The New Republic

Who Knew? Listening to Cripple Creek in a, well, different state of mind. Forty years goes by way, way too fast. I learned today that his name was actually Lavon, but he changed it because other members of the Band couldn't pronounce it. Different state of mind, I suppose.

- rayward

April 19, 2012 at 5:52pm

I just learned yesterday that Levon Helm was terminally ill. The Band was such a great band, and for a short while, too. All too short. Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz is a beautiful production.

- liberalref

April 19, 2012 at 6:02pm

We've lost an American musical treasure. While his work with The Band produced some timeless songs, even more remarkable is his work in recent years after recovering from throat cancer. If you haven't heard the "Dirt Farmer" and "Electric Dirt" albums, do yourself a favor. The damage to his voice takes nothing away from the genuine-ness and power of his singing.

- appleton

April 19, 2012 at 6:50pm

Oh, bummer.

- Sophia

April 19, 2012 at 6:51pm

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is an American classic by any measure. It can make a diehard supporter of crushing the Confederacy feel the pain of defeat and the grief for pointless loss.

- ironyroad

April 19, 2012 at 7:54pm

The night they drove old Dixie down... Literally just last week LH came into my thoughts (probably because of The Band's "The Band" I have on my iPhone) and I looked him up on YouTube. I watched an interview from some PBS music show from a couple years back. He and the interviewer discussed his cancer. Helm said he was in remission, but he looked pretty frail and the radiation therapy had messed up his singing voice. I've always thought the feud between Helm and Robbie Robertson was sort of sad, though as son of the old Confederacy myself I'm drawn reluctantly to take Helm's side in it. I think Robertson probably deserves credit for writing most of the songs in the sense of penning the lyrics, but the lyrics aren't what made The Band The Band. What made The Band the strange, lovely thing that it was was the sound of Levon Helm's voice and his funky redneck drumming that took this shambling, disorganized jug band sound, pulled it all together and staked it right into your guts.

- AaronW

April 19, 2012 at 8:23pm

Very sad news indeed. Whenever I am really sad or despondent, there are only two records I feel like putting on. One is an old copy of a Louis Armstrong record from way back when that my father used to play for me and the other one was Music from Big Pink and especially The Weight. From losing a friend to cancer to having to console my best friend when her mother died all too soon (now only a distant memory), listening to The Weight always made dark days just a little easier to bear. I suspect Helm's voice has a lot to do with that. Just today when I was driving home, a cover of The Weight was playing and I thought about him and just how unusual his combination of great voice and drumming ability were. I also liked his more recent output (there's a great version of Tennessee Jed on Electric Dirt if you have six minutes to spare), but I guess today I'll go looking for that old Music from Big Pink LP.

- SEBASTIANSALING@HOTMAIL.COM

April 19, 2012 at 8:38pm

If your memory serves you well, you'll remember that you're the one Who called on them to call on me to get you your favours done And after every plan had failed and there was nothing more to tell And you know that we shall meet again if your memory serves you well

- CRS9TNR

April 19, 2012 at 9:17pm

I watched the Last Waltz again when I read he was in the final stages, I was a teenager when the movie came out and man does it seem like yesterday. Hard to believe 3 of the members are now dead. The weight is also one of my favorite songs, not partly because Nazareth is the town next over and I will never forget one time literally pulling into Nazareth after a day of skiing feeling half past dead when the song came on. Those guys were also some of the coolest looking band members ever, they looked just the way the music sounded.

- blackton

April 19, 2012 at 9:21pm

Helm was also an early and avid supporter of a wonderful non-profit called Musicians on Call, which brings music to the bedside of hospital patients (in various forms, from live performances to iPods). The first location was Sloan Kettering, focused on cancer patients.

- shellski

April 19, 2012 at 11:15pm

"You take what you need and leave the rest, but they never should have taken the very best."

- Sancho

April 20, 2012 at 1:12am

That brought tears to my eyes, Sancho.

- Timothy Noah

April 20, 2012 at 9:48am

When I learned Cick Clarke had died I was saddened in a nostalgic way. I used to as a 12 and 13 year old watch a little Bandstand. After that he wasn't much to me. He was a perennial back ground presence on the outer rieaches of my awareness. When I learned Jimi Hendrix had died I was shocked at the news but was left somehow unaffected. When I learned that Janis Joplin had died I was overwhelmed, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room and that something great and momentous had passed from the world. That's how I felt yesterday when I learned Levon Helm had died. I loved him, his songs, his acting, The Band, his presence, his sensibility, how he unassumingly lit up wherever he was. He was someone I wished I'd met, a treasure of American popular music. I'm going around today with a heavy heart.

- basman

April 20, 2012 at 10:35am

Levon Helm was an original, as was the Band. And he had a creative resurgence in recent years with albums like Electric Dirt and Dirt Farmer. He and his voice can't be replaced or even covered. I like Joan Baez's version of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," but it sounds like light opera compared to the gritty original by Helms. Country is something you can't co-opt. It's in your DNA. I've seen The Last Waltz more than once. Now I'll buy it and watch it more than once--again.

- magboy47.

April 20, 2012 at 11:52am

It is amazing that a Canadian-based band had to become one of the major catalysts for reinterpreting and reintroducing American roots music to Americans in the mid-60s and simultaneously creating timeless songs that made them an 'American' band. Much like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers seminal album reintroduced blues to many Americans, The Band helped us realize there was/is a rich fount of musical essence in American folk, bluegrass, country, blues, jazz and rock that did not have be separate styles from each other. That 'The Band' could mix it all up and make its own lasting contribution to music is oftentimes understated. ____ Sometimes the best bands aren't the frontmen but those back-up musicians that leave an indelible mark on music. One of the founding members of the Memphis Horns recently passed away as well. Two guys on horns that played with some of the most significant acts and on some of the most significant albums in the American lexicon of music. Sam & Dave's "Soul Man" wouldn't have that soul with the Memphis Horns.

- singlspeed

April 20, 2012 at 11:58am

The apt mentions of Robbie Robertson and The Band and Ronnie Hawkins and Canada, Toronto, to be sure, bring to mind one of my favorite Robbie Robertson/Ronnie Hawkins bits from the The Last Waltz. Robertson, half Mohawk, half Jewish, recalls how Hawkins enticed him into The Hawks, "Son," I paraphrase from memory, "if you join us, you'll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra." To bring that line current, Robertson very recently was interviewed by the CBC's staid and plummy voiced newscaster Peter Mansbridge, himself a past womanizer of legendary proportion. With a twinkle in his eye, Mansbridge's first question was, I paraphrase, "I've got to ask you right off, was Ronnie Hawkins right?" To which question an equally twinkling-eyed, Robertson, with his usual street wise half smile, said, "Ronnie was a great predictor"

- basman

April 20, 2012 at 12:18pm

I too very much like Joan Baez's cover of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, mag, but you are correct, the original is the best. Your post caused me to recall quite a while ago, from two to three decades back, some snarky conservative in a publication of the right, quite likely in the old The American Spectator under the reign of the dotty Robert Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (though I don't remember for certain now) was bashing Joan Baez and mentioned this song, asking what the title line even means (the comment read as if the writer didn't know that the song wasn't written by her). Singlspeed, your post is very fine and eloquent. Thank you much for it. The Band came to my attention, as it did to so many, when they backed Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s. But they were tremendous talents in their own rights. The remarks by basman and Aaron are also very good. I was almost going to write that I was stunned that no one mentioned The Feud, but I recalled that yesterday I ran through some of the comments quickly, so I went back and read them through carefully and I see where Aaron mentioned this. I always think such feuds are sad. I recall when Roger Waters left Pink Floyd and he sued for rights to the group's name and lost. After Waters was gone, the new PF still sounded a hell of a lot like the old PF because of David Gilmour and the rest, but of course the were then bereft of Water's creativity, so there was a difference. I found their set-to especially ironic, because their great meme was "tear down the wall," and a huge wall sprung up between them after the breakup. The latest incarnation of this phenomenon was when William Bruce Bailey (Axl Rose) snubbed his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last Saturday by not showing up. Last night, weirdly, a rumor spread like wildfire that Axl Rose was dead, courtesy of the nervous-tic Twitter culture. The rumor seemed to be especially virulent among his followers in Brazil, for some reason. On a nice note, I read this morning that Robbie Robertson visited Levon Helm in the hospital before he died and sat with him. Best to everyone.

- liberalref

April 20, 2012 at 2:26pm

Timothy Noah's post about Ry Cooder, another soulful proponent of roots music, and now the post about Levon Helm, with multiple nonsnarky comments, warm my heart, showing that I am among like-minded folks. There is a certain insight into the human condition that this music brings that is consistent with the insights of liberal politics. (Republicans notoriously have no taste in music.) Anyway, this excellent music brings me back to my college days from 1969 to 1973--and I sense that lots of the readers are in the same general age group....

- NR141480

April 20, 2012 at 6:10pm

I still remember going opening night to the Zigfield to see the premiere of TLW with my older brother, and I've been hooked since. But changing the subject a bit, Hamlet as a musical? Gilligan's Island anyone? To the melodies of Carmen. This was even before Big Pink was scored, and well before they made Ophelia (a great number with a real New Orleans flavor).

- PaulChum63

April 20, 2012 at 6:54pm

Libref's comment above about a snarky piece from way back in the day sent me to the American Spectator site to see if I could find anything in their archive. Although the volumes going back to the 1970s are theoretically available online, their search function seemed to hit some kind of wall at 2005 or so. In any case, what I did find there was equally amusing or depressing or both: incredibly, they are still, as late as 2010/11/12, making heavy-handed digs about the folk music/protest music scene, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs etc in a way that makes you think you're reading something from 1972. Just put Joan Baez in the search box and you'll see what I mean. I wonder what will happen when they advance to 1980 and discover punk. Get that ol' right-wing guffaw going. Hippies, har-har! Girls with no bras, snort snort!

- ironyroad

April 20, 2012 at 7:12pm