Robbie Robertson won his first big break by writing two songs overnight
As a Toronto teenager, Robbie Robertson overheard rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins complain that he needed new material. He stayed up all night, wrote two songs, and played them for Hawkins the next day. Both ended up on Hawkins's 1959 album, and the kid was soon on his way to leading the Band.
Robertson was born on July 5, 1943. His mother, of Cayuga and Mohawk descent, grew up on the Six Nations reserve near Hamilton, and on visits there his cousin Herb Myke taught him guitar. Late at night he tuned in to rock and rhythm and blues from stations in Buffalo and Nashville. At 12, as his mother was divorcing, she told him his biological father was a Jewish gambler, Alexander David Klegerman, killed in a road accident before Robbie turned three; the uncles he later met welcomed him as family.
At 14 he spent summers on the carnival circuit, including three weeks assisting at a sideshow, experience he later poured into Life Is a Carnival and the 1980 film Carny. His teenage bands included Robbie and the Robots, named after the robot in Forbidden Planet, for which friend Pete Traynor, later founder of Traynor Amplifiers, fitted his guitar with antennae. After the overnight songwriting coup, Hawkins took him to New York's Brill Building to pick songs and later hired him on bass for the Hawks. Left alone in Arkansas, he spent his allowance on records and practised daily, soon switching to lead guitar and absorbing Roy Buchanan's string-bending tricks.
With Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, the Hawks left Hawkins in early 1964 to chase blues and soul, playing six nights a week at a New Jersey shore club. The group went on to back Bob Dylan and, as the Band, helped create what is now called Americana. Among the songs Robertson wrote for them was The Weight, and he stayed until 1976.
His second career was in film, mostly with Martin Scorsese, beginning with The Last Waltz and continuing through Raging Bull and The Irishman. Killers of the Flower Moon, dedicated to him, earned a posthumous Oscar nomination for its score. Rolling Stone ranked him 59th among the greatest guitarists. He died on August 9, 2023.
Source: Robbie Robertson
