The Band -- "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
In honor of the late Levon Helm, the only drummer who could make Joan Baez cry.
The thing that always surprises me about this song is simply that it's so great. Though I love the traditional music of the American South -- old time, New Orleans jazz, Delta blues, honky tonk -- I have always hesitated at the celebration of Southern culture. I find songs like "Sweet Home Alabama" to be cloying and even offensive: I'm on Neil Young's side.
What this track does, though, is to go beyond a celebration of the South and its culture. It enters into a perspective: it's a story-song. Helm is channeling a voice from the past. The pathos in the song comes from Helm's vocal (and, sure, his drumming, if drums can be emotional). The sense of nostalgia that the song evokes is not cheap. The details of the story being told are a bit ambiguous, but the sense of feeling is clear enough. History sweeps on inevitably, and individuals are caught in the midst of it.
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