Bruce Cockburn, Ian Tamblyn, and other Canadian folk and blues legends have released an album that pays tribute to Ottawa taxi driver, poet and songwriter Bill Hawkins.

The double CD Dancing Alone features songs penned by Hawkins but never recorded before he became a taxi driver 34 years ago.

Hawkins wrote them for the Children, a band he played in with Cockburn, Sneezy Walters and David Wiffen in the mid-1960s when Hawkins managed the legendary Le Hibou coffeehouse.

Artists once gathered at the venue, which was first located on Rideau Street, then Bank Street, then Sussex Drive, to take in the words and voices of poets such as Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton, as well as musicians such as Reverend Gary Davis, or Blind Gary Davis as he was called, and John Lee Hooker.

'I took my then-wife and two kids down to Mexico. And when I returned, everyone else was famous.'— Bill Hawkins

Hawkins, now in his 60s, said he was filled with amazement when he heard his old songs on the new album, which features folk veterans and emerging local talents.

"I can't say enough about the job that Ian Tamblyn did producing it. He brought the songs more into this century than the last century," said Hawkins, who was to sign albums at Compact Music in Ottawa's Glebe neighbourhood Saturday afternoon.

The idea for the album came from Harvey Glatt, former manager for the Children.

"We all were very excited to hear these songs again for the first time in a long time, and they really stood up well 40 years later," Glatt said.

Hawkins first met the musicians who would later perform as the Children while running Le Hibou with his then wife.

"I just wanted to get something going and I realized early on that there was a tremendous amount of talent. The first time that I heard Bruce Cockburn touch a guitar, I knew," Hawkins recalled.

At the coffeehouse, he first heard Wiffen sing, and said the "amazing instrument" of Wiffen's voice was in his head when he wrote many of the songs on Dancing Alone.

Sang for Hendrix, Mitchell

Hawkins found himself partying with musical legends such as Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix, who was carrying a big tape recorder one night when Hawkins picked him up at the Capital Theatre.

"And the look on his face when she started to sing — it was just unbelievable. She was as fresh as the dew on Prairie grass and sang like an angel," said Hawkins, who himself sang for Mitchell and Hendrix that night.

Eventually, when Hawkins was in his late 20s playing rooms full of teenagers, he got the sense that he no longer belonged in the scene, and the band split up.

"I took my then-wife and two kids down to Mexico. And when I returned, everyone else was famous," he said.

Hawkins started another band, but became disillusioned with the business and found he was drinking too much. He tried jobs in television and the civil service.

"But I'm just not used to working for other people, so I started driving a cab — been doing it ever since."

Now, more than three decades later, Hawkins said he's getting back into music. He hopes to retire from taxi driving in a couple of years so he can spend more time on music and poetry.