Posted on 04/04/2018 7:33:54 PM PDT by donaldo
Revisiting 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' by the Band. Any opinions? I think James Gleason nailed it in his Rolling Stone Review:
Nothing I have read … has brought home the overwhelming human sense of history that this song does. The only thing I can relate it to at all is The Red Badge of Courage. It's a remarkable song, the rhythmic structure, the voice of Levon and the bass line with the drum accents and then the heavy close harmony of Levon, Richard and Rick in the theme, make it seem impossible that this isn't some traditional material handed down from father to son straight from that winter of 1865 to today. It has that ring of truth and the whole aura of authenticity.
Her’s was the only one I heard on the radio. I always thought it was a “Joan Baez song.”
I saw one of those neckties at the Gone with the Wind museum in Jonesboro, Georgia. If more people studied that terrible war, we Americans would be in a different place today.
For another historically informed song that is somewhat similar in conveying the reality of war (and totalitarianism), listen closely to Al Stewart’s Roads to Moscow.
Great story. Thanks for sharing. For some reason, I love stories of the old radio business.
I grew up in the Detroit suburbs just after the heyday of CKLW radio. It was an absolute powerhouse. Based in Windsor, Ontario. At one point it was the highest rated station in 5 or 6 states plus 1 or 2 provinces.
It was a white station that played white and black music, in many ways bringing the races together.
Of course, being the same time as Motown Heyday didn’t hurt.
Side story. I was talking with a friend the other day. He’s black, I’m white. We were talking about growing up and I brought up I Wish by Stevie Wonder. I said I grew up in the suburbs, not the ghetto and outside of not being a “nappy headed boy” I could relate with almost everything in that song. I thought my friend was going to die he was laughing so hard.
Interesting note - RC Cola, haven’t seen that in years.
you are correct “The Robert E. Lee” steamship.
River boat ?
“Chest Fever” was a real killer for me the first time I heard it on KPRI-FM in San Diego in 1968.
Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz is epic ... the best concert movie ever.
Well, the song is just tremendous, almost regardless of the vocalist-—this from a northland Scandanavian boy who can’t carry a tune alone in the car with the stereo cranked.
I know Levon Helm has the bonafides, and legions of fans of the song to back him up, but the recording...it’s like the equipment is second-rate. Levon sounds to me like they put a sack over his head.
Joan Baez was and is a not-so-poor little leftist (bet she wouldn’t touch the tune these days with a 20-pounder Parrott rifle) but her glorious voice so carries the profoundly womanly pain in the song—the unbent, steely southern wife or mother kept from the battle (lucky for the Northern aggressors) but cursed with first-hand grief and loss...it underscores for me everything that a northerner can’t and never quite will understand about the South, to this day.
Robert E. Lee supposedly said that “without music, there would have been no army.” Not to be flip, or ‘appropriative,’ as they say these days, but I’ve always thought that if General Lee had ridden into battle with the Allman Brothers playing “Jessica” as his fight song, we’d all be speaking Confederate today.
Add Joan Baez’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and we’d all be singing Confederate too. Which would beat the hell out of what we got.
From Songfacts.com .. Richmond fell in early April ... but by May 10 it had fallen. May 10th is the day that Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia and the Confererate government ceased to exist ... so the verse is not false.
As for the lyric "back with my wife in Tennessee" ...
In 1870, the "Robert E. Lee" raced the "Natchez" (another steamboat) from New Orleans to St. Louis. (The "Robert E. Lee" won the contest.) This race would have taken the Robert E. Lee along the Mississippi on the western border of Tennessee, where Virgil's wife might have seen the steamboat. Virgil tells the story of his involvement in the Civil War in the first two references, and then quips "back with my wife in Tennessee", obviously following the events described earlier in the song. The logical conclusion is that Virgil's wife saw the "Robert E. Lee" sometime between April 1865 and 1870
Historical fiction? Maybe not
I worked with a black guy in Helena back in the 70s and one day we were talking about growing up. I told him we had a wood stove and an out house and would sometimes go to be hungry, etc. He said “Hell, you’re a n****r, too!”
One of my all-time faves. Love how they got the history right with General Stoneman’s raiding cavalry. They could have been closer to the actual date Richmond fell - April 3.
That was so beautifully stated that I’m going to finally forgive you for not liking Levon’s version the best.
The song reminds that the North is guilty of genocide against my people, lest I ever forget.
At that time in our country, the confederacy was looked upon kindly by the left because it represented "resistance" to the Federal Government. The Federal Government was sending boys to Vietnam, therefore the Federal Government was unpopular.
It’s absolutely a great song!
My feelings on it exactly mirror yours.
I think in the song they’re talking about a steamboat.
That was always my impression ...
But then again, there’s that third bathroom on the right.
I went to a college in NYC. I saw a lot of demonstrations. I saw vietcong flags, north viet flags, upside down American Flags. I never saw a Confederate Battle Flag. The Confederacy was personified by George Wallace. Not really a hero of the Left.
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