rife with pimps, pushers and prostitutes as well as teenage music fans, and Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks got to know all of them to varying degrees.
In addition to playing regularly in their home base in the Queen City, they played south of the border in their home state of Arkansas and clubs across the southwest, particularly in Texas and Arkansas where Ronnie eventually owned his own venue, the Rockwood Club. He’d also been signed to mobster Morris Levy’s Roulette label out of New York since 1958, with one of those notorious contracts where he’d pretty much signed his life away and was paying for everything from studio time to promotional expenses while Levy reaped all the rewards. Nevertheless, he charted with Chuck Berry’s “Forty Days” and Young Jessie’s “Mary Lou,” which hit the U.S. Top 30 and Canadian Top 10 and were part of his debut long player.
In late 1959, around the time the New York sessions for his second album were drawing nearer, a 17-year-old local kid named Robbie Robertson began hanging around the stage at La Coq D’Or and getting to know the guys. He’d been playing guitar since he was in single digits and had already formed three rock and roll bands. He studied guitar like Einstein studied theoretical physics and would study Fred Carter’s fingers as he plucked the strings with relative ease. He did it at any concert where the guitar playing was superb, including a rock and roll revue at the Maple Leaf Gardens that featured the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly. Standing alongside hyperexcited girls who were jumping, screaming and hollering, Robbie did his best to study their techniques and how they got their individual sounds. When he overheard Ronnie lamenting that he was bereft of original songs for his second album, he saw an opportunity open up right in front of him. He offered the singer a couple of his own, and, to his surprise, took them, and Robbie too. He brought him to New York City to watch the sessions and witness music publishing in action inside the Brill Building near Times Square. Despite it all, Robbie wasn’t yet a full-fledged Hawk. After they returned to Toronto, he purchased Robbie a train ticket to Fayetteville, Arkansas to study under Fred Carter while he traveled to England.
Carter had no interest in being a tutor and instead took the youngster with him to Memphis, which was like taking a postulant to the Holy Land. Robbie was immediately smitten, hanging out on Beale Street where he practically moved into the Home of the Blues Record Shop and spent nearly every dollar Ronnie had given him on Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters albums, and every blues compilation he could wrap his arms around. They capped it all off by taking in a Jerry Lee Lewis Sun Records session. Robbie got to work listening, studying, practicing and mimicking Carter to sharpen his skills. In mid-1960, he took over on bass when Jimmy Evans left the group and became a full-time Hawk. But it was the lead guitar spot he desired and practiced every waking hour to work his way up to Fred Carter’s level. It wasn’t lost on his rival, and tension quickly arose between the two, who had a deep 10-year chasm between them that couldn’t be overcome. The senior Carter would often tease Robbie for his constant practicing. One day, Robbie had had enough.
“Well, you need to be practicing yourself,” Robbie fired back.
“Oh, really? Why is that?” Carter asked.
“Because someday I’m gonna cut you,” Robbie responded with dead sincerity.
That was it for that relationship, and the division got cold. From that day on, Carter always turned his back on Robbie whenever he played a solo so he couldn’t study him. But Carter’s expiration date was already close at hand, and this certainly expedited it. In the summer, Ronnie and the Hawks made their way to Nashville to record his fourth LP, a Hank Williams tribute album, and Carter elected to stay behind when he realized how much he could make as a session musician. He quickly became one of the top session guitarists and remained there for the rest of his life, where he was a fixture at every major studio. It opened up the desired spot, but Robbie wasn’t promoted immediately. Another Arkansas guitar virtuoso, Roy Buchanan, was brought in to replace Carter. He was four years older than Robbie and had an impeccable reputation. His choice of guitar was the Fender Telecaster, for which he’d invented a primitive wah-wah pedal to control his tone. It showed he was light-years ahead of his contemporaries, even Robbie. It looked like it was going to be an uphill battle for the young Toronto guitarist, going up against another technically proficient and soulful veteran. But Robbie had one thing going for him that Roy didn’t. He was normal. It didn’t take long for Roy’s personality to emerge, and he was about as bizarre as they came. He was stoic and expressionless when he played, but it was countered by a Christopher Lee-like dark side, insisting to his bandmates that he was part wolf and would often wake up with blood on his sheets. It really freaked Ronnie out, and when Robbie outshone him in a guitar duel, Roy walked away. Robbie emerged as the new lead guitarist of the Hawks, and the two parted as friends. Roy did come back and play a few more gigs and was brought in for a few recording sessions, including Ronnie & the Hawks’ 1963 frenetic take on Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love.”
By the end of 1961, the Hawks’ lineup included pianist/vocalist Richard Manuel, bassist Rick Danko and organist and multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson. All had come from the Toronto area, playing in local rock and roll bands. Garth was a particular prize who rebuffed multiple attempts by Ronnie, Levon and Robbie to join them. He was classically trained, but played mostly jazz, and was worried about disappointing his parents by joining a rock and roll band. After Ronnie talked with Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, assuring him that this would benefit his career greatly and that he’d earn an extra draw by providing music lessons to all his younger bandmates, they gave their blessing. The lineup that would eventually become the Band was now in place, as well as saxophonist Jerry Penfound and vocalist Bruce Bruno, and each of the core members brought something unique to the group in their musicianship and personalities. Richard’s pleasant innocence betrayed a troubled childhood that manifested a careless, almost fatalistic approach to life, but his soulful vocals provided a Ray Charles-like sensibility coupled with a wonderfully rhythmic piano style. Rick possessed a similarly soulful and emotive voice, and his bass playing was melodic. His youthful athletic looks made him look more like the star linebacker on a high school football team than a musician, and he possessed the requisite mischievous nature, countered by a secretive emotional side. Garth Hudson was almost pathologically introverted, but incredibly kind to his bandmates and was effortlessly sober. He could play virtually anything and was gifted with a Lowery organ and a Leslie speaker, which brought incredible depth to their live sound.
First Dance
By the Spring of 1964, the bloom of playing with Ronnie Hawkins was coming off the rose for the Hawks. Ronnie’s good nature always dictated that he’d be hip, charismatic and a load of laughs, but his dependence on rockabilly was wearing on his bandmates, who were steadily moving into the world of modern R&B. And they were noticing a definite change in him. The once carefree, frantic playboy had settled down with Wanda Nagurski, daughter of Chicago Bears legend Bronko Nagurski, and had a child, which meant he was no longer with them as much and would even pull no-shows where they’d end up covering for him. It finally came to a head when Ronnie began zeroing in on Rick Danko for constantly bringing his girlfriend to their shows at La Coq D’Or. It was against band policy and resulted in a fine. Ronnie had taken to dispensing them with the ease of a Billy Ward or a James Brown, and certain infractions were inexcusable. Having young girls in the audience was of prime importance, and Ronnie believed that all the young, good-looking guys in the band should give off an air of bachelorhood to attract as many as possible. Ronnie’s philosophy was that ladies would come specifically to see the boys and would be followed by their boyfriends, which resulted in a bigger audience and a bigger payday. It made sense at first, but when Ronnie became unrelenting towards Rick, the Hawks sided with their bassist. When Levon used this as an excuse to confront Ronnie about a pay raise and other grievances, it permanently split them apart.
Though the tension precipitated the breakaway from Ronnie Hawkins, the truth of the matter was that the Hawks had outgrown him. As talented as he was, Ronnie was not a leader in the style of Buddy Holly or Curtis Mayfield. There was no vision, no direction, and no growth outside of becoming better musicians and live performers, and each member of the Hawks had reached those milestones. Over these past several years with Ronnie, all of the Hawks had become musically proficient, so doing gigs without their leader wouldn’t be a problem. They’d done it regularly with his increasing no-shows. Securing management and finding gigs was the major hurdle, and relief came in the form of Harold Kudlets. Levon called him up after they’d made their decision, and it turns out Ronnie had just fired him as his booking agent, and he had a whole host of gigs that needed to be filled. The timing was serendipitous.
They hit the ground running, splitting their time between Toronto and Hamilton in clubs like the Grange, the Summer Garden, Pop Ivy’s Ballroom and Club Concord, playing a rollicking set of R&B. Levon and Richard did the heavy vocal lifting on with the former shining on rollicking covers of “Short Fat Fanny,” “Turn on Your Love Light” and “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks,” and the latter’s vulnerable baritone, which could easily raise into a delicate falsetto, handling the tender ballads like “You Don’t Know Me” and “Georgia on My Mind.” Their reputation began to eclipse their former leader’s as they took him head-on in Ontario and Arkansas, and they soon spread their wings to other parts of the U.S., becoming one of the best unsigned groups in North America. But, as nice as that was, it wasn’t paying the bills, and being unsigned and hitless worked against them in dollars and cents.
Nevertheless, the Hawks continued to sharpen their skills as well as their looks. After taking in a Cannonball Adderley show at McMaster University in Hamilton, they were inspired twofold by the cool jazz sextet. First, to make their onstage attire match their musical professionalism, they purchased shiny, tailored suits, which emitted a pure business approach and made them look as cool as the Temptations, the Impressions and even the Adderley Sextet themselves. Second, they adopted the jazz group’s seemingly profound sense of indifference onstage while blowing the roof off the joint. They were particularly taken by saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s cool-as-a-cucumber onstage demeanor. It would eventually come to serve them well.
Regardless, their reputation as a top-notch R&B unit was growing, and, for the first time since leaving Ronnie Hawkins, a portion of the Hawks reentered the studio. Blues singer John Hammond Jr., son of the legendary Columbia Records A&R scout who discovered Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan, invited Levon, Robbie and Garth to play on the sessions for his third album, “So Many Roads,” which also featured 21-year-old Chicago guitar virtuoso Mike Bloomfield. It would be John’s first electric LP and a harbinger of things to come. John did as much to spread the word about the Hawks as anybody, and it would soon reap dividends. As a testament to how respected the Hawks were among their fellow musicians, Bloomfield, whose playing impressed John’s dad enough that he signed him to Epic Records and was about to break out in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was too self-conscious to play in front of Robbie. He instead took turns on the piano.
As flattering as that was, it wasn’t paying the bills, and the thought of hitting any sort of windfall seemed like it was a million miles away as Levon & the Hawks continued eking out a living. Without a record deal or a national name, their live appearances would only net a certain amount, which covered overhead and had to be split five ways. Things got so desperate that, while playing in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a friend talked Levon and Robbie into participating in a holdup at an illegal card game. They got as close as pulling up to the front door with stockings over their faces and shotguns in hand, when their friend emerged, telling them that the game had been called off. A few months later, while traveling to a gig in Oklahoma, Robbie and Levon stopped in Chicago to visit Mike Bloomfield and ended up smooth-talking Paul Butterfield’s landlady into his apartment so they could steal his potent weed because he had been rude to them a day earlier. In his 2016 autobiography, “Testimony,” Robbie attributed these bad decisions to hanging out too long around the criminal element in the Toronto clubs.
As 1964 gave way to the new year, Jerry Penfound and Bruce Bruno had become part of Hawks history, the former being a cost-cutting measure, and the latter being for love. Their timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous, as the entire group was busted for narcotics possession on January 29th after flying into Toronto from New York City with an envelope full of John Hammond Jr.’s Panama Red. They were tipped by a jealous boyfriend, and were pulled over in Cooksville, less than 15 miles from the airport. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were able to scrounge whatever was left of the weed out of their station wagon, and by Monday, all their names were in the Toronto Star, which made them hometown legends to some and fodder to others. To his great shame, one of Garth Hudson’s classmates was an arresting officer.
“Hello Garth. I’m sorry to see you involved in this,” he said to the musician, who hung his head in disgrace.
Ronnie Hawkins wasted no time goofing on his ex-band from the stage every chance he got, but, as music’s drug culture began seeping over into their audience, it only served to enhance their image. They would face a judge in April who awarded them a five-month remand. Their attorney argued successfully that the boys had work commitments in the United States that they had to honor to make a living. Eventually, the charges were dropped altogether.
At the end of June, their career hit a turning point, although they had no way of knowing it. In fact, at the time, the future of the band looked pretty uncertain. Kudlets booked them into Tony Mart’s, one of several legendary large-capacity Jersey Shore clubs in the Atlantic City area that opened during the 1940s Big Band era and easily transitioned to rock and roll audiences. It was just what they needed: steady, good-paying work that would allow them time to continue honing their craft and planning their next move. They also signed a two-single deal with Atlantic Records, and the proximity would allow for easy travel to and from New York City, where the studios were located. They had done some recording recently for the Apex label with sessions produced by the legendary Henry Glover, the legendary King Records music executive who produced everybody from Hawkshaw Hawkins to James Brown. The Hawks had met him years earlier at one of Ronnie’s sessions, and he always encouraged them to branch out on their own. But as vaunted as he was, the Hawks came away disappointed with the results and the name the label chose for them, the Canadian Squires. They were quickly told by many of their contemporaries that nobody with Canada in their name sells in the U.S. Atlantic Records offered a do-over.
A couple of weeks before their Tony Mart’s debut, John Hammond Jr. took Robbie to Columbia Records’ studios on 7th Avenue to take in a Bob Dylan recording session. Robbie and the rest of the Hawks were familiar with the popular folk singer, but none of them owned any of his records. John explained that Bob was shifting to full-band rock and roll arrangements and shedding the solo folk style that earned him accolades from folk fans and leftists of all ages as well as a spot close to Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Only two months earlier, Bob released his “Bringing It All Back Home” album, which featured a studio band on the A-side and traditional solo Bob on the B-side. It had met with an overall mixed reaction, and his fans were fearful that Bob was going full-on rock and roll. Their fears were grounded. The folk star was indeed going in that direction, and his next record would be 100% full band and much more in-your-face. The session Robbie witnessed was “Like a Rolling Stone,” which would kickstart Bob’s foray into the mainstream and start a revolution. He was well aware that this would isolate many of his old fans, but he was going all in and had a damn-the-torpedoes attitude. There was no way Robbie could’ve known on that mild June day that he would be first mate on Bob’s battleship.
Further information
Part 2 coming soon
Riveting
It’s a great in-depth history
I eagerly await the next instalment