"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".

@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?