Thursday music corner: Canadian musician Robbie Robertson, who died yesterday aged 80, was a driving force alongside four other supremely talented performers in The Band. Starting out backing Ronnie Hawkins as The Hawks, after their famed role backing Bob Dylan on his first electric tour they changed their name to The Band. Robertson was a strong songwriting talent, penning four numbers on their first album Music from Big Pink(1968) and on their self-titled second album The Band(1969)he wrote eight of the 12 tracks solo, and had co-writing credit on the other four. He generally left lead vocal performance of his songs to the other talented Band singers. Robertson worked prolifically in film music after The Band split in 1976, and had solo hits in the 1980s with Broken Arrow and Somewhere Down The Crazy River.
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down appeared on the group's second album, written by Robertson and with lead vocals by drummer Levon Helm. This performance appears in Martin Scorsese's 1978 documentary The Last Waltz, and is prefaced by a brief interview from Robertson about his 2012 visit to Helm's hospital bedside in the last days of his life.
The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (live, 1976)
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