With the recent passing of Robbie Robertson on August 9, I'm finding myself revisiting the music of The Band, most of which he wrote. Today, The Band is widely acknowledged as one of the progenitors of the musical sub-genre known as Americana, which blends aspects of country, rock, folk, blues, jazz, etc., into a uniquely American art form.
The Band's story is also unique. Instead of bursting onto the scene with their debut album, they quietly paid their dues, first backing rockabilly artist Ronnie Hawkins as The Hawks, then backing Bob Dylan as he controversially electrified the folk scene in the mid-'60s, eventually collaborating with him on the Basement Tapes project, while he recuperated from a near-fatal motorcycle accident.
As a result, their first studio album, Music From Big Pink (1968) conveys a maturity, achieved through almost a decade of playing together live. It, and its 1970 follow-up, the eponymously titled The Band, make a good introduction to their music, and together contain many of their best known songs.
While jumping on at the beginning with those two albums has its virtues, another option for a broader view is the two-disc compilation from 1988 called To Kingdom Come. Released during the heyday of CD reissues, To Kingdom Come has one noticeable shortcoming shared by many digital remixes from that era, which consists mainly of bumping up the bass and drums in an attempt to give the music a bit more 'punch'. Nonetheless, the collection presents a concise but comprehensive overview of The Band's entire catalog, plus a handful of unreleased rarities. The three-disc box set, Across the Great Divide, is also excellent in its own right, presenting The Band in context with their earlier incarnation as the Hawks, along with a larger helping of rarities, but I tend to prefer To Kingdom Come because it is more focused and presents a solid collection of must-have tunes.
Also worth considering for anyone new to The Band is their live album Rock of Ages. Originally issued on two LP's, and later in several different CD configurations, this album captures The Band at the peak of their powers in a four-night run at New York's Academy of Music, culminating on New Year's Eve 1971. Performances on this set are generally more energetic than their studio counterparts, as would be expected from a band that cut its teeth on stage. A particular highlight is keyboardist Garth Hudson's Bach-inspired organ workout, called "The Genetic Method". CD versions of this album are many and varied. Its first CD version was a single disc that was missing a couple of tracks to fit it onto one disc, as was common practice in the early days of CD reissues. It later came out as an expanded two-disc collection that included most of guest artist Bob Dylan's performance with them, as they welcomed in 1972. The entire four-night run was also issued as a limited edition box set, and at the other end of the spectrum is a severely truncated 11-track CD titled The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
Honorable mention goes to The Last Waltz, the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's concert film of the same name, which documented The Band's farewell performance on Thanksgiving 1976 that included a virtual who's who of popular music at the time, including Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond, and the Staples Singers, among others. Originally issued on three LP's, which later fit comfortably on two CD's, it also came out as an expanded four-CD box set titled The Complete Last Waltz. While it is excellent in its own right, it isn't as good of an introduction to The Band as some of the other albums mentioned, as the arrangements are often quite different from the originals and it represents a culmination of an era, and the final time Robertson would perform with The Band, although the other members would re-convene, tour and record, with Robertson's blessing but without his participation, on into the 1980s and '90s.
The music world lost one of its brightest luminaries last week, but we can be thankful that Robbie Robertson's recorded output, both with the Band and as a solo artist, has granted him a certain measure of immortality.
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