History / Levon and the Hawks (1964–1965)

Levon and the Hawks (1964–1965)

They left Hawkins in early 1964 without much of a plan beyond not working for him anymore. For a few months they called themselves the Levon Helm Sextet, with saxophonist Jerry Penfound rounding out the lineup. Penfound left in May, the horn section went with him, and the five of them settled into a name they'd wear, on and off, for the next year and a half: Levon and the Hawks.

Booking agent Harold Kudlets kept them working through 1964 and into 1965, bars and roadhouses across Texas and Arkansas, then two long summer residencies at Tony Mart's in Somers Point, New Jersey, six nights a week alongside Conway Twitty. It was steady, and it was nowhere near what they actually wanted. Somewhere in the middle of it they cut a single under yet another name, the Canadian Squires, for a small label called Ware Records. "Leave Me Alone," released in March 1965, went nowhere. The b-side, "Uh Uh Uh," did no better.

The connection that mattered came from somewhere else entirely. In Toronto in 1964 they'd befriended a blues singer named John Hammond Jr., and when Hammond needed a backing band for a Vanguard album called So Many Roads, Helm, Hudson, and Robertson signed on. Robertson got billed on the sleeve as Jaime R. Robertson, his given name, which almost nobody used. Around the same period they also met the blues harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson II and offered to become his full-time band. Williamson died before anything came of it.

By September 1965, recording again as Levon and the Hawks, they cut two more sides for Atco, "The Stones I Throw" and "He Don't Love You," both Robertson originals. Neither charted. Looked at from the outside, in the summer of 1965, this was a competent bar band with three failed name changes and no hit singles to its name.

Word of mouth did what the singles couldn't. Hammond mentioned them to Bob Dylan, who was putting together a touring band for his first electric shows and trusted Hammond's ear. Separately, a Toronto native named Mary Martin, who'd landed a job as Albert Grossman's secretary in New York, kept telling Dylan the same thing whenever the subject came up: you have to see these guys. Toward the end of the second Tony Mart's engagement, in August 1965, Robertson got a call from Grossman's office asking him to meet Dylan. Dylan wanted a guitarist, just Robertson, nobody else. Robertson said no to that but agreed to two one-off shows, and suggested Helm come along on drums. They played Forest Hills Tennis Stadium on August 28 and the Hollywood Bowl on September 3, filled out by Harvey Brooks on bass and Al Kooper on organ. Forest Hills went badly, the crowd booing through most of the electric set, still expecting the acoustic Dylan of Bringing It All Back Home. The Hollywood Bowl went a little better.

Dylan flew to Toronto later that month and rehearsed with the full band, September 15 through 17. He hired all five. Robertson had made that the condition from the very start of the conversation: either Dylan took the whole of Levon and the Hawks or he took none of them. He took all of them. Within a matter of weeks, a bar band that had spent eighteen months playing under three different names to crowds who mostly wanted Conway Twitty found itself backing the most argued-about songwriter in America.