The Band @55- the late Robbie Robertson 9-30

On this, the fifty-fifth anniversary of the the eponymous second effort from The Band, it is hard for me to remind myself that Robbie Robertson, the fulcrum upon whose songs The Band leveraged rock music so magnificently for so many years, is no longer amongst the living. Robertson’s musical tales, and the places and characters who inhabited them, seemed so vividly alive and timeless that by extension I guess I thought that the composer somehow would be, too.

Robbie Robertson from the In the Studio archives reveals how he, a fifteen year old guitar prodigy from Toronto, met up with with Arkansas roadhouse legend Ronnie Hawkins and, later, a folksinger from Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman. And along the way they pretty much changed the course of twentieth century culture, with Robertson teaming up with Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson on songs including “Rag Mama Rag”, “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down”, “Up on Cripple Creek”, and “King Harvest Has Surely Come”. That’s the fifty-fifth anniversary of The Band with the late Robbie Robertson the week of September 30th. -Redbeard