Roger Hawkins, one of the most influential, accomplished and danceable drummers in American music history, has died. Hawkins was 75.
Hawkins was a member of Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, the studio musicians better known as The Swampers, thanks to being immortalized in the lyrics to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Southern-rock anthem “Sweet Home Alabama.”
The Muscle Shoals Music Foundation confirmed Hawkins’ death to AL.com. In recent years, Hawkins suffered from myriad health problems, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and died after an extended illness.
“We are going to miss his funny memes and texts and calls to us at the studio,” Muscle Shoals Music Foundation executive director Debbie Wilson said. “He had such a great sense of humor and loved to talk about drumming always.”
Born in Mishawaka, Indiana and a longtime Shoals resident, Hawkins played on classic R&B and rock hits including: “Mustang Sally” by Wilson Pickett; “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge; “Respect,” “Chain of Fools” and “Think” by Aretha Franklin; “I’ll Take You There” by The Staple Singers; “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger; “Slip Away” by Clarence Carter; and many others.
Perhaps his most immortal groove, and he created many of those, powers 1966 Pickett smash “Land of 1000 Dances.” Particularly the infectious breakdown pattern, played on Hawkins’ gold-sparkle Ludwig kit and Speed King kickdrum pedal. That beat has shook many tailfeathers and souls. And always will.
During a 2019 interview, Hawkins told me he didn’t know why his beats had stood the test of time 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. It was just doing what you felt.”
Hawkins’ passing leaves bassist David Hood as the only surviving Swamper. Guitarist Jimmy Johnson died in 2019 and keyboardist Barry Beckett in 2009.
“I was a better listener than I was a player and I think the other guys were too,” Hawkins said in 2019. “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’ funky, empathetic accompaniment made them music’s hit-making secret sauce, in the mid ’60s at Muscle Shoals’ FAME Studios and then their own Muscle Shoals Sound in Sheffield, founded in1969.
“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 said in 2019. “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.”
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Hawkins first became interested in rhythms while watching services at his Pentecost church as a youth. Soon he was beating on pans and pots at home, using crochet needles instead of drumsticks.
From there, he saved up two bucks or so for some real 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 did this for three years before his father finally bought him 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 said. “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.”
His musical influences included Stax Records drummer Al Jackson, whose playing helped inspired Hawkins’ dramatic and nuanced work on “When A Man Loves a Woman. “Through listening to Al Jackson is how I learned to build a drum part in a soul ballad,” he said.
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.
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.”
As told in the 2013 “Muscle Shoals” documentary film, Hawkins, Hood, Beckett and Johnson parted ways with FAME’s legendary owner/producer Rick Hall in 1969, and founded their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, just minutes away in Sheffield. Pop singer/actor 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.
At 3614, a humble cinderblock building and former coffin factory, Muscle Shoals Sound produced some of the most enduring music recordings ever. The Rolling Stones recorded “Wild Horses” here. It’s where Staple Singers cut “I’ll Take You There.” More recently, The Black Keys cut their breakthrough album “Brothers” there.
In 2019, Hawkins told me of all his drum tracks, he was proudest of 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. Hawkins thought a reggae groove, with the kick drum on two and four beats just like the snare, would be a good fit for “I’ll Take You There.“ That didn’t work.
So he shifted the the kick to the one and three, and pulled the drum microphones down closer to the snare. Playing cross-stick, he peppered the groove with “little unexpected hits like a timbale would make,” he said. “It was really different. I basically went in with a plan that did not work and changed it around to where it did work.”
Additional essential Hawkins drumming can be found on Wilson Pickett’s Beatles cover “Hey Jude” (which boasts a solo from future guitar hero Duane Allman) and Etta James’ “I’d Rather Go Blind.”
The hundreds of sessions he played on also include recordings by Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Otis Redding, James Brown, Johnny Taylor, Rod Stewart, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Glenn Frey, Boz Scaggs, Candi Staton, Jimmy Cliff, Levon Helm, Delbert McClinton, Steve Cropper, Alicia Keys and many more.
Hawkins was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1995 and the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2008.
In addition to history they made together at Muscle Shoals Sound and FAME, Hawkins, Beckett, Hood and Johnson also for a time in the ’70s joined Steve Winwood’s British jam-band Traffic, known for songs like “Mr. Fantasy.” They can be heard on Traffic’s studio LP “Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory and the live album “On The Road,” both released in 1973.
In 2019, Swampers bassist David Hood told AL.com that Hawkins, “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.”