“Well, I’ll tell you something,” Natie said finally, leaning back, “there’s no doubt in my mind that’s Tutor’s son.”
“Are you kidding? Of course, he looks just like him.” Morrie laughed.
“What are you talking about?” Natie said. “He looks like his mother, thank God, but I could tell a mile away. His voice, his gestures, his forehead. I can tell for sure.”
I felt like I was passing a test that I didn’t even know if I wanted to take.
“Well, Jaime, how about that?” Natie continued. “I bet you didn’t know you were Jewish.”
Morrie, with a wide smile, added, “Doll, you ever tell him he was Jewish? Look at that, he looks Jewish sitting there.”
“Doll, you did a great job,” said Natie. “Good kid. Right, Morrie? Great-looking kid.”
—
The Caddy was doing close to eighty miles an hour as we cruised along through the night toward Hamilton. “Oh, man”—Levon grinned at me as I wound up my story—“you’re Jewish? How about that!”
At that moment Ronnie rustled awake. “What, who’s a Jew? Let me check and make sure I still got my damn wallet.” He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “You saying young Robin here’s a Jew? You better pull the car over and shake him down.”
“Aye, aye, Ron,” said Levon. “Next chance I get, I’ll turn his pockets inside out.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Bad enough he was a redskin, now he’s a Jew on top of that.”
“I’m afraid so.” I laughed. “Yeah, you could say I’m an expert when it comes to persecution.”
They kidded me the whole drive to Canada, but it became obvious that Levon looked at me differently after I’d shared some of my past. After all those stories, I became somebody he wanted to know. This was the beginning of a brotherhood.
My new uncles, Natie and Morrie Klegerman, were, I would soon discover, products of Toronto’s Jewish underworld; both were streetwise, reared by their tough bootlegger mother. The brothers were close but extremely different in mind and in body. Natie had a wholesale business selling fur coats and diamonds, while Morrie owned and drove a taxicab. Natie was intellectually gifted, with a remarkable ability to connect with people and delight them with his dangerous imagination, while Morrie, more solidly built, fit naturally into the role of protector.
They quickly pulled me into their world and went out of their way to make me feel like family. By then I was going to R. H. King High School, even farther east in Scarborough, but I made regular trips downtown to the heart of Toronto’s Jewish neighborhood at College Street and Spadina Avenue. Natie introduced me to his lovely wife, Fran, and their two kids—my cousins—David and Vicki. And even though this world couldn’t have been newer or more different from the suburbs or the reserve, I felt quite at home. Maybe it was the mysterious bloodline connection—or maybe they were very sweet and caring people.
My uncles were keen to know what made me tick and showed concern for my future. Natie took me to his business headquarters and showed me someone cutting and sewing fur skins. He poured out diamonds from a piece of crepe paper and explained they would later be mounted in jewelry. He told me about money lending, another part of his broad business model, which seemed to cover a range of very traditional Jewish trades. I could tell he was trying to see if any of this touched a nerve in me.
When I told Natie that playing rock ’n’ roll music was my passion, a stunned look came over his face. “What kind of a cockamamie thing is that?” Then he realized, “Oh, show business. I get it. But rock ’n’ roll? Isn’t that a bunch of goofy, crazy people?” The concept was as foreign to the Klegermans as being a shylock was to me.
I grew ever more fascinated the deeper they drew me in to my newfound heritage. One powerful moment came when Natie took me to meet his father, Shmuel Chaim, a devout-looking Jewish gentleman dressed in a black suit. They spoke in Yiddish, and Natie explained the whole situation to him, that I was Alex’s son. The old man trembled with emotion. He put his hand on his chest and lowered his head as if in prayer. Then slowly he raised his eyes to look at me, a combination of joy and sorrow on his face. I felt frozen in the moment as he studied me, searching, I’m sure, for traces of his departed son. He gave a nod of recognition and a tear rolled down his cheek. Then he spoke in English. “Alex was my favorite. Your father was my favorite.” I managed a slight smile in acknowledgment before glancing at Natie with sympathy, concerned he’d be upset by his father’s stark favoritism, but he waved it off—as if it didn’t bother him in the least. He signaled for me to join them. I walked over and took both their outreached hands, profoundly moved by the whole experience. But though I knew Natie meant for it to bring me closer, in this strange new world I still couldn’t help feeling like an outsider.
So while my uncle Natie tried his best to pull me into his business and family, music took me away. That summer of ’58 he got me a job selling dresses in the wholesale district, but I also opened for the Hawks with my band, wrote the two songs Ronnie recorded, and got rock ’n’ roll permanently under my skin.
Just as I would go my own way, Uncle Natie went his. After that summer, as I fell deeper into the world of professional music, he began to organize a new and mysterious business enterprise that no one but him completely understood. It still involved diamonds, but this was more like an investment venture. From his vague explanation, I gathered it was an extension of the six-for-five money-lending business but with a much better “vig,” or interest. And there was an international element, connecting Natie in Toronto to others in New York and Antwerp. Some investors were putting up hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Natie had diamonds from a New York 47th Street connection that he was using as collateral. He recommended that my mother and I invest whatever money we might have while we had the opportunity. “It will be worth twice as much in about a month,” he promised.
The whole thing was over my head, but I completely trusted my uncle and admired his ambitions. He was by far the smartest, most charming person I had ever known—one of those people who, whatever the subject, knew much more about it than anyone else.
“How do you retain all these facts, and keep all these numbers in your head, without writing anything down?” I asked.
“Our bloodline is blessed with a very special gift of memory,” Natie explained. “My mother never wrote down a name, a number, an address. And maybe it was for the best, too, when it came to dealing with the authorities. Your father also had this, especially when it came to poker. You’re very lucky. Have you ever noticed you can remember things that other people couldn’t imagine?”
I had a flash of realization. “You know,” I said, “in school, I could remember everyone’s name, where they lived, stories they had told. After a while I had to pretend not to remember, just so the kids and teachers wouldn’t think there was something peculiar about me.”
“There you go.” He smiled, gratified. “You got it, that’s the Klegerman memory.”
—
The Hawk loved hearing about my colorful family. “Well, I hope they come to the club,” he said. “I’d like to meet this uncle of yours.” We pulled up to the Warwick Hotel, unloaded, and checked in like the regulars we were. Ron liked to stay at the Warwick rather than the Westover because the hotel had a roof that was good for sunbathing. Duane Eddy and the Rebels were playing next door at the Edison, and rolling in the following week was none other than the man himself: Bo Diddley. At this point, I thought, life might be perfect.
Then one night Ron’s wish to meet my family came true: Uncle Morrie, Uncle Natie, and Aunt Fran came down to Le Coq d’Or to check us out. I introduced them to Ron, not quite knowing what to expect. I couldn’t imagine two more different worlds coming together. Ronnie could be funny and likable, but he was half wild man, half savvy entertainer; I knew my aunt and uncles had never met anybody like him. But Natie asked Ron questions about life on the road and the record business, and Ron answered seriously and respectfully. All
seemed to get along perfectly well. Later Ron pulled me aside. “That uncle of yours is one smart son of a gun,” he declared. “You could just feel it. I liked him. I liked them all. And your aunt is so damn pretty.” Morrie didn’t say much. He was just measuring Ronnie on his bullshit detector with my best interests in mind. So was Natie, of course, but you would never know it.
A few nights after that, my dad, Jim Robertson, came to the club by himself for a beer and a little visit. I hadn’t seen him too much after the divorce, partially because we were always on the road and partially because my mother still held hard feelings toward him. I introduced him to Ron and the boys, which completely confused everybody; I had family showing up left and right. Afterward Jim told me he was proud, and had known all along that I would turn out to be something; it touched me that he’d come by and said so. Despite the violence and the difficult days, I had a warm place inside for Jim. He was still the only father I had ever known.
But of all my family, it was my mother who would come to hold a hallowed place in the affections of the Hawks. Ron and Levon had met her briefly a few times before I ever got tangled up with them, back when she’d come to Le Coq d’Or with friends. Sometimes, Ron told me, she would mention “her talented son.” But after my Jewish relatives came to the club and I told Levon and Ron a little more about my background, they looked at my mother in a whole different way. With so many threads of my ancestry to keep track of, they mistakenly thought she was Jewish and started calling her “Mama Kosh,” as in “kosher.” She didn’t mind, and I got tired of trying to explain the whole story again, so the nickname stuck.
Come Monday night, Bo Diddley started his engagement at the Edison. Ron liked Bo’s music, so it didn’t take much to convince him to go check out his set and to bring me along. The spell was woven as soon as we walked through the Edison’s doors. There onstage stood Mr. Diddley, armed with a square-body guitar and an amp strung with chicken wire, and Jerome, his maraca player, shaking the joint down. I concentrated on Bo’s hands, his fingers—it was like watching some kind of voodoo magic, where you can only believe half of what you see. How could someone make that rhythm, make that beat, sing with such mourning and move that way? It was a great musical Mississippi mystery I deeply needed to solve. Every chance I got that week, I slipped next door and took in a bit more of Bo’s jungle medicine. His stripped-down combo made a raw, hypnotic noise that could stop a train on the tracks. And when we hit the stage back at Le Coq d’Or for our own sets, I incorporated bits of his rhythm into our songs.
Then, one night after the show, the Hawk and Levon decided to have some company over to the Warwick, and Ron suggested that I go next door to the Edison and ask Bo if he’d like to join us. I jumped at the chance, and as I approached him I took in his shiny, silky-straight hair and those thick black glasses. Somebody had asked him for an autograph and he took something out of his jacket and stamped his name on a piece of paper.
When I told Bo I was with the Hawks and invited him to come by, he looked amused. “I like Ronnie Hawkins. He’s a funny cat,” said Bo. “Yeah, I’ll come by, what room you in?”
Earlier I’d met a young lady named Patricia who was at the club with her aunt and invited her to our postshow get-together. As she and I strolled over to the Warwick after the show, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and tried to make a little conversation.
“Are you really twenty-one?” I asked.
“No,” she admitted. “A friend loaned me her ID. It’s the first time I’ve ever used it.” She was a little uncomfortable going to a hotel room with someone she barely knew, but I assured her she had nothing to worry about. Up in the room Patricia waited while I changed out of my show clothes in the bathroom, and just as I emerged there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and there stood my hero: Mr. Ellas McDaniel, known to the world as Bo Diddley.
“Come in,” I said, trying to act as cool as I could. Bo was carrying a guitar case that he laid at his feet as he sat down. “Ron will be by soon. This is Patricia.” I couldn’t believe that Bo Diddley was sitting right there in my hotel room. After a few minutes of small talk he reached down, unlatched his guitar case, and pulled out that incredible looking square-body ax. The Gretsch guitar company had built this custom for Bo. Mostly country-and-western musicians played Gretsch guitars, so this was quite unusual—and nobody had a square-bodied one. His foot started patting out a tempo, and then he kicked into his pulsing “I’m a Man” rhythm—boom bap boom bah boom. Was this really happening? The sound, the feel of just his thumb strumming and his foot on the carpeted floor sent chills up my spine. When he began to sing, it took me a second to realize that he was making up words on the spot about what he was going to do to this young girl called Pa-tri-cia, once he got rid of me.
When this young man’s gone
And Bo Diddley moves in
Patricia gonna know
Real loving ain’t no sin
My mouth hung open. Patricia started squirming and looking at her watch. Just then Ronnie knocked on the door and let himself in. “Son, you got Bo singing in your hotel room,” he cried as he surveyed the scene. “How much did you have to pay him for that? We know he don’t play for free.”
Bo slapped me on the back. “You can pay me later.” He put his guitar back in the case.
“Well, don’t put that thing away now,” Ron whooped. “We’re going down to my room and have a little party!” He put his arm around Patricia’s waist. “Darlin’, you and I might have to run off together before this night is through.” She blushed.
“Yeah, I was trying to tell her the same thing,” said Bo. “But I sang it, for free.”
Bo and Ronnie headed down the hall whispering to each other. “Really, I have to get going,” Patricia said softly. “I have to get up early for work.”
“Work?”
“Well, actually, school.”
I could tell she was unsettled by all the attention and tried to explain that she was in no danger: I promised I’d keep these Casanovas away from her, but Patricia just patted my cheek, smiled, and said, “Call me a cab.”
—
The Hawks had a wilder, slightly out-of-control force to us now, with Willard back on piano. His style wasn’t as musical or refined as Magoo’s, but it made for an exciting ride. My rhythm guitar, matched with Will’s left hand and Rebel’s solid bass style, held down the foundation well enough to give Fred free rein to wail. And wail he did—his solos were the best I’d ever heard from him, and that pushed me to raise my game.
Despite the difference in our age and experience, Fred still regarded me as a junior-sized version of himself, which probably explained his enduring competitiveness. Ron liked to feature Fred singing a down-and-dirty version of Muddy Waters’s “She’s Nineteen Years Old.” He played guitar solos that stung like a bee—the piercing sound of the back pickup on his Fender Tele could jab you right between the eyes. It was hard to imagine anything could top it, but gradually Ron started pointing to me to take solos on the same song. I played most of my leads in a go-for-broke fashion, and Ron got a kick out of this youthful, pedal-to-the-metal approach. “Burn that baby up, son!” he kept yelling, and my confidence bloomed nightly. Levon too would be laughing and nodding at me to keep on pushing. Fred, on the other hand, did not like anyone trespassing on his turf.
The Hawk had a strict rehearsal regimen, and many afternoons were spent learning new songs and pushing our skills. Ron was dead serious about having the best band around, and proclaimed, “If you’re not working at it, you ain’t getting better.” I took these words to heart. One afternoon at rehearsal, Fred made a snide remark about my practicing all the time.
“Well, you need to be practicing yourself,” I shot back.
“Oh, really? Why’s that?” he said.
I looked up at him. “Because someday I’m gonna cut you.”
Fred granted me the courtesy of a small laugh but then muttered, “Okay, that’s it. The guitar lesson is over.” After that
he never played another solo facing me so I could see what his fingers were doing.
Yep, this was high noon and the Wild West.
—
With Fred about to depart, the pressure to hold up my end on lead guitar was mounting. My youth and limited experience made Ron nervous about my taking over this responsibility. So he decided to try out someone else: a top-flight Arkansas guitar slinger named Roy Buchanan who, like Fred, had played with Ron’s cousin Dale Hawkins. I had no choice but to roll with the punches, though when Roy showed up in Toronto with just a Fender Esquire guitar and a small duffel bag, I thought the Lone Ranger had never looked this solitary. He plugged into a small amp we had at the hotel and proceeded to blow our minds. Roy had more tricks up his sleeve than Houdini: his fast runs and extreme string bending, his rhythm and soloing at the same time, like it was two guitars. The thrilling part was that he didn’t mind showing me things in slow motion, quite the opposite of Fred. Roy would play something amazing, break it down for me piece by piece, and then hand me his guitar. I began hoping we could both fit into the next incarnation of the Hawks. I wasn’t overly naive: I knew this could mean I’d be out of a job—Ron might not want two guitar players. But right then it didn’t concern me. Just being around somebody that good lifted me up.
Soon after Roy arrived, though, Ron observed there was something a bit demonic in his eyes, and in his nature. The suspicion was confirmed when one day, out of the blue, Roy confessed to us, “I’m half human and half wolf.” We all stared at him. “And sometimes it’s a problem, especially late at night when there’s a full moon.”
“Why? What happens?” I asked. Sure, Roy did look more bohemian than us, with his goatee and pasted-down hair, but a wolf?
“Well,” said Roy gravely, “sometimes I wake up in the night howling from a nightmare. One time there was blood on my beard, and in the bed.”
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