Concerning The Performance Mastery Of Levon Helm

It has been long overdue, but i am compelled to scribble a little something about Levon Helm. Levon Helm played drums in the Band. The Band, for those of you who may be underexposed and confused by the generic name (they were originally The Hawks) were Bob Dylan's backing band for a time in the mid-60s. The late keyboardist Garth Hudson and guitarist Robby Robertson, who's given a bit more credit than the former, sometimes unfairly, both being true collaborators with Dylan, along with bassist Rick Danko, were the main instrumental contributors and, along with Helm, songwriters for one of the great bands of all time. The obscure recording sessions The Band did with Dylan have been dubbed the Basement Tapes, a name suggestive of the "loose" quality of many of the songs. "Loose" they may be, but the basement tapes contain many little-knonwn, quirky recordings. There's nothing loose about the arrangements, the harmonies, the orchestration on these songs. But The Basement Tapes do have this delightful homespun quality to them, sounding at times like what they pretty much were: some drunk guys in a basement manipulating powerful sonic machines, pressing RECORD on the four track, and singing their bloody lungs out.

Levon Helm, stalwart drummer and featured vocalist for the Band, had, as I understand it, a bit more of a contentious relationship with Dylan than his Band counterparts. In fact, I believe that he doesn't appear on many of the Basement Tapes tracks. He left in the midst of Dylan's 1965-66 tour, the pivotal period when Dylan, with the help of The Band, was changing from folkie to rocker. Apparently Helm didn't like the nonplussed, occasionally outright hostile reception that greeted Dylan and The Band at these shows, the patrons often unreceptive to Dylan's mainstream mutation. Legend has it, Helm worked on an oil rig during this time.

You always know Helm when you hear him. "Ain't No More 'Caine On The 'Rizon" he sings on one track from the Basement Tapes, southern twang resonating through the speakers, floating on the sit-up-and-take-notice power of his singing voice, which cuts through some pretty dense guitar, piano, and drums. Helm, the Arkansan, has a quality to his voice that makes it clearly surperior to those of the two Canadians, the loveable Hudson and the cranky Robertson.

The most well known songs by the Band are The Weight ("Take a load off, Fanny"), Cripple Creek, and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, which evokes the plight of the beaten Confederate soldier at the end of the Civil War. It is a representatively anachronistic example, and there's genuine heartbreak to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Helm's ode to Virgil Kane. Helm sings lead on these and many more, including a song called "Don't Do It", which first appeared on The Band's 1972 Capitol Records double LP, Rock Of Ages, a live recording. The live setting, for this song in particular, showcases Helm's relentlessly soulful vocal mastery like none other (and the backing harmonies are enrapturing.) It's a flawless performance, one that could easily be mistaken for studio-generated--if not for the thunderous and extended applause at the end.

I was lucky enough to see the Black Crowes open their set at Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 2005, the last Jazz Fest before Katrina, with a cover of "Don't Do It", and I marveled then as I do now whenever I listen to the song, at its succinct and anthemic soul-blues-rock power. Hell of a horn part, too, to complement the song's simple rhythmic and melodic appeal. Chris Robinson sang it halfway decently that day on the stage at the fairground, and it was a homerun, as openers go.

All leading to my very simple, endlessly arguable conclusion that Levon Helm is the greatest singing drummer of all time. Far as I know, he's alive, kicking, and gigging. As for the Dylan feud, if it was even that, who knows. But I know this: though Dylan is often unfairly maligned as a singer, Levon Helm is twice the vocalist as he, and an underrated, funky, down-home drummer to boot.