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Say Goodbye To A Legend

Levon Helm 1940 ~ 2012

When I think of Levon Helm, I think first of poor Arkansas dirt farmers and prize fighters. After all, he spent most of his 71 years fighting to raise a good crop, before and after his so-called music stardom. I think of his struggles and fighting to make a living at his one true passion, making music, and I recall his fights with record companies, promoters and band mates over contracts. Levon Helm makes me think of lyrics to songs he sang with unknown authors listed simply as "Traditional", from gospel to blues, country folk to default Pop Hits because there was nothing else to call songs like Robbie Robertson's "The Weight", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "Up On Cripple Creek", "Life Is A Carnival" and "Rag Mama Rag". The world had never heard anything like The Band in 1968 and those songs still pay Robbie's bills, but, Levon whose clever crusty crooning made them timeless classics received no songwriting royalities for them and that eventually led to a decades long tiff and the two friends refused to even speak to each other.

When I think of Levon, I think of The rockin' Hawks backing Ronnie Hawkins, the very strange bearded guys up in Woodstock New York at "Big Pink" and the guy who walked away in the middle of Bob Dylan's 1966 world tour because he couldn't couldn't handle the crowds booing because Dylan had gone electric.

When I think of Levon, I remember Elton John and Bernnie Taupin naming the song after him, "because he likes the name." The song is fictional, but, The Band was Elton's and Bernie's favorite group in those days (just listen to Elton's "Tumbleweed Connection" to hear The Band's awesome influence on Sir Elton). I recall that Elton John and his civil partner, David Furnish, named their son "Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John", as he was born on Christmas Day 2010 (just as Levon was born on Christmas Day in the song). It's just something I think of when I think of good 'ole Levon Helm, Elton never named a song "Drumbo". :(

Sometimes I think that had there never been Levon, there would have never been "The Band", and there may well have never been Poco, The Eagles, Crosby, Stills & Nash or the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. There's a lot to think about when I think about Levon.

After thinking all that, then I remember, oh yeah, Levon was a drummer. Well yes, but he was an amazing all around musician. He played guitar, mandolin, some banjo, piano, harmonica, Jew's harp and he could whistle melodies through the gap in his teeth like no one else I ever heard. And though he was proficient with his stable of instruments, he was never far from behind his drum kit and from there he sang most of the songs that made The Band famous. It was his rock solid drumming that got him his first gig with Ronnie Hawkin's Hawks and led to the gig with Dylan ... no scratch that, it should read "collaborations with Dylan" that came and went and spanned decades.

Levon's amazing skin smacking gained him a place in "The Big Beat", longtime E Street Band and Conan O'Brien bandleader Max Weinberg's 1984 book interviewing fourteen pioneers of rock drumming including Hal Blaine, Charlie Watts, Ringo Starr, Earl Palmer, DJ Fontana, Jim Keltner, Bernard Purdie, Dino Danelli, Kenney Jones, Russ Kunkle, and "Bad" Johnny Bee (Badanjek), et. al. I can tell you those are all heavyweights, Cheapskate can tell you those cats are the cream of the crop, Publius can tell you ...
but, most of you already know all that, we are talking Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones, The Who and about every other group that produced a hit record in the 60s and 70s. Levon's drumming was as solid as Hal Blaine's, as simple as Ringo's, as rockin' as D.J.'s, as swingin' as Watts, as funky as Palmer's and Perdie's, as technically correct as Keltner's and Kunkle's with all the flash of Dino and Johnny Bee and all while fronting The Band with the majority of lead vocals!

When I think of Levon, I think of his movie roles in "Coal Miner’s Daughter", "Fire Down Below", "The Right Stuff", "Lightning in a Bottle", "Feeling Minnesota", "In the Electric Mist", "Shooter" and a dozen others. When I think of Levon, I think of The Hawks, The Band, Ringo's All Stars, his collaborations with Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Emmylou Harris, Robert Earl Keene and of course Bob Dylan. When I think of Levon, I think there's not enough space of the Drumbo Server to host even a sampler of his discography or enough time in one weekend to spin all those tunes ... but I'm gonna try.

Tonight as I think of Levon, I think of his last great fight against cancer, how it's over, the Weught's been lifted and how he and Robbie Robertson recently reconciled their friendship after years of bitterness. When I think of Levon, I think of him singing "When I Go Away" from his last album and I believe he may have finally won his fight buckaroos.

Don't want no sorrow
For this old orphan boy,
I don't want no crying
Only tears of joy.
I'm gonna see my mother,
Gonna see my father,
And I'll be bound for glory
In the morning
When I go away.
I'll be lifted up through the clouds
On the wings of angels,
There's only flesh and bones
In the ground
Where my troubles will stay.

God speed and good rest, In peace, be blessed.

Levon
~ Elton John ~