HAWKSHAW HAWKINS’ CHRONOLOGY AND OTHER INTERESTING FACTS
- Harold Franklin Hawkins was born in Huntington, WV on December 22, 1921
- He gained his nickname as a boy after helping a neighbor track down two missing fishing rods: the neighbor called him “Hawkshaw” after the title character in the comic strip, Hawkshaw the Detective.
- He traded five trapped rabbits for his first guitar, and performed on WCMI-AM in Ashland, Kentucky.
- At 16, he won a talent competition and a job on WSAZ-AM in Huntington, where he formed Hawkshaw and Sherlock with Clarence Jack.
- The duo moved over to WCHS-AM in Charleston, West Virginia, in the late 1930s.
- In 1940, at the age of 19, Hawk married Reva Mason Barbour, a 16-year-old from Huntington.
- During 1941, Hawkins traveled the United States with a musical revue.
- He entered the U.S. Army in 1943 during World War II, and served as an engineer stationed near Paris, Texas, where he and friends performed at local clubs.
- As a staff sergeant, he was stationed in France and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, winning four battle stars during 15 months of combat.
- He was also stationed in Manila and performed there on the radio.
- After he was discharged, Hawkins became a regular on WWVA Jamboree from 1945 to 1954 in Wheeling, West Virginia.
- In 1946, he signed a recording contract with King Records in Cincinnati.
- His first two recordings with King, “Pan American” and “Dog House Boogie”, were top ten country hits.
- A minor hit, and the song that become his signature tune, was “The Sunny Side of the Mountain”.
- “Slow Poke”, which he recorded in 1951, was another notable King recording, a record label he stayed with until 1953.
- Because of his height (6’5″) and his outgoing demeanor, he was nicknamed “Eleven Yards of Personality”.
- In 1951, Hawkins and his wife adopted four-year old Susan Marlene, but they divorced in 1958 with Susan traveling back and forth between parents in summers and for holidays.
- Beginning in 1954, Hawkins was a regular performer on ABC Radio and TV’s Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri, where he met his second wife, Jean Shepard.
- After a few years with Columbia and RCA Records, he joined the Grand Ole Opry and returned to King Records
- In 1962 Hawkins recorded his biggest hit, “Lonesome 7-7203”, first appearing on the Billboard country chart on March 2, 1963.
- On March 5, Hawkins, Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas left for Nashville in a Piper Comanche piloted by Randy Hughes, Cline’s manager (and Copas’s son-in-law). After stopping to refuel in Dyersburg, Tennessee, the craft took off at 6:07 p.m. CT. The plane flew into severe weather and crashed at 6:29 p.m. in a forest near Camden, Tennessee, 90 miles from Nashville. There were no survivors.
- Following his death, “Lonesome 7-7203” was removed from airplay for two weeks, but re-appeared on March 23 and then spent 25 weeks on the chart, four of those weeks at No. 1, an chart accomplishment that eluded Hawkshaw his entire life.
- Hawkins was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, in what’s become known there as Music Row, where he rests along with Cowboy Copas and other notable country music performers.