Hawkshaw Hawkins - Put A Nickel In The Jukebox

Here's a wonderful little Country & Western rarity... Put A Nickel In The Jukebox (And Let That Record Play) by Hawkshaw Hawkins. Hawkshaw was sadly one of the four doomed passengers on the March 5, 1963 flight that also took the lives of Cowboy Copas (Going Back To Alabam' was his biggest hit), and Patsy Cline. Hawkshaw's biggest hit would seem to have been LOnesome 7-7203. See, they used to have these things called exchanges where the first two numbers of a phone number in an area would be written as letters, here we had GRanite and EVergreen. So LO7-7203 would be 567-7203, not that any such exchange as LOnesome existed (but just for kicks I suppose you could give it a try and let us know what happens). His recording career started after the war when he was about 25. I really love Hawkshaw's voice and Slow Poke, Little Whitewashed Chimney, Teardrops On Your Letter, I'm Waiting Just For You, and Sunny Side Of the Mountain are all favorites. This one was released on King Records in 1948. A follow up in 1949 was titled I Wasted A Nickel. Why... a nickel was worth more then than it is today, young fellers, by cracky, not like these fancy nickels you kids have these days! Hawkins left King For RCA in 1953, and moved on to Columbia in 1959. He performed with Patsy Cline numerous times as they had been at the time of the crash, but certainly deserves recognition apart from that connection.

You can find some classic Hawkins on CD at Oldies.com