Lost and Found Father
A dramatist creates and relives the life of the famous father he never knew.

BY JILL KRAMER

For 22 years, W. Allen Taylor was tormented by his mother’s refusal to tell him who his father was. It wasn’t until he’d gone off to Ohio State and become a popular disc jockey on the college radio station that she finally told him his father had been a local celebrity: the first black disc jockey in Cleveland, Walkin,’ Talkin’ Bill Hawkins. In the next breath, she told him that his father had died just three months before.

For the next 20 years, Taylor lived with the frustration and the fury of never being able to get to know this man, never to ask him the millions of questions he was left with. But after college he began working in the theater in New York, honing his acting skills, and eventually found that he could bring his father back to life through his art. In a one-man show opening January 6 at The Marsh in Berkeley, he portrays each of the colorful characters—real and imaginary—that revolved around his search for his dad.

Taylor, who lives in San Rafael and has taught drama at College of Marin since 2000, has performed earlier versions of the show at the East Bay Center for Performing Arts, Z Space in San Francisco, and most recently at COM last year. The original performances led to yet another version of the story, broadcast in 1999 on National Public Radio and narrated by Taylor. The national exposure in turn brought Taylor in touch with even more people who knew Bill Hawkins and have helped the son learn more about the father. The show—a dramatization of Taylor’s quest—has become an integral part of the quest itself.

Taylor is 52, with a touch of gray sprinkled through his close-cropped hair. He wears a small gold ring in the lobe of his left ear. He’s tall and lean with big hands and long, graceful fingers that seem made to stroke a keyboard. He did take piano lessons as a kid but decided it was for sissies and quit, to his later regret. He took up drums in high school, playing rock and soul in a band. These days he likes to sing as a sideline. Music is a big part of the show, with tunes from the ’40s and ’50s like the platters Bill Hawkins used to spin in the storefront window of his record shop. As Taylor presents him, Hawkins bristled with charisma, a sharp-dressing ladies’ man and a silver-tongued forerunner of today’s rap artists. The other side of Hawkins was the devoted husband and son of a Baptist minister.

Piety and sin are recurring themes running in Taylor’s family. His mother had been married for 13 years to a pastor before discovering his infidelity and divorcing him. Soon afterward, she began a two-year affair with Hawkins, who wouldn’t leave his wife. When she became pregnant with Taylor, she moved for a year to New York and her liaison with Hawkins remained a secret for the next 22 years.

I sat with Taylor in his cluttered office at the College of Marin. A huge black-and-white poster of Miles Davis, holding his trumpet and looking moody, covers most of one wall. Scattered around the room are photos of the casts of a few of the many plays he’s directed at the college: The Crucible, The Diary of Anne Frank and the one closest to his heart, August Wilson’s Fences. As we talk about his one-man show, from time to time he transforms himself into one character or another.

When you performed this show before, as a “work in progress,” did audience members come up to you and say, “That’s my story, too”?
Yes! And initially I had been very worried that it was overly indulgent—who would want to hear my personal story? But to my surprise I’d walk out of the theater and people would say, “That was great—and guess what? I had the same exact story!” And their stories usually had to do with an absent parent or with a family secret. So I found the story was really resonating with people. You know, the more personal, the more universal. It really is true. I’ve also gotten some feedback on the black radio history that has been lost. There are so many folks, especially in the younger generation, that have no clue that this is where rap comes from. Certainly the whole idea of rhyming is a style that was basically created by these personality DJs of the ’40s and ’50s.

Can you give me a taste of what that sounded like?
[goes into the persona of the fast-talking jive master, his voice leaping from baritone to falsetto and back]: HEY, all you chicks and chappies, it’s time to skid with The Kid on WEGO Soul to Soul Radio on your telepathic dial where we keep you in style, movin’ and groovin’ with the latest and greatest hits of the past. You’re slidin’ and glidin’ with The Kid so take off your lid and let it go, Daddy-O!

[laughing] I remember that sound!
Yeah, that comes from the newest character I’ve added to the show. He is my alter-ego, a hipster-trickster who I created as a vehicle for expressing my anger and the range of emotions that I, as the protagonist in the play, don’t get a chance to express. I chose to do this show in the first place to work through pain and anger and—at the risk of using a term that’s overly used—to get some closure on this issue in my life. The story is centered around this family secret—who my father was—that was held from me all of my childhood. I had asked my mother many, many times growing up and she refused to tell me. Finally at age 14 I just had a tantrum and said, “I’m never going to ask you again!” and didn’t ask her for the next eight years. Anyway, a lot of the comments I got had to do with not revealing enough of the journey of the adult protagonist. Because the play is primarily childhood stories of surrogate fathers juxtaposed with interviews with composite characters—people that knew my dad and talked to me about him. This character allows me to get a lot more in-depth about the emotional turmoil, the emotional journey I’ve gone through and continue to go through. And it hasn’t ended yet.

[I stop, look at him; he’s covering his mouth with a hand] You got me with that—“it hasn’t ended yet.” I’m going to come back to that—but first, tell me this: You say your purpose in putting this show together was to get some closure, yet it wasn’t until just recently that you created a character that allows you to do that.
Yeah, I wasn’t aware that that’s what I needed. And, while this show coming up is my professional debut, I don’t consider the script finished. It’s organic and continues to grow. Just two months ago, I was given a wonderful gift. Someone in Cleveland who has chosen to remain anonymous sent me a recording of my father’s voice.

Wow! How did that happen?
It was sent to NPR, which did a piece on me in ’99, with me as the narrator, as part of the series, Lost and Found Sound. My director was an associate producer on the project, which was about finding lost sounds from the 20th century. And part of my search for my dad was searching for his voice. My father died 30 years ago. So NPR sent me to Cleveland with a tape recorder to interview people and a lot of things came out of that. My father’s relatives heard it, and my father’s great-nephew heard it, and he was the inheritor of all of my father’s memorabilia. My father didn’t have children in his marriage, but his great-nephew, who now works for Toshiba, was on the road in Texas and heard this on the radio. And he called me up and he had all these pictures. He was so gracious. He gave me the originals of so many pictures—pictures of my father in his record shop, of him with Dinah Washington, with Clyde McPhatter. He knew everybody. My cousin gave me a copy of a Christmas card my father got from Duke Ellington. Phenomenal stuff. But he didn’t have my father’s voice. Then just two months ago, NPR calls me and says, “We found your father’s voice!” So now I have this CD of his voice.

I understand you actually met your father once, not knowing it was he.
My mother and my father conspired for me to meet him in the guise of a job interview when I was 18 years old.

So your mother stayed in touch with him.
They were in touch throughout my childhood, but not frequently. My father was married and my mother was recently divorced when they started to have an affair in the early ’50s. And when my mother became pregnant, it was such a potential scandal that she left Cleveland. She was a pastor’s wife. She was like the First Lady of one of the largest black Baptist churches in Cleveland. Everybody knew her. And when she met my father, she was recently divorced. So she went to New York to have me, and stayed there almost a year before coming back with me in tow. And my father came to New York to see me as an infant. But at a certain point, they decided that he would not remain in my life. They didn’t want it out that she had had an illegitimate baby.

So they kept the truth from you to protect her reputation.
Both their reputations. My mother was a product of the ’50s. People at that time were a lot more prudish than we are today about having a child out of wedlock. And my father was a very big public figure. He was a celebrity! So when I was 18 years old and ready to move to Columbus to go off to college at Ohio State, they conspired for me to meet him before I left. So she tells me I’m going to a job interview.

Oh, God.
And I go downtown to meet this man and he’s working for the Cleveland Urban League and I was very excited about making some money before I go off to college. And I sit with him in his office for about 45 minutes. It was so vivid. You know how certain memories are indelible? You don’t even know why you remember them. It must have been that, unconsciously, I knew there was something very familiar about this man. And I was just staring at him wondering, What is the deal with this guy? And he’s asking me everything about my personal life, but nothing about the job! I remember that distinctly. And I wanted this job! So I’m asking him, “What does it pay?” and “What skills do I need?” and he’s saying, “Do you play ball?” “Do you have a girlfriend?”

He wanted to get to know you!
I left there pretty bewildered. And I went home and told my mother, “He didn’t seem very interested in giving me the job.” She said, “Oh, don’t worry about it—if you get it, you get it, if you don’t, you were probably overqualified.” So I go off to college and I become a radio announcer!

It was in your blood.
I just gravitated to it. I majored in communications and got to be a popular DJ on college radio. I decided I would be a radio DJ and program director. I had my life all planned out. So when I graduated in ’75, my mother gives me this big party and she invites relatives from all over the country.

But the one man that wasn’t there was my dad, and that really got to me. So, for the first time in eight years, I decided to ask my mother once again who my dad was. And, lo and behold, she told me. She said he was Bill Hawkins, the first black disc jockey in Cleveland, Ohio. I was elated. Because now, not only did I know who my father was, now I had connections! Then, a few sentences later, she tells me he had passed away three months before. And that he was the man at that job interview. So I’m getting this all at once and I was blown away. I had this range of emotions. It was a rough, rough thing to hear. I did have an immediate burst of anger with her, but I tend to hold stuff in and I just submerged it. But after that, she began to say little things about my dad—like I would put on a hat and she’d say, “You know, you look just like your dad.”

How did that make you feel?
It felt great! Because part of my search was a search for me, for my manhood. One time I was DJing at a party—that was a gig that I would get frequently in the mid-’70s—and this drunk old guy walks up to me out of the blue and goes [gets up, assumes slumped posture, knees bent, swaying, playing the part of a jovial but reeling drunk]: “Hey, baby! You know what, man? You look jes’ like an old friend of mine. They called him Walkin’ Talkin’ Bill Hawkins.” This was the very first time that a stranger walked up to me and told me I looked like my dad. It made me feel so good. But at the same time it sparked my hunger to know more. And I started accumulating information about him—talking to people who knew him, going to the library to read about him. I went to his house and I met his wife.

What was she like?
She was very elderly and very proper. She just opened the door a crack and peered out and said [making himself small, with a high-pitched, feminine voice]: “Yes? Can I help you?” And I said, “I’m your husband’s son.” [laughs heartily] And she opened the door and said, “You look just like him.” She had her coat on and she said she was on her way out so she didn’t invite me in, but she gave me her phone number and I called her a few times. But with each conversation she got colder and colder, to the point where she finally started to deny I was who I said I was. I think her relatives must have gotten to her.

Maybe they were worried that you were after some money.
Yeah, so I just stopped contacting her.

I wonder, though, if she was the anonymous donor.
No, she passed away in ’94. But I’m still hoping to find that person. And ultimately, when I do the show in Cleveland—and it is when, not if—I think that could be when Pandora’s box opens up. I expect to have a whole new layer of information come my way. With each workshop production I’ve done, I’ve discovered how much more there was to know, that was going to help me personally—which was the whole point in the first place. And it’s still the point. If this show is a commercial success, great—thank you, God and thank you, Dad—but it really isn’t about that for me. My number one priority is to work through my own stuff with this and to be able to share with other people that are dealing with similar things.

Have you forgiven your dad yet?
I’ve come a long way in forgiving him. I can’t say I’m totally there yet. You know, when I was 18 and I was sitting there with him for 45 minutes, that would have been the ideal time for him to just say, “I’m your dad. I love you.” But the more I can get to know him, the more I’ll be able to forgive him and the more I’ll be able to love him. And I do understand a lot more now than I did just a few years ago. But I think it’s a lifelong journey for me. I continue to long for him. As a 52-year-old, I would love to be able to talk to my elderly dad, to say, “What was it like for you at 52?” I feel like he and I had a lot to share that we missed out on. And that’s one of the things I try to bring out in the show: that if you have a sibling or a parent that you can share your life with, don’t let that get away, because it’s so precious.

What about your mom? Have you forgiven her?
Yeah, my mother and I got so close, especially in the year that I took care of her. She had had a stroke and I went to Cleveland. That’ll be another play [laughs]. She has apologized to me so many times. She passed away in May of last year.

Do you have any kids?
I do. I have one daughter who, ironically, was born out of wedlock. She’s now 28 years old and we are now very close. I made a pledge when she was born that I was always going to be in her life. And she was just as excited as I was to hear her grandfather’s voice. I couldn’t wait to get the CD in the mail to her. She’s in Washington, D. C., she’s a graduate student and she works as a corporate trainer.

How did you get involved in theater?
My desire to be in radio pretty much dissipated after I found out about my dad. I think, subconsciously, I didn’t want to be like him anymore. That’s one of the ways I expressed my anger. But I had moved to New York to become a DJ and auditioned for a couple of big-time stations, worked as a volunteer for WBAI for close to a year. And for a few years I worked as a fund-raiser for United Way. But I started to want to do something more creative and I ran into an old friend who had become a professional actor. Joseph Papp, a producer at the Public Theater, at that time was doing black versions of Shakespeare and my friend was in Coriolanus, along with Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, who were all just starting their careers. And my friend talked me into going to an acting class. So I went and I was hooked. I loved it. And I decided, this is what I want to do. So I quit my job a few years later and became a waiter. [laughs] I waited tables for 10 years while I was supporting myself in theater. I moved out here in ’87 to go to A.C.T. for my graduate degree in theater, to get my MFA.

Tell me about your work here at College of Marin.
I teach acting, and I direct plays. Most recently, I directed August Wilson’s Fences, which was a joy, after performing as an actor in his work. You may have heard that August Wilson passed away recently, and we opened two days before his death. And when I chose that play to direct, I had no idea that August Wilson was even ill. So it was a very emotional and profound experience for me and for the cast. I felt honored to work on one of his greatest plays during that period. And it was very well received.

Auditions are open to the community, right? It’s not just students?
We get a lot of semiprofessionals. It’s usually a mixture. For Fences, my main lead, who played the protagonist Troy, has had 25 years experience and is definitely a professional and I was very happy to have him on-board. He was doing it as a favor to me and also because he always wanted to do this great role—it’s like playing King Lear in black theater. But one of my personal missions is to make the plays accessible to students and to the community. This should be a place where people can get experience as actors. I’ve had people in all of the plays I’ve directed here—on the main stage—who had never set foot on the stage before. I love teaching, but performing is [pounds his heart]—I am passionate about my teaching, but I equally love to be on stage myself.

I imagine all your students are going to come out and see you.
I hope so. Yeah, I mean, that can be nerve-wracking as well. When I did the production here, they’d sit right in the front row [crosses his arms across chest in defiant posture], “Show me, Allen!” But that’s fun. And I like to be afraid. I guess that’s one of the reasons I chose theater, to challenge myself. I want my students to see me triumph and also to fail. Because I talk about that in the classroom all the time. If something goes wrong on stage, they’ll see me struggling to get through that moment and they’ll learn something.

W. Allen Taylor’s one-man show, Walkin’ Talkin’ Bill Hawkins…In Search of My Father, runs January 6-28, with a preview performance January 5, at the The Marsh in the Gaia Arts Center, 2118 Allston Way, Berkeley. For more information and to order tickets, call 800/838-3006 or log on to www.themarsh.org.

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