In foreign lands Ted Hawkins commanded the devotion of packed houses night after night, yet his own corner of Los Angeles offered only the windswept stretch of Venice Beach as a performance space. There he stood alone, acoustic guitar in hand, weaving an unaccompanied tapestry of soul, blues, folk, gospel, and a hint of country. Onlookers often halted, captivated by the expressive bends and slides of his voice, and left coins or folded bills in the open case at his feet.
That pattern sustained him until DGC/Geffen Records released The Next Hundred Years in 1994, the album that suddenly placed him on the threshold of widespread recognition. Mere days after Christmas, however, a stroke ended his life, an especially bitter twist of timing.
Hawkins had never known ease. Raised in crushing poverty in Mississippi as a mistreated and unschooled boy, he was sent at age twelve to a reformatory. While there he first encountered New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair, whose appearance at the facility inspired the youth to sing in a talent contest. The experience proved fleeting; at fifteen Hawkins stole a leather jacket and was committed for three years to Mississippi’s Parchman Farm penitentiary.
After his release he drifted through Chicago, Philadelphia, and Buffalo before purchasing a one-way ticket to Los Angeles in 1966 to escape the northern winters. Once settled, music drew him forward: he acquired a guitar and sought out the former manager of his idol Sam Cooke. Although that meeting never occurred, he did record his first single, the soul-infused “Baby” backed with “Whole Lot of Women,” for Money Records. When royalties failed to materialize he concluded that a living could not be made from records and turned instead to street performance.
Producer Bruce Bromberg nevertheless tracked him down and captured his singular songs in 1971, first with guitarist Phillip Walker’s band—the resulting “Sweet Baby” appeared on the Joliet label—and then in solo acoustic sessions, occasionally joined by Hawkins’s wife Elizabeth on harmony vocals. Contact lapsed when Hawkins again ran into legal trouble, but the 1971 tapes surfaced in 1982 on Rounder as Watch Your Step, earning a five-star review in Rolling Stone. Bromberg reconvened the artist for the 1986 follow-up Happy Hour, which included the poignant “Cold & Bitter Tears.”
At the urging of a British disc jockey, Hawkins relocated to England in 1986 and enjoyed four years of star treatment, appearing in Great Britain, Ireland, France, and Japan. Upon returning to Los Angeles he once more faced indifference, resuming his spot on the beach with a black leather glove on his fretting hand and a tip jar before him. Only the brief intervention of DGC placed him in the national spotlight. An artist impossible to categorize yet profoundly soulful, Hawkins tasted genuine domestic fame for roughly a year. The posthumous collection Love You Most of All: More Songs from Venice Beach appeared in 1998.
