"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".

The Band, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and Buddy Guy did a tour of Canada together in 1970, traveling from city-to-city on a train car they took over. Rick Danko and Janis had a ball together, singing old Hillbilly and Blues songs. The tour was filmed, and is available on a DVD entitled Festival Express.

bdp24 

08-13-2023 at 11:35pm 

I respect the Hell out of Joan Baez. But she became the object of derision amongst myself and my peers when she sang "till so much calvary came" instead of the correct "till Stoneman’s calvary came" in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Come on Joan, if we could hear it surely you should be able to!

And surely those living in glass houses should be wary of throwing stones 😀

I assumed @roxy54, our resident grammarian, would have seen to this, but since he hasn’t, I feel obliged to point out that “Calvary” (the place where Jesus was crucified) and “cavalry” (military troops on horseback) are very different words.

And don’t you think you should really cut Joan a little slack:  I mean who among us has never been the victim of a mondegreen (a misinterpretation of a word or phrase heard, especially in the lyrics of a song)?  So ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy, since I hear there’s a bathroom on the right!

With apologies to Jimi and Credence, respectively.

@moonwatcher + 1 - I've seen Jerry Garcia Band many times in the late 80's and early-mid 90's, and their version of 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' has always been one of my favorites of their's. 

@asvjerry ,

My favorite RR song!

Whole album is good.

@rel: Touche!

In my defense, my only excuse is that I never before typed either Calvary or cavalry. Looking at the word calvary now, it doesn’t look even close to how cavalry sounds. Now that I think about it, I've been aware of Calgary (the city in Canada), but being the heathen I am I don't think I was aware of the word Calvary. Sunday School was a LONG time ago!

On the other hand, in The Band’s recording of "TNTDODD", the word Stoneman’s is clearly audible. At least to everyone but Joan. Maybe she heard the LP on a crappy turntable 😉. I love her anyway.

@rel 

Hilarious post! Thanks for pointing out what I missed. Yes, we all make mistakes...t

Regarding Robbie’s behavior, I suppose musical genius and being a jerk are a not necessarily mutually exclusive. RIP to a gifted song writer.

More corrections:

I described New Buffalo as a "quarter", when they were actually a quartet.

And I said Dave Edmunds had two "precious" albums prior to making his Swan Song Records debut Get It. They were actually previous albums.

Emily Litella lives!

@roxy54 ,

You're slackin' Rox! 😃

@bdp24

Explanation:

I read an interview with Hiatt in which he stated that his intention was to record Slow Turning with the Bring the Family group; that in fact they went into the studio and began running down the songs but that the band was not clicking with the material, which is why other players ended up on the record.

Sonny Landreth is a killer player but I'm not drawn to his songwriting. 

I found Slow Turning disappointing but unlike you, I eventually gave up on Hiatt because I've yet to hear an album that's not inconsistent. I liked Walk On and Crossing Muddy River for awhile but they're no longer in my collection. I saw him live on a solo acoustic tour and it was great, BTW.

@stuartk: Ah, okay. I hadn't seen that interview. Interesting.

Another disappointment from the group was their sole Little Village album. I just a coupla days ago read a quote from Nick Lowe about it: 

"Little Village was really good fun. Unfortunately, the record we did was no good. I suppose on some level it worked, but Warner Brothers kind of gave us too much time to do it."

So he puts the blame on Warner Brothers?! I have always assigned the blame to the group's decision to establish the ground rule of forbidding the recording of any member's already-written song, insisting that they record only songs written "on the spot" for the album. Not a good way to make an album, or even write a song.

That same rule was established for the making of The New Basement Tapes album and film, but that turned out much better than did the Little Village album.

@bdp24 

Another disappointment from the group was their sole Little Village album.

Yeah-- the fist and only time I listened to that, I thought "WTF is this?" 

I'm not familiar with "The New Basement Tapes" but then again, I was never a fan of the old ones, despite repeated attempts. 

@bdp24 

Thanks, once again, for the deep dive into music and those who make it possible to enjoy great performances in our homes.  As much as I enjoy technical conversations about Litz inductors (and, flux capacitors), these conversations are refreshing and time well spent.

On a personal note, I spent a few days in Gettysburg last month along with around 600 other delegates (an equal number of "reds" and "blues") to try to find ways to hold this country together.  Gettysburg was certainly symbolic of a time when American's weren't getting along very well with each other. I was driving about a week ago, listening to Tidal when Joan's cover of the song came on. I've heard this song dozens of times over the decades, but this time it really hit home to me, and created an emotional response.  

And, yes,  Festival Express is a fun video to watch.

Thanks again for the post.

When in the early-to-mid 1970’s mainstream Rock music became unpalatable to myself and others like me (I won’t name any of the bands and solo acts I’m speaking of), an underground movement took place in which we began following the breadcrumbs left over the years, following them back to the music that little-by-little led to the Rock ’n’ Roll music of the 1960’s upon we which we grew up listening to.

What we discovered were the roots of the music (Hillbilly, Jump Blues, etc.), almost all of which had come from the Southern States, Tennessee and Alabama being two of the major ones. And though that part of the country was still largely segregated, Rock ’n’ Roll had evolved from both the white and black cultures. A major reason early Rock ’n’ Roll shows were becoming prohibited in many cities was because the elders didn’t want the "races" mixing, which they saw happening at R & R shows.

In late-1979 and into 1980 I met and became slightly acquainted with the guys in Dwight Twilley’s band, all of whom had relocated from Tulsa to L.A. They all had that Oklahoma "drawl", and I learned that they had grown up in a very different culture than had we California boys. I had considered Oklahoma a Mid-West state, but I learned otherwise. It is located directly above Texas, and is part of the South.

Twilley’s guitarist Bill Pitcock IV had few interests outside of not just R & R music, but even just the music he, Dwight, and the other band members were themselves making. They didn’t have record collections, hi-fi’s, or even cars, and were almost complete unaware of the music other bands were making. All Bill did all day---sitting around the house Twilley’s record label paid the rent on---was play a huge "Civil War" board game, chain-smoke cigarettes, and guzzle coke from a liter bottle. Though only in his late-20’s, his teeth were already very rotted. He ended up dying of lung cancer at age 58. He had long ago moved back to Tulsa, as had Twilley. In his last years Bill made his only solo album (CD only), which I suggest you at-all-costs avoid hearing. It’s REALLY awful. His guitar playing with Dwight---and The Dwight Twilley Band’s drummer Phil Seymour, who left the band after the Twilley Don’t Mind album for a solo career---on the other hand, is fantastic!

I tell the above in the effort to make the point that growing up in the South---as did The Band’s Levon Helm---instills in one a different view of the history of The United States than does growing up in The North. That view is at the heart of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", and that a Canadian could tell that story so well is a testament to the talents of Robbie Robertson. Rest In Peace, you rascal you 😊 .

In my opinion, if music lacks the Southern element, it ain’t Rock ’n’ Roll.

Learned a new word. Mondegreen. I have a ton of trouble hearing lyrics correctly.

One ton of tomatoes is how I hear an earworm Hispanic song.

Ten feet long is another from a Marshall Tucker song.

So forgive and there go I.

Also the Perfect is the enemy of the good. Best is just boring. 

@bdp24 how do you think the song would be different if a Southern black person had written it?  Let's face it, most Americans don't sing songs lamenting how bad it must have been to be a German in 1945 when the Russians crossed the Oder River.  And it was really bad.

@onhwy61: Oh, it would have been completely different, of course. But then that would be a different song. Am I supposed to defend the Southern white view of the Civil War?! I didn’t write the damn song, I’m just describing it’s creation.

I grew up listening to my dad---born and raised on a farm in South Dakota---use very ethnic slur known to man when referring to African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, The Polish, Jews, Catholics, and every other non-WASP group of people in the world. When John F. Kennedy would appear on our TV screen I would hear him mutter "N*gg*r lover", to which my mom would make her objection very well known.

I had a friend who had moved from San Jose to Santa Cruz in 1965, a real good drummer. In the spring of 1969 he was playing in a Jazz trio, and one afternoon he and the band’s pianist---a black man---made the trip over the Santa Cruz Mountains to pay me a visit. My band happened to be rehearsing in the garage of my father’s house, and the two of them watched and listened as we went through our set.

My father arrived home from work, coming into the house through the garage. When he got to the door into the house he called my name, motioning for me to follow him inside. When we were both inside he ordered me to "Get that n*gg*r out of my garage." Mouth agape, I asked "Are you kidding?!" He assured me he wasn’t. I had the unpleasant task of informing my friend of my dad’s commandment.

After everyone had left, the father went into the garage to make sure, he told me, that "the n*gg*r had not stolen any of my tools." What he didn’t know was that the black man he viewed with such contempt was a professor at The University Of California at Santa Cruz, and was far more intelligent and educated that was he.

In 1975 I was working in a 7-pc. all-white Jump Blues/Swing band, playing up and down the Northern California coast from San Francisco to Monterey. We had a great male singer, whom in that era of long hair, beards, and bell bottom jeans had a pompadour and wore a sharkskin suit on stage. The band decided they wanted to add a female singer, and found a great one in Palo Alto, a "full-figured" black woman.

I had played many gigs in the frat houses on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto, which is on the West side of El Camino Real, the old long street that stretches all the way from Southern California to San Francisco. All the frat boys were white, and mostly came from families with money. Directly across El Camino Real from Stanford is East Palo Alto, a low-income neighborhood in which I had never been. That’s where out new female singer lived. Seeing Palo Alto from that side of ECR, and the stark contrast between the West and East sides of Palo Alto, gave me a new appreciation of the fact that segregation was not just a Southern phenomenon. No, not by legal decree, but by economics.

Has everyone seen the film Mississippi Burning?

@bdp24 yes, clearly the song would be different.  I actually like the song, but then again, I like the movie "Gone With the Wind".  However, both present the South and the Civil War in a problematic light.  All I am arguing is that you should take the song within the context of a decades long movement within the United States to paint the South and the Confederacy in a favorable light and as such downplay the evil at its core.  It's hard for me to comprehend but it's 2023 and a major political party leader wants to teach children that slavery was beneficial to the enslaved.

And in no way am I accusing you of anything but being the world's biggest The Band fan.

Sometimes a song is just a song. Is it really necessary to micro-analyze and dissect every song, movie, book and sitcom to the point where it's branded as evil and no longer here to be enjoyed?

I think that we can learn from history without erasing it. That doesn't seem to be what's happening these days.

It's hard for me to comprehend but it's 2023 and a major political party leader wants to teach children that slavery was beneficial to the enslaved.

+1

Often times the distortion of history is worse than the erasure of history.

@onhwy61 + 1 - Unfortunately, it's no longer hard for me to comprehend....

Excellent points as above. JFK was the original (D) scumbag, make no mistake here. 'Gone with the Wind' stands up. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" stands up as well. America must keep her History.

Happy Listening!

bdp24

Big fan here of The Band and John Hiatt.

Happy Listening!

  ^^^^^^

  Well put Roxy54....

Lots of people like the music of Mozart, yet Glenn Gould famously did not. J.S. Bach spoiled him for just about all other composers.😉 For I as well.

Me, too.  I've long told this story about J.S. Bach:

When the Voyager spacecraft was launched in 1977, opinions and ideas were solicited as far as what human artifacts would be most appropriate to leave in outer space as a signal of man's cultural achievements on earth.  Carl Sagan proposed that 'if we are to convey something of what humans are about then music has to be a part of it.' To Sagan's request for suggestions, the eminent biologist Lewis Thomas answered, 'I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.' After a pause, he added, 'But that would be boasting.”

😉

I saw Miles Davis on David Sanborn’s TV show Sunday Night Music on NBC. This was near the end of Miles’s life. The backing band was The Red Hot Chili Peppers! I kid you not! How the mighty have fallen!

How our memories are fallible. I just watched that show on You Tube, Chilli Peppers were "live" and Miles was a recorded clip from a previous show. They did not play together, at least on the episode I watched.

That said, it was really an incredible series with an amazing lineup of guests. I found Jools Holland as host to be incredibly annoying but the music was incredible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Night_(American_TV_program)

this will keep you busy for a few hours

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD92B91B57951467B

Having a Southern heritage myself it always dismays me when entire swaths of  people are vilified, as if they acted in unity to commit "evil".

Viewed through the lens of todays (hopefully) forward thinking, enlightened perspective we can easily analyze past practices that never should have been allowed to happen.

To my way of thinking we should all dust off our copy of Randy Newman's classic album "Good Old Boys" and give a close listen to one of the greatest album lead-off songs: 

"Rednecks"

In the name of everything sacred to man and beast, I think The Little Village album is fantastic! The Weight is among my favorite top 10 songs of all time.  I am also of the opinion that Robbie absolutely smoked Clapton on Further On Up the Road on the The Last Waltz, which is also a personal all time favorite album.  Now, back to your regularly scheduled program….

Well said @rettrussell.

Viewed through the lens of todays (hopefully) forward thinking, enlightened perspective we can easily analyze past practices that never should have been allowed to happen.

Unknowingly found myself on the (right-side of town) during a very first Memphis trip searching for a late night Pizzeria to-go. Found one, walked into the establishment with shall I say, "all eyes on me." Brought on a smile. The Joint was literally packed from top to bottom and here comes strolling in this only Caucasian with ... hey, how’s the Pizza here? The Pizza is very good!

Parents never taught color or race ... equality.

“Lipstick Sunset” vis a vis “Lipstick Traces” as pointed out by the OP are different songs but both have a connection to The Band. “Sunset” thru John Hiatt and “Traces” through Allen Toussaint who wrote the song under pseudonym Naomi Neville. “Traces” was a regional hit around the Gulf South with covers by Bennie Spellman, Ernie K-Doe and later Amazing Rhythm Aces and was frequently played on WWOZ.. Allen Toussaint and Dr John along with several others from NOLA were collaborators with the band. At one time Levon Helm owned a music club in downtown NOLA. 

One movie I still need to see is Birth Of A Nation. One of my longtime faves is To Kill A Mockingbird, which just yesterday I again watched for the first time in years.

One of my sisters recently reminded me of an incident that occurred long ago. After the death of her husband (my Dad’s Father) in early-1969, my paternal Grandmother moved to San Jose to live with us. One afternoon the sister heard the doorbell rang, then ring again. She exited her bedroom and stepped into the hallway that led to the front door. She saw the Grandmother standing at the far end of it, peaking around the corner where the hallway met the entrance foyer.

The sister thought that odd, and headed down the hallway to see what was going on. The grandmother saw her coming, put out her arm to stop her, and said "Don’t answer the door Robyn, there’s a big black n*gg*er outside." My friends found that story hysterical, again and again insisting I tell it.

My High School was attended mostly by white kids; we had a smattering of Hispanics and Asians. and only one black male. He just happened to play guitar, and every musician I knew in 1967 wanted him in his or her band. Blues was the dominant musical style, and Hendrix and Cream were leading the pack. Having a black musician in your band gave you instant credibility!

I assume you're referring to the Griffith 1915 movie.  That's the film where the KKK are the heroes.  It was the biggest grossing film in Hollywood history until "Gone With the Wind".  It's an important movie for cinematic reasons and a touchstone cultural event in American history, however, let's not micro analyze it.

One movie I still need to see is Birth Of A Nation. 

The pro KKK film??

@gavman: Yep, that’s what it is. I hope you didn’t jump to the conclusion that my wanting to see Birth Of A Nation implies I agree with the sentiments it espouses! Does wanting to see a Nazi propaganda film make one a Nazi-sympathizer? Not necessarily.

In the book This Wheel’s On Fire---co-written by Levon Helm and Stephen Davis---Levon tells the story of The Hawks having a couple days off between shows in 1965, and as they were near the town in which they knew Sonny Boy Williamson lived (Helena Arkansas, where Levon was raised), they thought they would see if they could find him. They did, and ended up spending several hours playing music with him.

The fun ended when a couple of law enforcement officers showed up, asking what the Hell was going on. The Hawks were told to pack up and get out of town. That story was also told in abbreviated fashion in The Last Waltz. All The Hawks save Levon were Canadians, and hadn’t witnessed that degree of racism. Seeing Birth Of A Nation will---I’m guessing---provide context for me to understand the racism I witnessed in my own family. As the FBI agent in charge in the movie Mississippi Burning asks: "Where does this hatred come from"?

 "Where does this hatred come from"?

Unfortunately, it's taught.

There is nothing innate about racism.

There are no winners in Wars, only Losers.  The American Civil War was a war where the Civilian Population was targeted to suffer, because doing so hastened the end of the war.  The North still had the moral high ground, as Slavery needed to be ended, but once the likes of Sherman and Sheridan figured out that making War on Civilians would cause desertions from the Southern Armies, and therefore felt that inflicting this pain could be justified as legitimate, a lot of bad things happened.    Most Southerners who fought were to poor to own slaves.  They were persuaded by their leaders and their  society they lived in that it was noble for them to give up their lives so that Southern Aristocrats could enjoy the fruits of their sacrifices.  I always viewed the narrator of this song as one of those duped white teenagers who  gets to live the horrors of war and is witnessing of the demise of his world, and is caught in forces not of his own making

Birth of a Nation is an important watch if you value cinematic history in regard to the development of techniques still used to this day.

The black and white depiction of the Civil War betrays our desire for easy answers. Most northerners did not fight to end slavery. Racism was ingrained d

nationwide due to scientific, cultural, and religious justifications. The implications and inheritance of such  systemic rationalizations unfortunately still exist. I appreciate the song in question as a lament and enjoy the discussion to its meanings.  I wonder if there were any songs rueing the fall of the Roman Empire?

Or the "1000 year Reich"...

@bdp24, I don't think watching "The Birth Of A Nation" will give you much insight about your relatives' beliefs.  It's an adaptation of a book and play titled "The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan".  The film was instrumental in the nationwide resurgence of the KKK during the 1920s.  The Stoneman family play a prominent role in the movie, but I don't know if they are linked to Stoneman's Calvary from the song.

I want to thank you for sharing details about your family.  It's not always easy being the person you want to be.  If you want to understand racism in American history you should start with "The 1619 Project".  The same people who wrote that all men are created equal were enslavers.  Go figure.

@mahler123, I agree with your description of the characters in the song, however, if you get into a war you have to win.  And if that means killing woman, children and the elderly, then that's what you have to do.  Read up on the bombing strategies of the Allies in WW2.  The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are another good example of doing whatever is necessary to get your enemy to surrender.  The moral high ground is to not start a war, but if war is forced upon then destroy the enemy by any means necessary.

I think that there's more value in living the right way in the present moment than dissecting the past and reliving pain that we as individuals weren't directly involved in.

Only if we want to understand the world around us - as it really is

@roxy54 the old cliche is that people that don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

@onhwy61 As a general history buff, and having had many holocaust survivors and victims in my family, I am pretty “read up” on the subject.  I understand that sometimes pain has to be inflicted upon civilians and soldiers in order to shorten conflicts and minimize further suffering down the road.  That doesn’t mean that we can’t have sensitivity to the suffering of all involved 

@mahler123 

That's true, but living in the past you will miss the present. It's useful to go there occasionally, but not to linger.

I believe "...all the people were singin’ ; Na- nanana- nanana-nana-nana-nanana-nana..." to be historically inaccurate. Can any historians confirm this?

For me, not even the great JS Bach can spoil, or even diminish, the greatness of Mozart, Scriabin, Janacek, Shubert and others. Seems to me that it is pointless and counterproductive to compare and judge as “greater”, for instance, Miles vs Armstrong, Coltrane vs Prez, and on and on. Ultimate greatness in art has to be judged against the backdrop of the point in time of its creation. Good art is always a reflection of its time and is an expression of the evolution of that particular art form. Whether we personally like any particular example of that art form or not is an entirely different matter.

@frogman 

Well said...

@thecarpathian 

+1

@thecarpathian - 😄 

That Australian YouTube guy Lachlan often wears a t-shirt that says, "Surely not EVERYBODY was kung-fu fighting."