By now the entire world is well aware that yesterday we lost one of the great musicians of our time. Levon Helm passed away, surrounded by family and friends, in New York after a long battle with cancer. Helm was a founding member of The Hawks, a band made up of one American and four Canadians who started with Ronnie Hawkins in the late 1950s, joined Bob Dylan in the 1960s and took the world by storm as The Band in the 1970s.
Read CBC Music's tribute to Levon Helm and check out our visual timeline of the life and times of Levon Helm.
Levon was diagnosed with cancer once before and beat it. It was throat cancer and it took his voice. But after years of hard work Levon began singing again and once he was ready he started recording. In just a few short years Levon would win three Grammy Awards for his work. First with his comeback album Dirt Farmer and this past year for his album Ramble At The Ryman. More importantly he started a concert series in his home studio called “The Midnight Ramble.” These became must-see concerts that fans of The Band and of Helm would attend with regularity. They were down-home evenings of music where the audience would bring food for a pot-luck dinner and you could sit right next to Levon as he played with his band.
I was first introduced to The Band when their concert film The Last Waltz was released in the spring of 1978. I was all of nine years old. By the time the movie was filmed, the members of The Band had been performing on the road for 16 years, first in honky-tonks and roadhouses with Ronnie Hawkins, then throughout Europe and America electrifying Bob Dylan and finally in stadiums as The Band. They had appeared on the cover of Time Magazine and sold millions of albums, all this before I was even a teenager.
The year The Last Waltz was released I had already discovered rock-and-roll through my parents’ record collection. Little Richard, Stevie Wonder and The Beatles were my favourites. These records were the ones that jumped out at me from the pile of 30 or 40 that my parents owned. My parents weren’t exactly music people, but living 40 miles east of Motown; they couldn’t help but understand the importance of a good song and the power of music.
One hot afternoon in the summer of 1978 my parents did something that, looking back, was a little out of character. This was the 1970s and Star Wars and Superman were on the big screen and every kid in my town forced their parents into the theatre. What was out of character for my parents was that on that particular hot summer day they didn’t take me to see Star Wars; they took me to see The Last Waltz and that day will forever be etched in my memory.
I sat beside my father and he looked over at me and said “This movie is very important.” To me, that meant it probably wasn’t going to be much fun but I had better pay attention. From the opening frame in which the words “This Film Should Be Played Loud” appeared and the crack of Rick Danko breaking balls resounded on a pool table, I could do nothing but pay attention. These men on the screen, looking larger than life, playing music with all of their heart and soul, but somehow looking strangely workman-like, mesmerized me. Sitting beside my father, I couldn’t help but make comparisons between him slaving away in a car factory and these men, roughly the same age, on stage drenched in sweat. To me both occupations, musician and factory worker, seemed to be hard work. And the way I was brought up, hard work was something to be admired.
While watching the guest stars walk on and off the screen, my father would lean over and say things like “That was Neil Young. He’s great and he’s Canadian.” Or “That is Joni Mitchell. She’s Canadian too.” By the end of the film I was convinced that all the great musicians were from Canada and to this day I believe we're the best. Of course there is one exception to that rule and he was Levon Helm. But come on -- every Canadian considers Levon an honourary citizen. You can’t spend that much time on Yonge Street and not be Canadian.
Tonight on Canada Live we will rebroadcast a concert that I produced almost 6 years ago. The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the day The Band said good-bye to the road. I was way too young to have been at the real Last Waltz so I had to somehow create my own. I called the concert We Shall Be Released. We gathered together a group of Canadian musicians to pay homage to their heroes. Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson were all invited to take part in the concert. Both Levon and Robbie turned us down. I was told that Levon wasn’t interested in celebrating the past; he was much too concerned with moving forward. The same went for Robbie. As for Garth, there was no way you could keep him away; he insisted on taking part.
Blackie and The Rodeo Kings were the masters of the ceremony and together with Dione Taylor,Tony Dekker, Oh Susanna, Kathleen Edwards, Luke Doucet, Paul Reddick and Jason Collett they paid homage to their heroes.
Tonight at 7 p.m. on Canada Live we rebroadcast We Shall Be Released for Levon Helm.
Related Links:
Levon Helm's legacy celebrated on social media
CBCNews.ca: Levon Helm losing cancer fight, family says
Lyrics as Poetry: The Band’s ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’