I was very sad to hear yesterday that Levon Helm doesn’t have much time left. His singing and drumming on The Band’s albums is incredible: I’ve read that all of the main parts on The Last Waltz film were overdubbed except his even though he was drumming and singing throughout a very long show. He was diagnosed with throat cancer in the late 1990s and decided to go through a tough round of radiation treatment instead of a laryngectomy. He was unable to sing for years, but recovered enough to record a couple of great albums late in his life. He won Grammys for Dirt Farmer and Electric Dirt and sings very well on both, and won a third Grammy earlier this year for a live album. I always wanted to make it to one of the rambles he held at his home upstate, but I guess I won’t get the chance.
Levon was the one American member of The Band, which always feels so weird when you listen to their music. He was the primary singer on a lot of their best stuff, including The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, King Harvest (Has Surely Come), Rag Mama Rag, Up on Cripple Creek, Ophelia, and their covers of Baby Don’t Do It and When I Paint My Masterpiece. I’m a fairly recent convert to The Band, but I thought he had one of those voices you just believe, whatever he’s singing. I’ll miss him.
I’ll miss him, too. The Last Waltz is something I really enjoy playing for close friends (“this should be played loud!”) on a good home theater system as often as I can.
Just off the top of your head, which Band songs were written (or co-written) by Levon Helm?
Robbie Robertson was credited with almost all of their songwriting credits, and later on that was something Levon was very unhappy about. He felt his stories and his experiences helped inspire more of their songs (Dixie being the obvious one). I was looking at the songwriting credits earlier, and I think he was only credited with these three from the Robertson years: Jemima Surrender, Strawberry Wine, and Life Is A Carnival.
Jemima Surrender isn’t one of the major cuts from The Band album but it does rock, and there’s one line in there that I always thought was great: “If I was a barker at a girlie show … I’d lock the door, tear my shirt, and let my river flow.” As if the singer is so overwhelmed by lust he’s rendered inarticulate. In Strawberry Wine he’s portraying a crazy alcoholic, and, uh, it’s convincing. Life Is A Carnival is the best of those couple of songs, though. It’s a group vocal but it’s a song that means a lot to me. We used it during our memorial event for my brother.
Come to think of it Levon helped write two other songs in the post-Robbie years. Caves of Jericho is maybe the one song from that period that would have fit on an early Band album. It’s a very well-written and moving story about a mining disaster. And he was involved with Move to Japan, which I think is very funny (“Sayonara Uncle Sam/And hello Samurai”).
My husband and I always wanted to make it to one of his Midnight Rambles too. Too bad we won’t get the chance now.
So strange that Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson will be the only surviving members of The Band.
Robbie mentioned on his website that he saw Levon at the hospital over the weekend. I know there was a lot of friction between them over songwriting credits, so I’m glad he was able to pay his last respects.
He was also Jack Ridley, and the narrator, in The Right Stuff. That’s my favorite movie, and I didn’t even know he was a musician until years after I first saw it.
Very sorry to hear this. The Band was my most favorite musical group when I was in college. I heard them live a couple of times, at Woodstock in 1969, and around 1970 in NYC.
I saw them live several times, but I’m not old enough to have seen the Robbie Robertson era line up. Saw them a couple of times before Richie Manuel’s death during their 80s come back. I was also at the Roger Waters Wall Concert at the Berlin Wall in 1990. The remaining members of The Band played with Ronnie Hawkins as a warm up and they were also in the concert.
I was an extra on The Right Stuff, and I met Levon Helm on the set and at the wrap party. He was wearing a flight jacket with his own name on it. Seemed a nice guy. And I worked in Ridley Mission Control Center, so I always liked that character.
