A Canadian born in 1943 wrote one of many definitive songs in regards to the American Civil War.
And one of many definitive songs in regards to the combat to kind U.S. labor unions in the course of the Great Depression.
And one about avenue hustlers, one a couple of lovestruck, playing truck driver headed to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and one other that collects a gaggle of oddballs right into a setting impressed by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel.
These tales — “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “King Harvest,” “Life Is a Carnival,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” and “The Weight” — have been penned by Robbie Robertson. The chief songwriter and lead guitarist for The Band, Robertson, who handed away Wednesday at age 80, virtually invented the Americana style.
When The Band retreated to Woodstock, New York, in 1967 to compile the tracks that might develop into its debut LP “Music from Big Pink,” psychedelia was raging. London was swinging, the Beatles sang “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” Jimi Hendrix lit his guitar on hearth. But Robertson and The Band had totally different concepts.
“I wanted to write music that felt like it could’ve been written 50 years ago, tomorrow, yesterday — that had this lost-in-time quality,” Robertson as soon as stated.
How a couple of century in the past? Robertson’s compositions appeared to deliver to life damaged Confederate troopers, battered Southern farmers, randy cowboys beneath the celebrities, and 100 characters extra out of Mark Twain then the Summer of Love.
Robertson was only a 16-year-old rock ‘n’ roll child when he began taking part in with Canadian-based singer Ronnie Hawkins in 1960. But relentlessly touring behind Hawkins turned him and his Band-mates into seasoned professionals. Half a decade later, the fellows graduated to backing Bob Dylan on his first electrical tour. Robertson then had the great audacity to emerge from an apprenticeship with one of many world’s greatest songwriters as, properly, one of many world’s greatest songwriters.
Behind Robertson’s catalog, and his lyrical and economical guitar solos, The Band rejected the sonics of the ’60s. By the ’70s, different artists had adopted its lead. The Grateful Dead stopped jamming (for a second) and recorded folk-rock classics influenced by Robertson’s type in “American Beauty” and “Workingman’s Dead.” Groups equivalent to Little Feat and the Eagles absorbed the nation and Southern influences — 4 of 5 Band members have been Canadian regardless of their aesthetic.
Robertson had the uncommon humility to finish The Band earlier than it misplaced its mojo. That finish was captured spectacularly in Martin Scorsese-directed 1976 live performance movie “The Last Waltz.”
But Robertson by no means stopped writing little masterpieces. He penned movie scores for different Scorsese movies. He launched a collection of stunningly various and unusual solo albums. With Cayuga and Mohawk ancestry, Robertson was the perfect option to create the soundtrack for the documentary movie “The Native Americans.”
Of course, Roberson was a great selection to write down something from a Civil War lament to a tune about Carmen and the Devil strolling side-by-side.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”