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Just heard Levon Helm passed away
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Just heard Levon Helm passed away (in reply to Ron.M)
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One of the greats.
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down..."
It's sad that it took a war to free the slaves, but it's right that it was done. In my youth their descendants were still legally oppressed. Schools were segregated. Black people had to sit at the back of the bus. They couldn't drink from the same water fountain nor sit in the same waiting room as white people.
At little or no cost to myself, I took part in some of the earliest civil rights demonstrations in Austin. I knew, and to the extent that such a thing was possible, I was friends with the first African-American undergraduates at the University of Texas.
Racism still exists in America, but it has largely been driven underground--at least, compared to how it was fifty years ago.
Still, another part of me is a 12th-generation white southerner. Men of my grandfather's generation were embittered by the defeat of their fathers, and the subsequent military occupation of the south by the north.
At the end of the war two of my great-grandfathers were automatically traitors due to the rank they held in the Confederate Army. They lost everything they had. It was justice, but its harshness was felt even by following generations.
My other two great-grandfathers fought for the north. The nation's tragedy was played out in my own family, as it was in so many others.
Levon's song brought tears to my eyes the first time I heard it, and did several more times as the years passed. They played it on the radio yesterday.
And they played parts of an interview with Levon in that inimitable northern Arkansas accent of his, stronger in speech than in song. His voice was ravaged by cancer. His warmth and wit were still intact.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 20 2012 16:45:02
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srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
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RE: Just heard Levon Helm passed away (in reply to Ron.M)
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Yup, very sad. His singing and drumming were always my favorite elements in The Band, and he had a very strong and natural on-screen presence as a character actor. His performance in Cole Miner’s daughter is killer. He was mentioned on the local classical radio station yesterday, and during last night’s baseball game (here in the far northwestern corner of the country, far from Helm's Arkansas home), and I was a bit surprised that news of his passing had crossed over into those worlds.
quote:
That it was written by a Mohawk-Jewish Canadian adds a touch more poignancy.
I don’t wanna stir up any ill feelings so soon after Helm’s death, but Robbie Robertson’s authorship of that and numerous other Band songs is a hotly contested issue and one that Helm felt a great deal of bitterness about. It’s been nearly twenty years since I read Helm’s autobiography, but if I recall correctly, Robertson, at the urging of Albert Grossman or whoever, hogged up sole writing credit and copyright claims for many of those songs himself, even though they were written in collaboration with Danko, Helm, et al. Who knows if it's just sour grapes or the truth, but my gut tells me that many of those songs were a true collective effort, and in the case of Dixie in particular, I dunno, man. Hard to believe that Robertson just handed that over as is…..
Richard, beautiful post!
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 20 2012 18:46:48
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