For many years Ernie Hawkins has been playing concerts, clubs, blues and folk festivals, workshops, colleges, museums, parties, fist fights and millennium celebrations in the United States, Canada, Japan and Spain and at every stop in the road from A Prairie Home Companion to Antone's to the Madrid Jazz Festival. He has played with blues greats such as Son House, Mance Lipscomb, Fred McDowell, Jim Brewer, Rev. Gary Davis and many others.
Ernest Leroy Hawkins was born in Pittsburgh PA in 1947. In the '50's he had a paper route, a beagle and a Roy Rodgers harmonica (which he still has somewhere).
He first learned country guitar, mandolin, banjo and bones from a guy named Pete who worked on his Uncle's farm. Pete had come up playing with the Lilly Brothers and had rambled around the country - taking a 30-year detour down whisky lane that landed him in a cabin on the farm as property caretaker…and becoming a primary musical mentor to Ernie.
Ernie was already playing blues as a teenager when he heard a fellow passing through town play Gary Davis' "Let Us Get Together". He was hooked then and forever on country blues and ragtime guitar…and players like Davis, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Blake, Willie Johnson, Skip James, John Hurt, Leadbelly…
Right after high school, Ernie moved to New York City with only one purpose - to track down and study with Rev. Gary Davis. In '69 he moved back home, enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh and earned a degree in philosophy. During this time, Ernie played with Niles Jones, a blues player living in the city and "rediscovered" in the '90's as Guitar Gabriel.
In 1973 Ernie moved to Dallas for graduate school and earned a Ph.D. in phenomenological psychology. Again he managed to find the blues scene and hooked up with players all over the southwest - learning some Lemon Jefferson, Funny Papa Smith, Henry Thomas and Lightnin' Hopkins. So, with Ph.D. in hand, Ernie wandered back into music.
In the early '80's he recorded his first solo album of ragtime guitar," Ragtime Signatures". His second CD "Blues Advice" was dedicated to the memory of his teacher, Reverend Gary Davis on the occasion of the centennial of his birth. The CD includes three songs taught to Ernie by Davis: "Penitentiary Blues", "Florida Blues" and "Will There Be Stars in My Crown" that have never been previously recorded. Ernie's third CD "Bluesified" received worldwide rave reviews. It regularly plays in the preemie unit of a Pittsburgh hospital where the soulful guitar is considered an integral part of the healing process.
For ten years he played electric guitar with the Blue Bombers, one of Pittsburgh's favorite R&B bands. They have two acclaimed recordings: Bombs Away and Altitude Adjustment.
"Instructional videos on Lightnin' Hopkins, Blind Willie McTell, Mance
Lipscomb and Rev. Gary Davis are available for purchase from this website.
Ernie was featured in SingOUT! Summer '01 and Fingerstyle Guitar Summer '00. Ernie's theatrical compositions include the NY production of L.E. McCullough's Blues for Miss Buttercup, the University of Pittsburgh production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Pittsburgh Public Theater's T-Bone and Weasel.
Ernie appears on Maria Muldaur's Grammy and Handy nominated and Indie Award winning album "Richland Woman Blues" and was the guitarist for the national support tour.Ernie's latest release "Mean Little Poodle" is HERE. Check it out.