She’s always been a Hate America type
Joan gets the words wrong. The band’s original version is better.
CC
It is a song to be sung by a man. I never understood why she did it.
I drove down to Win Dixie last night, but they were out of sauerkraut.
Baez’s vibrato has me grinding my teeth together after about 10 seconds of it. Not a fan.
Whatever. Old hippy pinko bitch
All politics aside, if you can manage it; the simple truth is Joan OWNS this song. Her version, sung with her voice of that time is the best I’ve ever heard.
This has zero to do with her stated beliefs about government.
Another example of someone covering a song not their own and wearing it like a fine mink stole, would be
Whitney Houston singing “I Will Always Love You”, written by Dolly Parton. Dolly has a lovely singing voice as Porter Wagoner could have told you, but Whitney re-imagined and rearranged the structure, the emphasis of this song and made it all hers.
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She didn’t write it
Robbie Robertson did
In homage to Levon Helms daddy in Marvel Arkansas a village around 20 miles west of Helena.....home to Irish born Confederate legend Patrick Cleburne....who coincidentally died 1000 yards or so 330 degrees from where I’m lying in bed with rib and chihuahua typing this post on my ipad air
One flaw in the beautiful song is that Marse Robert never rode thru Tennessee with Army of Northern Virginia et al
It’s a toss up who did it best.....but I love Levon Helms voice....Joan Baez who was cute as a young woman was too folkie for me....Judy Collins with beads and patchouli ....I prefer Joni Mitchell or Carole King for that genre
In high school our main rival was the Rebels. Our band would play this song and we would all sing when we played them in football.
Good Times.
The rendition by the Band is far better.
She’s an alltime Ick!
To get back to Shark’s question in the OP, I’ll start by saying if you’re not familiar with Marcus King, you should be. He’s a young kid from Greenville SC doing some of the best new blues rock out there. And he just turned 25! He’s a baby!
https://marcuskingband.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6dwaC5J_YiXXsRCZhqK3yw
So here’s a story and some commentary on woke culture and this song.
Fairly early during Covid, he did a series of four streaming concerts, one of which was a cover of The Last Waltz from start to finish (!!). The guy gets that The Band in general, and that album/event in particular, were An Important Thing. And in general his tribute to The Band was very nicely done.
Here, I see it’s now up on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3aTpvmXhzw
But here comes the wokeness screws up everything part. When it came time for The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, there was an intro by his friend “Early” James Mullis with some woke statements of “we need to change some of the lyrics because we’re young and thus woke” (heavily paraphrased). The lyrics change didn’t do much for me.
Here is the above concert advanced to this song.
https://youtu.be/Z3aTpvmXhzw?t=4091
The key issue seems to be that someone might see this as a glorification of the Southern cause, and thus because woke we must adjust the song, which I see as completely absurd. This song is a lament of a thoroughly beaten person/cause, and it certainly doesn’t glorify slavery. Virgil Cain is a poor Southern white who never owned a slave, barely made it through the war with his life, his brother dead, and came through it with nothing. And Virgil is lamenting what life has thrown at him and telling the story. It’s not like he was ever in control of events. There is no need to change the lyrics.
I don’t hold this against Marcus and James Mullis. I do hold it against the idiot teachers who didn’t give them enough background in history such that they didn’t understand my summary of the song above. And to the whole woke cancel culture phenomenon, which they’re clearly working to avoid falling afoul of. And I sort of can’t blame them for that.
Again, wokeness screws up everything.
If I remember correctly, she tried to get other leftists to condemn the Vietnam communists for their atrocities after taking over South Vietnam, but the most of the leftists did not go along with her.
I’m surprised YouTube hasn’t yanked it off their platform.
The song was written by a Canadian, stealing our culture.
Before my time, but I was spoonfed a great deal of boomer music.
There are two songs with catchy tunes and decent lyrics, that no one could ruin, and she offered both: Don’t Think Twice, and The Night They Drove Dixie Down.
And she really tried to botch both of them!
***The song was first recorded in 1969***
I believe Buck Owens and the Buckaroos recorded it before that as I remember hearing it in those years.
Sorry nobody did it like the Band.