Robbie Robertson - Early Life

Early Life

Robertson was born Jaime Robert Klegerman in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His mother, Rosemarie Myke Chrysler, was of "predominantly Mohawk descent". His father, Alexander David Klegerman, was Jewish. His father died when he was a child, and his mother re-married to James Patrick Robertson, who adopted Robbie and whose surname Robbie had taken. He had his earliest exposure to music at Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, where he spent summers with his mother's family.

By 1958, Robertson was performing in various groups around Toronto, including Little Caesar and the Consuls, Robbie and the Robots, and Thumper and the Trambones. By 1959 he had met singer Ronnie Hawkins, who led a band called The Hawks. In 1960 Hawkins recorded two early Robertson songs, "Hey Boba Lu" and "Someone Like You" on his Mr. Dynamo LP. Robertson then took over lead guitar with The Hawks and toured often, before splitting from Hawkins in 1963. Robertson's skill on his instrument continued to increase, leading Howard Sounes to write, "By twenty-two, he was a guitar virtuoso."

After Robertson left Ronnie Hawkins, along with Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson, the quintet styled themselves Levon and the Hawks, but, after rejecting such tongue-in-cheek names as The Honkies and The Crackers, as well as the Canadian Squires—a name the record label called them and that they immediately hated—they ultimately called themselves The Band.