incredible performance

we talk about new vs. old music - just an amazing performance by a group of musicians putting out their best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM

was chasing the music rabbit last night on youtube and 're-discovered' this one reminding me of that level of musicianship

-----------------------------------------------------

amazing...that performance never gets old

Best and most accurate comment section:

I am not going to complain that they don't make music like this anymore. I am just happy it got made period.

Get some, Levon! Love The Band. Also love Robbie's guitar on this, even though it's understated. Beautiful tone; part the guitar, part Robbie's touch.

quote:

Originally posted by amals:
Get some, Levon! Love The Band. Also love Robbie's guitar on this, even though it's understated. Beautiful tone; part the guitar, part Robbie's touch.

Robbie and The Band are certainly the original and, perhaps, the best version. But many people and groups have covered this popular song. My favorite, despite her politics but because of her beautiful vibrato voice, is one of several performed by Joan Baez:
 

 
Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTNirVqTepE
 

^^^ That's a great clip. Joan at her prettiest and most appealing, and a stirring rendition. But I easily prefer The Band's rougher and more raucous performance.

A different yet very emotional version of this truly classic song.

quote:

Originally posted by Chance228:
amazing...that performance never gets old

You've got that right. I saw that in the theatre!

http://theband.hiof.no/articles/dixie_viney_old.html

Mick Gold
Robertson’s songs went further than Dylan’s by going beyond metaphor and actually embodying the experience they sang about. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is not a song about the Confederacy, it is a song of the Confederacy. [4]

This was the track that came to be seen as most typical of The Band album. Levon sings the song in the persona of Virgil Kane, a Confederate ex-soldier who served on the Danville supply train until General Stoneman’s Union troops tore up the tracks [5] . Virgil was involved in the fall of the Confederate capital, Richmond in 1865. The final campaign of the Civil War was Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s defence of Richmond and Petersburg against the Union forces of Ulysses S. Grant.

Bruce Catton
A Federal army trying to take Richmond could never be entirely secure until the Confederates were deprived of all use of the (fertile and productive) Shenandoah Valley, and it was up to Sheridan to deprive them of it. Grant’s instructions were grimly specific. He wanted the rich farmlands so thoroughly despoiled that the place could no longer support a Confederate army; he told Sheridan to devastate the whole area so thoroughly that a crow flying across the Valley would have to carry its own rations. This Sheridan set out to do … and Total War began to be waged in full earnest … Few campaigns in the war aroused more bitterness than this one.



http://theband.hiof.no/articles/dixie_viney.html



David Powell
In the closing days of the war, Major General George Stoneman, as the commander of the East Tennessee district, oversaw a raid by a division of Union troops across the rugged Blue Ridge Mountians into northwest North Carolina and southwest Virginia. Their orders were not to fight battles but to punish and demoralize the Southern civilians. Stoneman, having previously served under General Sherman in the Georgia campaign, had learned Sherman's methods of "total war"-- the concept of targeting civilian as well as military objectives in order to destroy the enemy's will to resist. Stoneman's cavalry troops were still exacting revenge on the Southern civilians at the time that General Robert E. Lee was surrendering at Appomattox. Stoneman's forces plundered & destroyed tons of supplies, including foodstocks & grain, along with miles of railroad supply tracks. Even after the shooting war ended, they assisted in chasing down and capturing Confederate President Jefferson Davis. After the war, Stoneman remained in the regular army until he retired in 1871 at the rank of Colonel. He moved to California and lived on a large estate called "Los Robles" near Los Angeles. As a Democrat, he held several public offices and was Governor of the state from 1883 to 1887. Stoneman died on September 5, 1894 in Buffalo, New York. Even though Stoneman, on the surface, may appear to be just a footnote in the history of the Civil War, in that part of the U.S. where the borders of Tennessee, North Carolina & Virginia meet, his name lives in infamy. The exploits of his plundering cavalry troops in the last days of a defeated Confederacy are still a part of local legend. In this respect, I feel that Robbie Robertson succeeded in capturing this sentiment accurately in the song

very informative

thanks for posting that

----------------------------------------------

whew... Sometimes I forget how much I like Joan Baez...

i think I would like to see 3 other versions:

Little Big Town
Toby Keith and Willie
Pistol Annie