The Band, 40 Years On

From one perspective, it's an unfortunately generic moniker for a band that is anything but generic. From another perspective, the name is entirely apt. They really were The Band. It's hard to think of another musical group with this level of interaction between members. Robbie Robertson did most of the songwriting, but he plays such a subdued role in the performance of these songs. All five of the primaries pulled their own weight, so to speak.

It's also hard to think of an album with a sound as fully American as The Band's eponymous second release. Blues, folk, country, rock, R & B--not only do the musical styles shift seamlessly from song to song, they also do so within songs. When people think of The Band, they probably think of Woodstock or Ontario, but listening to The Band you realize how grounded this album is in the atmosphere of the American South. By 1969, Americans were pretty used to British takes on American musical traditions, but the mostly Canadian version offered by The Band provides a different, closer perspective--more like that of the insider, but not quite. Part of it is Robbie Robertson's being bowled over by Sothern tradition when he first came down from Toronto to Mississippi, but another part of it is Levon Helm's voice, which makes "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" the song that it is. (The beautiful drumwork he does helps. Can drumming be beautiful? It is here.) Lyrically, the song is less a lament for the defeat of Southern culture than it is an exercise in perspective--it's about a man who lives through that defeat. "Sweet Home Alabama" makes me want to unplug the stereo; "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" moves me nearly to tears.

It's also worth considering "Up On Cripple Creek." It's easy to want to overlook this song, overplayed as it is on classic rock radio--but then again, the radio never understood these guys. "Up On Cripple Creek" riffs on a theme from a traditional folk song called "Cripple Creek"; it's about a good-time rounder who reminisces on the virtues of a woman who understands her man. Like "Dixie," this song highlights Helm's earthy vocal twang, but there is also a funkiness to this song (as embarrassing as that term can sometimes be when applied to white music) that seems as natural as anything. This funkiness comes from the distinctive sound of a clavinet played (by Garth Hudson) through a wah-wah pedal (a sound Stevie Wonder would later apply to "Superstitious"), but it's hard to say where geographically this sound comes from. Chalk it up to The Band's inventiveness. You can also hear that inventiveness in the sprightly honky-tonk piano at the end of "Rag Mama Rag"; the song fades out, but Garth Hudson--certainly one the best piano players in the rock music tradition--seems unwilling to quit. "Rag Mama Rag" also boasts a tuba instead of a bass; the song just bounces along like a rubber ball.

It's hard to tell sometimes who is singing on a particular song; everyone in the band, it seems, gets his time at the mic. Helm's voice might be the soul of this ensemble, Robertson's pen the heart, but really no one takes the lead for long enough to diminish the others. For me, The Band stands beside Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and The Byrd's Sweetheart of the Rodeo as one of the great albums of its era, not just for what it says about the moment of its creation but also for what it says about traditions in American music.