Album: The Band
Helm was born in Arkansas, so his approach to the South was more ambiguous than his Canadian bandmates, and you can hear the raw emotion in his voice. This is where the Band really explored new territory in pop music, a song about a Confederate soldier who spends the remainder of his life on a farm mourning the fall of Old Dixie. There are more light-hearted moments on the album too, notably Rag Mama Rag, where the band all play in a loose and improvised style driven along by Garth Hudson's ragtime piano. Up On Cripple Creek is another highlight of side 1, mixing bluegrass with some pre-funk wah-wah pedal to create an entirely unique sound. My two favourites on side 2 are Rockin' Chair, just a simple song about being back home on the range, and King Harvest (Has Surely Come). For me, this is the songwriting pinnacle of the album, mining the same territory as Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads, portraying the hopes of farm workers being crushed by the ineffective union man. This is such an essential album; Robertson's songs, Hudson's organ & wah-wah clavinet playing, Helm's singing & songwriting, Manuel's jazz-style drumming fills and Danko's old-time bass and fiddle playing. A magical Americana mix.
Artist: The Band
Born: Toronto, Canada
Released: September 1969
Genre: Americana
Influenced: CSNY, Black Crowes, Wilco, The Shins, My Morning Jacket
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Though Music From Big Pink is no doubt a more influential album, I've always preferred The Band's self-titled follow-up. Anybody who's listened to The Basement Tapes, or even better one of the bootlegs, knows that Music From Big Pink is a slim and unsatisfying representation of those legendary sessions with Dylan. On this album, The Band moved almost fully out of Dylan's shadow and created their own influential brand of roots music. The seeds of this were sown on Music From Big Pink, with songs like Chest Fever (that marvellous organ sound) and The Weight (Levon Helm's singing and the group harmonies), but this is where it hit fruition. From years of touring, they were already an incredibly tight operation, and on this album their musical vision reached new heights, notably on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Helm's vocals on this are one of the high points of Sixties music, in fact any era, and you can see the intensity of his singing on the clip from Scorsese's brilliant Last Waltz documentary, filmed during their farewell tour of 1976.
Influenced: CSNY, Black Crowes, Wilco, The Shins, My Morning Jacket
Though Music From Big Pink is no doubt a more influential album, I've always preferred The Band's self-titled follow-up. Anybody who's listened to The Basement Tapes, or even better one of the bootlegs, knows that Music From Big Pink is a slim and unsatisfying representation of those legendary sessions with Dylan. On this album, The Band moved almost fully out of Dylan's shadow and created their own influential brand of roots music. The seeds of this were sown on Music From Big Pink, with songs like Chest Fever (that marvellous organ sound) and The Weight (Levon Helm's singing and the group harmonies), but this is where it hit fruition. From years of touring, they were already an incredibly tight operation, and on this album their musical vision reached new heights, notably on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Helm's vocals on this are one of the high points of Sixties music, in fact any era, and you can see the intensity of his singing on the clip from Scorsese's brilliant Last Waltz documentary, filmed during their farewell tour of 1976.
Helm was born in Arkansas, so his approach to the South was more ambiguous than his Canadian bandmates, and you can hear the raw emotion in his voice. This is where the Band really explored new territory in pop music, a song about a Confederate soldier who spends the remainder of his life on a farm mourning the fall of Old Dixie. There are more light-hearted moments on the album too, notably Rag Mama Rag, where the band all play in a loose and improvised style driven along by Garth Hudson's ragtime piano. Up On Cripple Creek is another highlight of side 1, mixing bluegrass with some pre-funk wah-wah pedal to create an entirely unique sound. My two favourites on side 2 are Rockin' Chair, just a simple song about being back home on the range, and King Harvest (Has Surely Come). For me, this is the songwriting pinnacle of the album, mining the same territory as Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads, portraying the hopes of farm workers being crushed by the ineffective union man. This is such an essential album; Robertson's songs, Hudson's organ & wah-wah clavinet playing, Helm's singing & songwriting, Manuel's jazz-style drumming fills and Danko's old-time bass and fiddle playing. A magical Americana mix.
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