Both passed on this last week, Helm at 71, Clark at 82. Here is part of a fine tribute to Helm:
He was a river of American popular music. Whatever you call it, roots music, Americana, R&B, rockabilly, gospel, country soul, he kept its rhythm and sang it as well as any American musician ever has. We heard all of it in that soulful howl of his lamenting the missing Ophelia and the soul-crushed Confederate soldier, and the temptations and ravages of the road.
[. . .] We’re a hell of a musical country. We’re a people with a soundtrack. The wind whistling through the pines and jackhammers tearing up concrete, guitars and fiddles in the subway, hip-hop on the corner, blues down the alley, “a saxophone in some far off place,” a flute in the desert.
Whatever levees we build between us, by color, class, creed or politics, the river overflows them. In the city, out in the country, on the plains or in the projects, we pine and dream and cry and love to some strain of American music that is connected to every other strain of American music. Levon showed us that, and made us want to sing along with him on his ramble.
Up on Cripple Creek
Chest Fever
The Weight
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. A great piece of Americana. "Like my father before me, I'm a working man/Like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand . . . ." Joan Baez's interpretation.
I Shall Be Released. With Dylan and a number of other luminaries.
Evangeline. With EmmyLou Harris.
When I Paint My Masterpiece. Tune written by Dylan.
"They'll be rockin' on Bandstand, Philadelphia, PA" in Chuck Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen is a reference to Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
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