The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - Question and general discussion thread

Cafe Society
1

I seem to think there was a somewhat recent thread discussing The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but damned if I can find it. Maybe I’m remembering a conversation within another thread.

Anyhow, I happen to like the song quite a lot. It’s been getting a bit of the “Cancel Culture” treatment these days by some who view it as a pro-confederacy anthem, but I’ve always seen it more as a comment on the devastating effect the Civil War had on ordinary, non-slave-owning southerners, who never really had a dog in the fight to begin with.

To my particular question: I was looking at the lyrics on genius.com, the one where you can click on each line and get an explanation of its meaning. I’ve seen this site before, and its analysis can range from helpfully insightful to totally full of crap.

The lyric in question is from the second verse, and it’s listed as:

Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
“Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E.Lee”

Clicking on those lines reveals this:

After the war, the narrator is back at his home with his family. His wife calls him out to see Lee and his Confederate troops headed back home, defeated.

Some versions of the song (such as Joan Baez’s cover and the live version on Rock of Ages ) include a “the”, which suggests the Mississippi steamboat named after the Confederate general. Lee lived five years after the end of the war, all of them in his native Virginia, and never actually visited Tennessee.

I listened very closely to what I believe to be the original studio recording, and it sure sounds to me like he sings “There goes the Robert E. Lee.” I’ve never not heard it that way, in any version.

I suspect the line is indeed not about Virgil’s wife actually seeing Lee and his troops passing by. Has anybody ever heard this and not thought it meant the steamboat?

Feel free to discuss the song in general as well, if you like.

2

The live version by The Band is truly a fantastic song.

3

Robbie Robertson’s still alive. Maybe you could send him an e-mail. I agree, I really like this song and I hope it doesn’t get cancelled.

4

Robert E. Lee never went to Tennessee in the immediate aftermath of the war. He was in Virginia when it ended and went back to his home there.

OTOH, the steamboat Robert E. Lee wasn’t launched until 1866, a year after the war. It was considered from the start to be an impressive ship, so there’s no reason why it would make Virgil sad even if he saw it then.

Wikipedia says that “the” was always supposed to be the lyric, but can’t be heard on the album. Leaving it out messes up the rhythm of the line, so it probably was intended.

What I think is that Robertson just chose an evocative image. Not everything in a song is based on anything that actually happened. You might as well ask if Virgil Caine existed.

5

You may be thinking of a discussion on the “other board” if you are a member.

FWIW, I agree. It never quite drifts into lost causism or an endorsement of the Confederacy tome, at least not The Band version (though the Joan Baez seems to, as Virgil seems to say that he, like his brother, took a rebel stand).

But to The Band version… there’s no exhortation that can be taken as “we fought for the right thing and lost, and that’s sad.” The closest it comes to expressing sympathy for “the cause” is really more like indifference (“take what you need, leave the rest,” I know your damn paper Confederate “money’s no good”, but I don’t want to argue with a bunch of armed men over it seems to be the general attitude), but then there’s the line “they should never have taken the very best,” which I take to be referring to his brother, who died fighting for the Confederacy, and so was wasted. He’s not expressing pride that his brother fought for a good cause, but sadness that he didn’t just stay home and outlive the Confederacy.

6

I just missed the edit window.

I looked at those “genius.com” annotations for the lyrics. I think whoever wrote them (unless of course they are coincidentally a member of this board outside The Pit) was a flipping idiot who has gone out of his or her way to interpret the song as a pro-confederacy anthem. I don’t know what “original lyrics” they’re referring to. Because it’s not like The Band was doing a cover (as Joan Baez was). So when I listen to The Band’s recording of the song, I take that as the definitive studio-released version.

As an example of just how warped he annotations are, the certified “not genius” at genius.com insists that the line “but they should never have taken the very best” is actually “but they should never have taken on the very best.” Uh… cite please?

7

I just sent him a message via Facebook. Not holding my breath, but ya never know!

8

Fingers crossed! :wink:

9

I wouldn’t say it is a pro-confederacy song, but it also is not an anti-confederacy song.

I always took it as the lament of some average Joe who never had slaves and was never anywhere close to the landed gentry of the antebellum south. But he liked the south, so he went off and fought what he thought was a good cause, and ended up on the losing side. And after it all, he went back home with nothing to show for the whole thing but a dead brother.

But I never thought “the very best” was his brother - just commenting on looting by the Union. What do I know? I usually miss these things.

10

The line “There goes ?? Robert E.Lee”

?? Could be: the, da, ah according to who was and when they were singing.

Southern-speak tells me it is ‘ah’ as in:
“There goes ah Robert E. Lee”
The steam ship.
Ah=The.

IMHO

I really really hope Robbie answers you.

11

Since the Danville train is mentioned earlier on, I assumed the Robt E Lee was also a train. There was a boat? Works just as well. They needed wood to fuel a steam engine, plus campfires etc.

Virgil Caine is my name. I know very little about the Bible. (How long did Cain hate his brother? As long as he was Abel.) I looked it up. This struck me.

(Italics mine)

I swear by the blood below my feet…you can’t raise a Cain back up when it’s in defeat.

So as Cain rebelled and killed Abel, we have the Confederates. Virgil can’t be killed—but his brother can. He can’t sustain himself from the scorched earth (“If you till the soil…”). But he’s cursed.

The author(s) chose Tennessee, the Volunteer State. They could have gone either way. Well, no…the Cain/Abel thing wouldn’t work if they had chosen the Union. Here’s a map.

https://www.mountainpress.com/maps/tn/mp-cr026w.html

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I think the biblical reference is made only indirectly, through the intermediate expression “raise Cain,” as in, “You can’t raise a Cain(e) back up when it’s in defeat.” Like, talk all you want about rising again and “raising Cain,” but at the end of the day… the south lost and my brother (a Caine) is still dead. So good luck getting him out to fight again. So it’s not used in a “I somehow metaphorically killed my brother through rebellion” kind of way but in a “You all go on pissing and moaning about how the south shall rise again, but my brother fought for you and he sure as shit ain’t gonna rise again” kind of way.

If all we had to go off were the lyrics, I might agree with you. But the way it’s sung, the emphasis placed on it, it sounds more like a statement of lament or melancholy rather than a vindictive statement. It is, to me, foreshadowing the later verse in which he relates the fate of his brother.

I take the below couple verses:

Taken together, to represent of a guy at work around the family farm, minding his own business, when one day the Confederate Army comes by. Maybe not literally Robert E. Lee, but some uncommon spectacle of a large number of soldiers. As part of this, the quartermaster types go around gathering up supplies, offering the choice of either useless money or a bayonet, and of course old Virgil here is just like “Whatevs, take what you want, leave the rest.” Because he doesn’t really care one way or the other, and certainly isn’t going to die in a futile attempt to keep them from taking what they will. He can accept that. But what he can’t accept is that his brother goes off with them. They didn’t just take the goods, they took “the very best” of the family. And that’s, like, sad, because it turns out later he died against the union. The lost goods and possessions can be replaced, but his brother cannot be “raised” again.

BT

Honestly, but for the final fate of the brother, the song, or at least the main thrust of it, could almost be taken as a summary of the 1965 film, Shenandoah. The film centers around a family patriarch (played by James Stewart) on a family farm in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia during the Civil War, just wanting to keep his family out of it, feeling no particular obligation to support either side. Much of the conflict is over the sons’ varying attitudes to the war and obedience, with at least one wanting to join up with the Confederate Army against the father’s wishes.

13

Maybe it was in Brigadoon.

14

There’s one from December which links to this thread:

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The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down chronicles the defeat of the South. It’s one of my favorites to play & sing.

I find it sad that people object to it. I view it as a strong statement about the consequences of a war. Remember that it came out in 1969 during the anti war protest marches.

The Band released this song in Sept 1969. The Kent State shooting was May 1970. The protest movement inspired a lot of music.

16

Robbie Robertson Discusses Meaning Behind “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

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That was interesting, if not terribly enlightening. Robertson is clearly excited to talk about his creative process, while being not at all interested in breaking it all down line by line and saying, “this is about this, and this is about that.”

I once saw a quote when somebody asked him about “The Weight,” and it was like “I wrote down some words, and then some more words followed those, and pretty soon I had a song.” I don’t think he was being snarky about it; he was literally describing how he wrote it.

18

When you go on about how “they” defeated “old Dixie”, it does have the flavor of a Lost Cause lament rather than just referencing the horrors of war.

Not as bad as Tom Petty’s “Rebels”, though.

I was born a rebel, born a rebel
Even before my father’s fathers
They called us all rebels
Burned our cornfields
And left our cities leveled
I can still see the eyes
Of those blue bellied devils
When I’m walking round tonight
Through the concrete and metal"

19

That was also my impression, the Robert E. Lee was an engine that was being confiscated.

20

It makes sense that “Robert E. Lee” refers to a steamboat or railroad engine because the next stanza “I don’t mind chopping wood” could refer to the Virgil chopping wood to sell. As in “Virgil! Look here comes the riverboat. Get to the river and see if the captain wants to buy wood.”