I have been neglecting this blog in favor of my Substack and part of the reason is that I use this space for pop culture stuff, but I have been getting that out of my system through multiple academic writing projects. To get back on track here I have decided to do one of my patented "listen throughs" of a classic rock artist.
This summer, as I was driving home from a Southern trip and I decided to put on the entire Last Waltz show so I wouldn't have to futz with Spotify while trying to concentrate on the road. I hadn't listened to The Band for a long time, and I was suddenly reminded that there was a three year period in the 2000s where I was absolutely obsessed with them. There is something about them that inspires fervid conversion experiences, like Clapton hearing them and breaking up Cream because they exposed the emptiness of the en vogue psychedelia. I had also been fortunate this summer to spend time with old friends from those 2000s days who shared my love of the group. Since it's been awhile, I thought it was time to go back, both to The Band and the time in my life I associate with it. There's also the sad fact that with Garth Hudson's passing, all of the original members are dead.
Unlike my other listen-throughs, I am going to do this one mostly album by album, since The Band's catalog is not as huge as Dylan or Springsteen's. The first installments, about their days before their first proper album under the name of "The Band" will be exceptions. Albums will be rated from one to five Levons once I get there.
They started as The Hawks, playing with Arkansas rockabilly wild man Ronnie Hawkins. The story is improbable, as Hawkins settled in Toronto and over time replaced his Arkansas band with local Canadian musicians (except for drummer Levon Helm.) The Band made some of the most quintessentially American music, but ironically, five out of the six members were Canadians. As a lover of Canada in a time when our president is threatening our relationship with that great nation, I think it's especially good to contemplate The Band.
I listened to Hawkins' first album, even though it was still the Arkansas players, just for context. He really rips it up on this record, which is a hidden gem in my book. I am a big fan of 1959's "Forty Days," his take on Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days." This is some real deal rockabilly from the piney woods of the "Natural State," not the watered down music that was beginning to cash in on and replace the harder-edged stuff that broke out of Memphis a few years before.
After that first record (which was without The Band) it's hard to know which songs and albums had the whole compliment of The Band on them since different members joined at different times. Instead of trying to name them, I'd rather write about the general feel of the music. I've heard rockabilly described as up-tempo country-style hillbilly music with R&B singing over it, which makes sense with Hawkins' first record. On Mojo Man, which had a lot of Band participation, things are VERY bluesy. I find it striking because while The Band was obviously aware of the blues in their music, the first music with their name on it drew more from country. That in fact is what seemed to draw in other musicians in the late 60s, who had mostly been playing a hopped up version of Chicago blues music. It's as if The Band already went through their blues phase before anyone else got there.
The Hawkins records, which I do really enjoy, are a reminder that The Band were not of the British Invasion, nor were they of the legions of garage bands that formed in the wake of The Beatles and Rolling Stones. They predated both, but like The Beatles they cut their teeth playing in rough clubs to rough customers. It makes sense that they would seemingly come out of left field in 1968 with Music From Big Pink because they had been woodshedding far from the mainstream. Even though their music in that time sounded nothing like the raw early rock n' roll they cut with Hawkins, it had the same uncompromising spirit.
That spirit meant that the Hawks would have to leave Hawkins' nest and fly. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.) They would really make a name for themselves playing with Bob Dylan, but before then managed to cut a 45 for Atco with "The Stones I Throw" on the A side and "He Don't Love You (And He'll Break Your Heart)" on the flipside back in 1965. The A side seems to be a song in favor of civil rights, and it's dominated by a heavy organ from Garth and muscular singing from Rick Danko. The B side is less hooky but better, a funky groovy number that sounds like a lost track from the Stax vaults. Danko gives it the appropriate level of sweat. This sounds nothing like their later music, but crucially, it also does not sound like Ronnie Hawkins, either.
You can hear in their early music why Dylan would have chosen them to be his backing band on tour in 1965. If he was going to enrage the folkies by going electric, best to do it with a bunch of guys who could really play some hardcore, gut bucket music and knew how to survive a hostile audience. The angry folkies were child's play next to the kind of people who showed up to Jack Ruby's burnt-out club in Dallas.
Next time I will write about those famous live shows, along with the "Basement Tapes" recorded with Dylan.
No comments:
Post a Comment