walking upstream…
The Band
Forged from the wreckage of Ronnie Hawkins's touring band and tempered by two years playing behind Bob Dylan, this Canadian-American quintet reinvented what a rock group could sound like: sepia-toned, horn-flecked, steeped in front-porch gospel and Civil War balladry, with three lead singers trading lines inside a single song. Music from Big Pink and The Band turned rustic American roots music into a genre before the word Americana existed, and Robbie Robertson's character-driven songwriting -- "The Weight," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" -- read like short stories set to an unhurried, shuffling groove. The group's farewell concert, filmed by Martin Scorsese as The Last Waltz, closed the book on the classic lineup in 1976, though Helm, Danko, and Hudson kept touring under the name into the late 1990s.
the sound in question
1968
The WeightThe Band
walk the tributaries ↓
Ronnie Hawkins1950s-60s · Rockabilly / Rock and roll / Rhythm and blues
Hawkins signed Robertson and, soon after, Helm's fellow Arkansan bandmates into his backing group the Hawks starting in 1958, running them through grueling roadhouse residencies across Ontario and the American South until his show-band discipline, timing, and crowd-reading instinct became second nature; when the group finally struck out on its own in 1964 as Levon and the Hawks, it kept his rowdy, hard-swinging stagecraft even as it slowed the material down and started writing original songs.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone -- Robbie Robertson remembers Ronnie Hawkins as "the one who made this all happen," on the roadhouse apprenticeship that formed the group ↗
1959
Forty DaysRonnie Hawkins
1969
Rag Mama RagThe Band
listen forHawkins tears through a rockabilly number with a manic, crowd-baiting energy built for roadhouse bars; The Band's own honky-tonk piano stomp keeps that same barroom velocity but redirects it into a group vocal that trades lines rather than chasing a single frontman.
Bob Dylan1960s · Folk / Folk rock / Rock
After backing Dylan on his polarizing electric tours of 1965-66 and holing up with him in and around Woodstock through 1967, the group -- until then a hard-touring R&B cover band -- absorbed his loose, character-driven songwriting method firsthand; Robertson has said Dylan was "educating us a little" just by example, and the colorful, image-dense narrative songwriting the group displayed on Music from Big Pink traces directly back to that year of close collaboration.
listen: upstream & heresource: Mojo -- Robbie Robertson interviewed on learning a new, more colorful and descriptive way of songwriting from Bob Dylan ↗
1965
Like a Rolling StoneBob Dylan
1969
The Night They Drove Old Dixie DownThe Band
listen forDylan piles surreal, cutting character portraits on top of a garage-band snarl; Robertson channels that same appetite for vivid narrative voice into a hushed, first-person account of a defeated Confederate farmer, trading Dylan's sneer for Levon Helm's aching, plainspoken delivery.
Sonny Boy Williamson II1950s · Chicago blues / Delta blues
Growing up outside Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, Levon Helm has said his drumming grew out of listening to Sonny Boy Williamson II's live blues broadcast King Biscuit Time on KFFA out of Helena, and watching drummer James "Peck" Curtis's shuffle up close at gigs around the Delta; that loose, unhurried blues shuffle became the rhythmic backbone Helm brought first into the Hawks and later into the Band.
listen: upstream & heresource: Encyclopedia of Arkansas -- Levon Helm entry on his boyhood exposure to Sonny Boy Williamson II's King Biscuit Time broadcasts and drummer Peck Curtis ↗
1963
Help MeSonny Boy Williamson II
1975
OpheliaThe Band
listen forWilliamson's harmonica rides a rolling, behind-the-beat blues shuffle that never rushes; Helm's drumming on the Band's own horn-driven strut keeps that same laid-back pocket, just dressed up with a New Orleans-style horn section standing in for the lone harmonica.