Swampers drum legend’s hot beats and cold winter

Roger Hawkins

Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section drummer Roger Hawkins. (Huntsville Times file photo/Tony Triolo)The Huntsville Times

Stomp, clap, stomp stomp, clap. Stomp, clap, stomp stomp, clap. Stomp, clap, stomp stomp, clap. Electrifying R&B singer Wilson Pickett was in the FAME Studios control room, beating out a rhythm with his foot and hands, to show the sessions musicians what he had in mind for the song they were cutting.

"Hey drummer, can you do that?" Pickett asked, in his razor rasp.

Pickett referred to Roger Hawkins simply as “drummer” because, at this point, he didn’t know Hawkins that well, or his name.

"Yeah, I can do that," Hawkins replied.

Pickett’s rhythm pattern became the hot, lean, breakdown beat Hawkins played on his gold-sparkle Ludwig kit and Speed King kickdrum pedal for Pickett’s 1966 smash “Land of 1000 Dances,” arguably not just the best Muscle Shoals grooves ever, but one of popular music’s all-time grooves too.

And I say arguably because there are many outstanding Muscle Shoals grooves. And Hawkins played the drums on many of them.

If FAME Studios founder and super-producer Rick Hall was the Muscle Shoals sound’s mastermind, Hawkins was the heartbeat. With the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, Hawkins built one of drumming’s most impressive discographies. Pickett’s hit “Mustang Sally.” “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge. “Respect,” “Chain of Fools” and “Think,” among others, with Aretha Franklin. The Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There.” Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll.” Clarence Carter’s “Slip Away.” And that’s just a sliver of the notable tracks Hawkins played on.

Today, Hawkins humbly says he has "no idea" why his drumbeats have endured so well.

"I never sat around and thought, 'I'm going to make up the part that’s going to be known for 40 years,'" he says. "It was just doing what you felt."

On much of his work he was joined by some combination of his fellow Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, aka The Swampers, session musician pals, including bassist David Hood, guitarist Jimmy Johnson and keyboardists Barry Beckett and Spooner Oldham.

"I was a better listener than I was a player and I think the other guys were too," Hawkins says. "Because they loved music and they had catalogs of music in their brains, just like I had a catalog of stuff where I could pull out certain things and make it work with newer stuff."

The Swampers’ simpatico playing and malleable country-funk made them music’s hit-making secret sauce, in the mid ’60s at FAME Studios and then their own Muscle Shoals Sound in Sheffield after seceding from Hall in 1969.

"We didn't really plan it that way, but looking back now we all lived virtually within minutes of where we went to work every day," Hawkins says of Muscle Shoals Sound, which is about five minutes from his residence. "And we loved what we were doing. And when we were in that studio nothing else mattered. We had such a good time making things sound like what we wanted them to sound like, hoping people would like what we're doing."

Hawkins and The Swampers were even immortalized with that shout-out in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Southern rock anthem “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Roger Hawkins

Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section drummer Roger Hawkins, as seen in documentary film "Muscle Shoals." (Courtesy Magnolia Pictures)

But the winter of Hawkins’ life hasn’t been easy. He’s battled health challenges, including tinnitus so acute he hasn’t heard silence in over 20 years. The condition can make for a hellacious existence, even though during our recent two-hour phone conversation Hawkins was warm, generous and jovial. “People cringe when they hear feedback on a microphone,” he says. “I have about three or four of those sounds going all the time. But I was blessed with all those years so I guess it’s my couple of decades in the barrel. [Laughs]” In 1997, Hawkins underwent neck surgery, after fighting through shoulder injuries for years. He worked hard to get back in shape. But then he went through a divorce, bad things happened and then the tinnitus manifested.

"Woke up one morning, ears were ringing and it's been a mystery ever since," Hawkins says, "because I know a lot of musicians who don't have this."

In recent years Shoals music has enjoyed a revival, following the 2013 documentary film titled “Muscle Shoals.” The surviving Swampers - Beckett died in 2009 - have been able to bask in new local, national and international interest, except for Hawkins whose health issues have prevented him from doing the public appearances and gigs Hood, Johnson and Oldham have.

But illness and injuries can't dim Hawkins' love for music.

It's a connection that dates back to when he was just 3-years-old, entranced by watching a picture-disc of the song " Grandpa's Getting Younger Ev'ry Day" spin on the turntable at his aunt's Indiana home. "That fascinated me," Hawkins says. "And from that day on I always wondered, what makes that sound? What are those sounds?"

A few years later, that same aunt took him to her Pentecost church, which utilized an array of musical instruments as part of services, including a drum kit with a picture of Jesus on the front kick-head. After a young Hawkins played some tambourine during a tent meeting, a church member told him he had good rhythm. The youth was even allowed to play the church drums. "That was the first time I had ever played the drums, and it was just so natural to me," Hawkins says.

Back home in Florence, now age 9 or so, Hawkins would beat on pots and pans with crochet needles. He eventually saved up money to buy a $2 pair of drumsticks and later brushes and would sit on the floor in his family's home and drum on cannisters, tinfoil and, later, a practice pad. He listened to Gene Krupa records and read about jazz musicians in Downbeat Magazine.

Hawkins' interest wasn't lost on his dad, who finally bought his son a used three-piece Slingerland drumkit when Hawkins was age 13. He'd been drumming without drums, just those sticks and brushes, for at least three or four years. With actual drums to play on now , Hawkins was thrilled. "Put them in the living room and I slept on the couch so when I would wake up I would see the drums," Hawkins says. "I wanted to make sure they were still there, and I couldn't believe it. I did a lot of playing on those little drums."

Hawkins met Spooner Oldham in the late ’50s at a local talent show they both had entered with separate bands. Oldham’s band was much more advanced though and soon Hawkins became a member of that group, called Spooner & The Spoons. The Spoons played a big gig at a Collinwood, Tennessee high school auditorium, where each member of the band made about 10 bucks, which seemed like a lot of money for a teenager, just for playing music back then. Hawkins still has a blurry black-and-white photo from the gig.

Around this time, Hawkins took his only drum lesson. And with his dad’s financial assistance ordered a set of new Ludwig “Hollywood Outfit” gold-sparkle drums, with double mounted-toms. This would be the same kit he’d go on to play on many classic Muscle Shoals sessions. “Just beautiful,” Hawkins says, recalling the Ludwigs.

Now he had an instrument to match the chops and reputation he’d been honing. Swampers bassist David Hood recalls, “Roger was known as a good drummer before he was old enough to drive a car. I met Roger when he was probably 14 or 15 or so. There was a music store in town where we would go buy records, Ryan’s Piano Company, and I remember seeing Roger there.”

At a Tuscumbia Armory square dance, Hawkins met a young guitarist named Jimmy Johnson. Soon, Hawkins was joining Johnson's band, The Del-Rays. "I remember Jimmy describing him as a machine," Hood says. "Even on breaks Roger would continue playing. He just couldn’t stop."

The Del-Rays would regularly travel to Tuscaloosa to play University of Alabama fraternity gigs, listening to the deejay Wolfman Jack’s radio show on the drive home, grooving to songs like Ernie K-Doe’s “Mother-in-Law.”

After Hawkins’ parents divorced and his grandfather died, he wasn’t sure what to do next. He moved to Atlanta and played club gigs there with a band that all wore red jackets onstage, usually clearing $40 or a week after paying rent, etc. That band also spent time based in Macon, Georgia and Orlando. They gave it a go, less successfully, in Memphis. A trip to Chicago in which they couldn’t score any gigs left Hawkins and his bandmates with just 83-cents between them. On the way home, they stole a can of pork and beans from a store, pulled the band’s station-wagon under a bridge, started a fire, heated the can and passed it around between them to share. “We were really living it up at this point,” Hawkins jokes now.

Hawkins had grown weary of nightclubs and the violence that could erupt suddenly there. When a soused redneck patron yelled at Hawkins onstage during a show he was going to kick his ass, all because the redneck didn't like Hawkins' eyeglasses, that was the tipping point.

At one point, Hawkins and Johnson got the chance to visit Memphis’ Royal Studios, where Al Green and others cut hits. The two young musicians marveled at the studio’s equipment and massive monitor speakers and vowed one day they’d have their own recording studio.

Hawkins heard Rick Hall had scored a hit with Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” and that FAME Studio’s original rhythm section, including drummer Jerry Carrigan, left Muscle Shoals for Nashville. Tired of playing gigs at dodgy clubs, Hawkins figured FAME would need new studio musicians. He quit his red-jacketed band and moved back home. Johnson was already working at FAME and helped get his drumming friend in on demo sessions, albeit unpaid ones. “The way I looked at it,” Hawkins says, “it was like free school, if you went to college you didn’t have to play for. I got a lot of experience. And boy that was great because the guys I was playing in the band with before I went home kept telling me, ‘You’ll never make it. They’ll never use you.’”

If any of those demos were turned into an actual record, Hawkins would get paid. The first one happened when the drummer was around 18, and it was "Just As I Am" by Lonnie Ray, local songwriter Dan Penn's pseudonym.

Hawkins was working a day job at a local automotive body shop. He was taking dents out of a car’s front bumper the first time he heard “Just As I Am” played on the radio, in 1965. “I was so excited,” Hawkins recalls. “It was the first record I’d ever played on, and I went up to the other guys and the boss was standing there and I say, ‘Hey that’s me. I’m on the radio. That’s me playing drums.’ And my boss says, ‘Better hurry up and get out there and get that work done, son. Mr. So-And-So wants to pick that car up on Thursday.’”

Hawkins also began playing on demos at a Sheffield studio called Norala, owned by producer Quin Ivy. One day he got the call to come in and drum on a record they were cutting by a hospital orderly named Percy Sledge. The song was a soul ballad called "When A Man Loves a Woman." "It was a funky little studio and it didn’t have any heat," Hawkins says. "We had a kerosene heater in the middle of the floor. There were no headphones. Luckily I played the right part for the right song at the right time." Hawkins' drumming on "When A Man Loves a Woman" is exquisite, setting a spellbinding vibe, shifting subtle changes and raising the tension at just the right moment. Hawkins credits the influence of Stax Records drummer Al Jackson with his own playing on Sledge's 1965 smash. "Through listening to Al Jackson is how I learned to build a drum part in a soul ballad," he says.

Soon FAME, the Swampers and Hawkins hit on a hot streak, playing on that aforementioned slew of now-iconic recordings by Franklin, Pickett and many others.

Hood, who remains an active studio and live bassist, says of Hawkins' classic drumming, "He has a great natural feel in his playing that I've not seen anybody else have. I work with a lot of great drummers, but I haven't found anybody better than him at recording."

Hawkins says when he was recording, he always zoned in on the vocal first, then what was going on musically on the song. “Knowing what not to play,” the drummer adds, “sometimes that’s the best thing.” He also learned the importance of self-critiques during playback and making necessary tweaks to his drum patterns. While The Swampers would record and work with many famous musicians, they never really hung out with the talent, keeping things focused on music and then going home afterwards.

Hawkins felt a special musical bond with Aretha Franklin. The first song he cut with the gospel singer turned soul star was at FAME, the smoldering ballad "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," also Franklin's first real hit. Later, sessions took place at New York's Atlantic Studios. At the time, Atlantic Records exec and producer Jerry Wexler was keen on making all the label's R&B rhythm tracks syncopated, like Hawkins' strutting meter on Pickett hit "Mustang Sally." At the New York studio, Franklin ran down a new song called "Think" on the piano, for the session musicians to hear.

“And the only thing that I could think of to play was the church groove that I had learned way back in time,” Hawkins recalls, “which was really just fours on the bass drum. And so, Jerry said, ‘Roger, I need more syncopation from the bass drum. Can you figure out anything?’ And Aretha immediately said, ‘Roger’s playing what I want.’ Because, see, she came from gospel and I somewhat came from gospel, and so it was the natural thing to do was to treat it like a gospel song.” The rollicking, sanctified results on “Think” speak for themselves.

After cutting his drum track for Franklin's sassy Otis Redding cover "Respect," Hawkins sat in a chair and watched Aretha and her sisters overdub the song's "sock it to me" backing vocals. "At the time I thought, 'This is really cooking,'" Hawkins says. "I never realized what kind of history was being made, but I knew that I liked it a lot." Working the Franklin sessions in New York brought a new level of pressure, the drummer says. "It was a different studio, a different room, it sounded different and there wasn’t any jive to it."

Atlantic had put Hawkins, Oldham and Johnson up at New York's ritzy Hampshire House hotel. Looking at the room service menu there, the Shoals musicians were shocked to see a cheeseburger cost a whopping $6.95, so they called Wexler to get his permission before ordering. In his gravelly bearded voice, Wexler assured them, "Room service is no problem, baby."

As is well documented, Hawkins, Hood, Beckett and Johnson parted ways with FAME and Hall in 1969, and founded their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, just minutes away in Sheffield. Foxy TV star/mononymous pop singer Cher was the first artist to record there at 3614 Jackson Hwy. and even named her resulting album (of Dr. John, Bob Dylan and Buffalo Springfield covers) after the studio’s address. Unfortunately, that Cher album didn’t generate much heat. Neither did anything else for the first six months recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound.

Then, legendary Atlantic record-man Ahmet Ertegun brought honey-voiced singer R.B. Greaves to Sheffield to cut an infectious, breezy song called “Take a Letter, Maria.” It took The Swampers and Greaves only about 15 or 20 minutes to cut the track. Meanwhile, Ertegun was intently jotting in a notebook. In past sessions when Wexler was in the studio, Hawkins always made a point to peak at whatever notes Wexler wrote, and it was usually something like “Second verse?” or along those lines. After they’d cut “Take a Letter Maria,” Hawkins walked into the Muscle Shoals Sound control room and looked inside Ertegun’s notebook. “And it was all doodles,” Hawkins says with a laugh. “He’d doodled while the thing went down. Which means he put together the right manager, the right artist, the right musicians and the right song. His work was already done before he got there.” Soon, Muscle Shoals Sound would become a hot spot, with stars like The Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson and many more venturing to Sheffield to cut.

Of the many memorable beats Hawkins drummed during his career, he’s proudest of Staple Singers’ 1972 gospel/funk gem “I’ll Take You There.” The Swampers had recently spent time in England where they’d been turned-on to Jamaican reggae music. Hearing a run through of “I’ll Take You There,” Hawkins thought the song would be perfect to try some of reggae’s quirky drum techniques on. “I tried it, and reggae has the bass drum on two and four just like the snare,” Hawkins says, “and that just didn’t quite make it, so I changed it to one and three, which they liked. Most people do. So I pulled the microphones down towards the snare a little closer and I played cross-stick and little unexpected hits like a timbale would make. It was really different. I basically went in with a plan that did not work and changed it around to where it did work.”

Chad Gamble is drummer with Grammy winning Americana star and Green Hill native Jason Isbell, whose smart rootsy tunes have made Isbell one of contemporary music's most respected songwriters. Gamble's tasteful, versatile drumming bears Hawkins' influence.

"Roger, to me, is an innovator," says Gamble, who is from Tuscumbia. "You definitely have to consider the time period with this. The type of music that was being turned out in Muscle Shoals in the mid '60s and '70s was competing with establishments like New York, California, Motown and Memphis. There had to be something that set it apart, and while everyone plays a role in that, often times it can hinge on the drummer."

For Gamble, Hawkins' quintessential drum tracks include "I'll Take You There" ("Roger took something that could have possibly been played straighter and turned it upside down") and James & Bobby Purify's 1966 hit "I'm You Puppet" ("There’s a linear pattern he plays between the kick, snare and hat on the end of that song gives that song an extra soulful oomph").

“Roger always plays for the song,” Gamble says. “If you’re not serving the song and only thinking about what will make you stand out, you shouldn’t be there. I’d dare say that a fair amount of drummers hold his drumming in high regard without really knowing his name or anything else about him. But in a way that’s what you want, I think. You want your body of work and its quality to stand up on its own.” Gamble feels he and other drummers residing and recording in the Shoals owe Hawkins immensely. “Rick Hall and The Swampers put us on the map,” Gamble says. “I know I’ll always be grateful.”

Shonna Tucker was bassist on cool Drive-By Truckers albums like 2004′s “The Dirty South,” and recently she’s been in singer/songwriter John Paul White’s band and released soulful solo EP “Dreams of Mine.” Growing up in Killen, Alabama, near Muscle Shoals, on her first day of seventh grade she made friends with Roxanne Oldham, Spooner’s daughter. Tucker’s father had given her a bass when she was 10, but she didn’t realize Muscle Shoals was a magical place for music until meeting the Oldhams. She soon became fascinated with the musical history there and by her early teens was studying vintage Swampers tracks.

“When I think of Roger Hawkins and his drumming,” Tucker says now, “I think of his snare hits, which are just very unique. He was a very loud snare player with a quick foot on the kick, and someone was able to swing it and make it funky like no one else. And make his own sound that way. And also, Roger was a damn wizard with cymbals. He does some stuff that to this day I will listen to some of his stuff and just try to break it down and think how he’s doing it and I can’t figure it out, his cymbal work.”

Tucker cites Franklin’s “The House That Jack Built,” Wilson Pickett’s Beatles cover “Hey Jude” (which also boasts guitar great Duane Allman) and Etta James’ “I’d Rather Go Blind” as go-to Hawkins tracks. She’s also fond of Lulu’s “Where’s Eddie,” which the Truckers covered in 2011 featuring Tucker’s spinetingling lead vocals. “And of course, Roger’s partnership with David Hood is pretty special,” Tucker notes.

In addition to history they made together with The Swampers, Muscle Shoals Sound and FAME, Hood and Hawkins also for a time in the '70s joined Steve Winwood-led British jam-band Traffic, known for songs like "Mr. Fantasy." While they enjoyed touring travel, playing three chord songs for 30 minutes live with Traffic wasn't really their bag. Away from music, back in the day Hawkins and Hood enjoyed riding dirt bikes together on woodsy local trails.

The intertwining arcs of The Swampers and Hall were featured heavily in the 2013 "Muscle Shoals" documentary. Hawkins says he enjoyed the doc and "rightfully so it was about Rick more than anything else, which that's what it was supposed to be."

Like many of the musicians who recorded for Hall, Hawkins’ feelings about the father of the Muscle Shoals sound are complicated. “Rick Hall could go naked into the woods and come out of the woods with a hit record,” Hawkins says. “That’s how determined he was. And sometimes that was very painful on the people he worked with, but sometimes it was a great joy. What was painful of a sudden now is a hit record which is now a great joy. He would push you, man. It was a good thing. He taught us all a lot.”

These days, Hawkins finds solace watching car shows, news and politics on TV. He also cooks a bit, and has been on a crock-pot kick of late, doings a roast the other night and a 15-bean soup he's fond of. Culinary curiosity ("What makes that taste like that?") has replaced his sonic curiosity ("What makes that sound like that?"). At night, Hawkins listens to talk-radio on his headphones to try to offset the tinnitus noise in his head and go to sleep, after washing his nerve medicine down with a beer.

On Jan. 2, 2018, the great Rick Hall died of cancer complications at age 85. The three surviving original Swampers - Hawkins, Hood and Johnson - rented a black limousine to ride together to their mentor’s funeral. “He brought us together one more time,” Hood says. They haven’t all three been in the same place at the same time together since. But the grooves Hawkins and The Swampers created will never leave anyone who’s heard them.

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