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Watch Your Step (Ted Hawkins album)

1982 compilation album by Ted Hawkins

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ7973090 ↗
Source-derived summary

Watch Your Step is a 1982 album by Ted Hawkins, a collection of previously recorded songs.

Release

At the time of the album's release, Hawkins was a prisoner/patient of the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

Critical reception

The Boston Phoenix called Watch Your Step "a triumph ... much more than the best blues album of the year -- it's an unexpected hybrid, the first folk-soul masterpiece." Trouser Press wrote: "Teaching a mighty acoustic lesson in roots music, Hawkins inhabits that secular place just outside the churchyard where gospel, folk and soul meet." Robert Christgau wrote that "these little dramas of passion, tenderness and betrayal are stamped with the sin-and-redemption of a lived life." The New Rolling Stone Record Guide wrote that "soul and blues fans need to hear this, if only to restore their faith in the dying art of emotional conviction."

Track listing

All songs were written by Theodore Hawkins, Jr. (i.e. Ted Hawkins); who also sang and played guitar on all of them.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Watch Your Step (Ted Hawkins album)” as 1982 compilation album by Ted Hawkins. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1982—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1982. The account is most persuasive where Watch, Your and Step can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1982 compilation album by Ted Hawkins. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7973090. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Watch Your Step (Ted Hawkins album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Watch Your Step (Ted Hawkins album) primary sources, Watch Your Step (Ted Hawkins album) archive and Watch research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Watch Your Step (Ted Hawkins album)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Watch Your Step (Ted Hawkins album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.