# Joan Baez Sings 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 8, 2018, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263 "2018-08-08T07:57:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/21 "2018-08-08T17:44:53Z")
Also, it’s “Like my father before me, I will work the land”, not “… I"m a working man”, but that one doesn’t really make a difference. “There goes the Robert E. Lee” wouldn’t have happened in that part of Virginia, either. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/22 "2018-08-08T18:12:13Z")
The song evokes a melancholy sense of loss from a perspective of the average man, who had little to do with the politics of slavery. A sentimental acknowledgement of defeat. And family loss, and the way of life that wasn’t coming back. Most of those young people who died were just fighting for their local towns and family. The whole Civil War was a butcher bath of young men for politics they did not really support or understand. This part of history is being lost in the recent revisionist black/white good/bad rewrite. But that is for a different thread. Like my father before me, I’m a Jedi man. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/23 "2018-08-08T19:35:23Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > Liberals, when people like Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Al Franken and John Conyers are busy assaulting women > > ``` > Al Capp, who was smart enough not to get fooled by the KKK changing the initials to SDS, parodied Baez as Joanie Phony. She sued him; good liberals can't allow criticism. > > ``` It’s probably not a good idea to attack liberal sexual harassers like Harvey Weinstein and then follow it with a positive reference to[Al Capp who had some “busy hands” himself.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capp#Allegations_of_sexual_assault) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/24 "2018-08-08T20:31:39Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Also, it’s “Like my father before me, I will work the land”, not “… I"m a working man”, but that one doesn’t really make a difference. “There goes the Robert E. Lee” wouldn’t have happened in that part of Virginia, either. He was “back with [his] wife in Tennessee” by then. The steamboat _Robert E. Lee_ sailed on the Mississippi River, which is the western boundary of Tennessee: [Robert E. Lee (steamboat) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee_(steamboat)) I like both Baez’s and The Band’s versions of the song, although I noticed that Baez sang “so much cavalry” while The Band sang “Stoneman’s cavalry,” which is both historically accurate and scans a little better: [George Stoneman - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stoneman#Legacy_and_honors) ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/25 "2018-08-08T21:33:57Z")
> [@](#): > > … But I can’t understand why Joan Baez does a version of it. It seems to praise and even glorify the South in the American Civil War. … She usually does songs of social protest. … her social justice credentials seem impeccable. So why does she do _ **this** _ song? I don’t mean this to apply to the quoted poster, but _ **The assumption that a singer of humanity and justice cannot sing an empathetic tribute to a Dixie working family is the sort of simplistic “political correctness” that sometimes makes post-rational progressive thought a caricature of itself** _ (and may sometimes even drive potential Blue voters into the hands of the Red liars). ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/26 "2018-08-08T21:52:16Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > ``` > Al Capp, who was smart enough not to get fooled by the KKK changing the initials to SDS, parodied Baez as Joanie Phony. She sued him; good liberals can't allow criticism > > ``` > > You want a truly hysterical song about Joan Baez, look up a “National Lampoon Radio Dinner” parody called “Pull los Triggeros, Negroeses”. She is truly righting the world with tedious songs, supporting them just across the bay I stopped liking Al Capp when I saw him at the bed-in with j and y feigning offense… But there was more to his resume: From Wiki: Allegations of sexual assault In her autobiography, American actress Goldie Hawn stated that Capp sexually propositioned her on a casting couch and exposed himself to her when she was nineteen years old. When she refused his advances, Capp became angry and told her that she was “never gonna make anything in your life” and that she should “go and marry a Jewish dentist. You’ll never get anywhere in this business.”[32][33] In 1971, investigative journalist Jack Anderson wrote that Capp had exposed his genitals to four female students at the University of Alabama. Then after an incident at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Capp was arrested and tried for indecent exposure and sodomy. He was fined $500, and his career and reputation were ruined. Two biographies, one about Goldie Hawn and the other about Grace Kelly, describe Capp as trying to force Hawn and Kelly into sex.[34] ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/27 "2018-08-08T21:57:45Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > First, I’ve got to tell you all about this wonderful site. FYE. They let you mix and burn your own CD’s. Or you can download them as MP3’s (I’ve never done the latter, I should tell you all). > > Anyways, they have quite an eclectic selection. Not just top 40. But religious, oldies, the whole bunch. (I esp. like religious and inspirational tunes. I am not too religious per se. But I like what I like.) > > Anyways, I recently got _The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down_ sung by Joan Baez. I already had it by another band, that did a cover version of it. And what can I say? I like the song. It is a very catchy tune. > > But I can’t understand why Joan Baez does a version of it. It seems to praise and even glorify the South in the American Civil War. As I said, I just like the tune. [Here](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/band/thenighttheydroveolddixiedown.html) are the lyrics, if you want to decide for yourself. > > As I said, why Joan Baez? She usually does songs of social protest. And I remember her mentioned in the 1988 presidential election. SNL portrayed her as a Dukakis Democrat. I am sure it was a joke and probably an exaggeration. But either way, her social justice credentials seem impeccable. So why does she do _ **this** _ song? > > Thank you in advance for your kindly replies:). > > :):)🙂 My feeling is that Joan was looking for a good tune, that might be commercial to do. And the Band were a hot songwriting propostiion right then, in her musical wheelhouse, and they were friends of friends. She had to fill up 12 slots in an LP and was looking for the logical candidates, of which this was a very good one. It’s the same modus she used for all of her earlier LPs, where she did Bob, the beatles, Phil Ochs, etc etc. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/28 "2018-08-08T22:57:06Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > Caine. Virgil Caine. > > I wish Joan would have looked up the lyrics that The Band wrote before singing her version too. It’s “Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again” Not “Til so much cavalry came.” > > Of course that was pre-internet, but still, she could have made a phone call. Or opened a history book. I believe you, but metro lyrics had it spelled Kane. In my defense. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2018, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/29 "2018-08-08T23:09:57Z")
**[Moderating]** **Jim’s Son** , you have been warned about your inappropriate politicking many, many times, and apparently you didn’t learn anything either from those warnings, or from your recent suspension. This is another Warning, and your posting privileges are under discussion. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/30 "2018-08-09T00:02:00Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > He was “back with [his] wife in Tennessee” by then. The steamboat _Robert E. Lee_ sailed on the Mississippi River, which is the western boundary of Tennessee: [Robert E. Lee (steamboat) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee_(steamboat)) And wasn’t built until 1866. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/31 "2018-08-09T00:20:43Z")
> [@mixdenny](#): > > Within the past few years that we see increased public outcry against Confederate monuments and demands that they be removed. Schools and anything else named after Confederate leaders are being renamed. Confederate flags are banned from being displayed at various places. > > Dennis So pretty much what I said, Dennis? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/32 "2018-08-09T01:08:54Z")
During the Civil War, a lot of the less well-off whites in the South hated the well-off whites much more than the black slaves. The less well-off whites had to work their own small farms, since they couldn’t afford slaves. The well-off whites owned plantations and had slaves to work the land. The less well-off whites despised the well-off whites for getting them into a war that only benefited the well-off whites. See the movie _Free State of Jones_ for some insight on this. ---
**Author:** ![Mithras](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mithras](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mithras)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/33 "2018-08-09T02:08:34Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > During the Civil War, a lot of the less well-off whites in the South hated the well-off whites much more than the black slaves. The less well-off whites had to work their own small farms, since they couldn’t afford slaves. The well-off whites owned plantations and had slaves to work the land. The less well-off whites despised the well-off whites for getting them into a war that only benefited the well-off whites. See the movie _Free State of Jones_ for some insight on this. If every poor, white southerner behaved like the character in that movie, there wouldn’t have been a Civil War. I imagine a southern farmer who doesn’t own slaves. I imagine asking him these questions: Is slavery immoral? What would happen to your state’s economy and your livelihood if slavery were abolished? What would happen if all of the former slaves were now free and were your neighbors? I don’t imagine his answers would do much to support the idea that the typical soldier wasn’t fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. Pretending that non-slave owners didn’t know they benefited from slavery or weren’t afraid of what would happen after abolition is one way that it’s made acceptable to glorify them. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/34 "2018-08-09T02:37:49Z")
Maybe they were on the wrong side of history but a lot of these were very young men and sometimes not even adults. The Confederate Conscription Act was passed in 1862 and so many were effectively drafted and punishment could be execution it’s not really fair to judge those young men by today’s morality it was a much different time period. It’s not like the North was some bastion of civil rights either they had the famous riots in New York, where would-be draftees tortured, lynched and killed a lot of black people. The deaths on both sides of the war were a tragedy, at least in my opinion. That being said music is art and its always interesting to examine the other point of view like say examining WWII from the perspective of a German soldier, they were fighting on the wrong side but you can still feel sympathy and commiserate with a lot of the individual people and their suffering, it was a bad time for everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/35 "2018-08-09T03:22:38Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > To me, not the Yankees so much as the war, and forces beyond his control. Like the bulk of rebel soldiers, he thought he was defending his home against invaders. At the time of the song, he was facing the fact that he’d have to rebuild his home and family and life from ruins, and preparing himself for the job. It’s a song about a dedicated working man doing what he had to do in spite of the hostile forces oppressing him - and that theme is in a folksinger’s wheelhouse. Just so. Even as a child, I understood it as a song about Reconstruction, rather than the war itself. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > During the Civil War, a lot of the less well-off whites in the South hated the well-off whites much more than the black slaves. The less well-off whites had to work their own small farms, since they couldn’t afford slaves. The well-off whites owned plantations and had slaves to work the land. The less well-off whites despised the well-off whites for getting them into a war that only benefited the well-off whites. See the movie _Free State of Jones_ for some insight on this. Or better yet, read W.J. Cash’s _The Mind Of The South_, where he notes that as much as they hated the planter aristocracy, who looked down on them, the poor whites hated the blacks even more; since the only thing that separated them from the absolute bottom of the ladder was their skin color, they were fanatical about making sure the blacks were below them. Bob Ewell in _To Kill A Mockingbird_ is a perfect example of this; he’s well aware that the upper and middle class of Maycomb thinks he’s “trash” (and have more sympathy for Tom Robinson and his family, especially after Atticus Finch shows that Ewell, rather than Robinson, beat and maybe raped, his daughter). While all the white residents of Maycomb are racist to a degree, Bob is the most vicious and virulent. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/36 "2018-08-09T03:23:25Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Also, it’s “Like my father before me, I will work the land”, not “… I"m a working man”, but that one doesn’t really make a difference. “There goes the Robert E. Lee” wouldn’t have happened in that part of Virginia, either. > [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > He was “back with [his] wife in Tennessee” by then. The steamboat _Robert E. Lee_ sailed on the Mississippi River, which is the western boundary of Tennessee: [Robert E. Lee (steamboat) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee_(steamboat)) And General Robert E. Lee never was in Tennessee during the war. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/37 "2018-08-09T03:39:51Z")
Joan sang southern folk songs for her whole early career, some of them dating back hundreds of years. It was a little less sensitive time, in 1971. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/38 "2018-08-09T03:59:24Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > But I can’t understand why Joan Baez does a version of it. It seems to praise and even glorify the South in the American Civil War.) I would have said there was neither praise nor glory in TNTDODD. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/39 "2018-08-09T09:56:41Z")
The only part of the song that bothered me was “by May tenth, Richmond had fell”. Lincoln visited the fallen Richmond days before he was shot in April. Where the hell did May 10 come from? I assume it’s just a matter of syllables. There is no comparison between The Band and Levon Helm’s soulful singing of this song and Joan Baez’s soulless valium-drip version. Why she sung it, I don’t know. Why anyone would ever listen to it when the infinitely better rendition is available is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2018, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263/40 "2018-08-09T12:22:57Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > To me, not the Yankees so much as the war, and forces beyond his control. Like the bulk of rebel soldiers, he thought he was defending his home against invaders. At the time of the song, he was facing the fact that he’d have to rebuild his home and family and life from ruins, and preparing himself for the job. It’s a song about a dedicated working man doing what he had to do in spite of the hostile forces oppressing him - and that theme is in a folksinger’s wheelhouse. I’d agree with this - if it weren’t for the song’s title and chorus. To me, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” doesn’t sound like a lament for the working man, or even for the land; it sounds instead like he’s bemoaning the fall of the Confederacy at the hands of the Yankees. Now, maybe by"Old Dixie" he’s referring to the land and its people, and not to the political entity. I don’t know. Is Dixie the South, or is it the Confederacy? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joan-baez-sings-the-night-they-drove-old-dixie-down/819263.md?page=3)