Veteran performer Ira Hawkins has died. Born October 19, 1944, in Los Angeles, Hawkins earned his master’s degree in classical piano from University of Iowa and worked as a junior high school teacher, before he began his career as a vocalist. He sang backup on Ringo Starr’s Top Ten 1974 solo album Goodnight Vienna and Keith Moon’s 1975 solo album Two Sides of the Moon. He also recorded the title song for the soundtrack of Melvin Van Peebles’ 1976 film Just an Old Sweet Song, which you can watch below.
Hawkins made his Broadway debut as an understudy in the 1976 revue Bubbling Brown Sugar. He followed that with the leading role of Hadji opposite Eartha Kitt in the 1978 musical Timbuktu!, a revision of 1953 Tony winner Kismet. Below you can listen to Hawkins and Kitt in the finale, “Sands of Time.” Soon after the show closed, Hawkins launched a long-running nightclub career with his 1979 debut at Les Mouches.
He spent the next decade alternating between stage and club gigs. His theater work included the 1980 backer’s audition of composer Charles Strouse’s Bojangles, the 1981 Amas Rep production of Luther Henderson’s The Crystal Tree, and the 1983 international tour of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies with Gregg Burge. You can watch the finale from the Japanese tour stop below.
Hawkins returned to Broadway in 1984, replacing Samuel E. Wright in The Tap Dance Kid, then originated roles in the short-lived musicals Honky Tonk Nights (1986) and Roza (1987), which marked his final Broadway appearance. In 1988, he returned to Off-Broadway in the Rodgers & Hart revue Sing for Your Supper and in 1989 to the clubs, singing with The Duke’s Men.
Hawkins primarily found gig work over the next two decades as a supporting vocalist in Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall (1992), which you can watch below, as well as the MTC II concert of Douglas J. Cohen’s musical The Gig (1994), the Sesame Street album Splish Splash: Bath Time Fun (1995), the cast album of Hank Williams: Lost Highway (2002), and the Encores! concert of 70, Girls, 70 (2006).
His recent work includes the 2008 Off-Broadway revival of Aphra Behn’s play Oroonoko, in which he served as actor and musician, as well as a return to his jazz roots with the 2011 Africa/Brass concert, 2013 Mike Longo album Live from New York, and 2017 Frank Perowsky album An Afternoon in Gowanus, from which you can listen to “Down for the Count” below.
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