Today’s classic song of the day with the word night in the title is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” It was a defining song for The Band and a major hit for Joan Baez.
The Band’s Robbie Robertson wrote “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” purportedly with more than a little help from the band’s drummer, Levon Helm, who sang lead on the recording. The song was the third track on side one of their eponymous second album, released in September of 1969. That album, which also included “Up On Cripple Creek” and “Rag Mama Rag,” peaked at #9 on Billboard’s Pop Albums chart and has become a true classic.
Folksinger Joan Baez heard the tune and decided to do her own recording. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lyric sheet in front of her and misheard a few of the words from listening to it on the radio. (She misheard “Stoneman’s calvary came” as “so much calvary came;” “I will work the land” became “I’m a working man.”) She was also a female singing a song narrated by a male, but that didn’t seem to bother too many people. Her single, released in August of 1971, hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100, and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It also it #1 in Robbie Robertson’s native Canada.
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is a prime example of what we now call Americana. The song details a poor white Southerner, Virgil Caine by name, during the last days of the Civil War. General George Stoneman’s Union soldiers had attacked the railroads of Danville, Virginia, behind Confederate lines, laying waste to all around, including the Caine family land. Virgil’s resentment as being nothing more than what we now call “collateral damage” of the Union raids was evident in the lyrics:
Now, I don’t mind chopping wood
And I don’t care if the money’s no good
You take what you need
And you leave the rest
But they should never
Have taken the very best
Some today view “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” as glorifying the Confederate cause. Others say it’s a dissertation on how war affects the innocent civilians around it. No less an eminence than music critic Ralph Gleason had this to say about the song:
“Nothing I have read … has brought home the overwhelming human sense of history that this song does. The only thing I can relate it to at all is The Red Badge of Courage. It’s a remarkable song, the rhythmic structure, the voice of Levon and the bass line with the drum accents and then the heavy close harmony of Levon, Richard and Rick in the theme, make it seem impossible that this isn’t some traditional material handed down from father to son straight from that winter of 1865 to today. It has that ring of truth and the whole aura of authenticity.”
While singer Levon Helm was, indeed, a southerner, the song’s writer, Robbie Robertson was from Canada and by all accounts had no reason to have Confederate leanings. I think it’s just a song about a poor white family in the South, caught up in the aftermath of the Civil War. Songs can be about things without being for things; if this song is for anything, it’s for the dignity of Virgil Caine and his family.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, The Band performing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” during their final official concert, as documented in the concert film, The Last Waltz. Say what you will, it was a perfect song for Levon and the Band, and Levon and the Band were perfect performers for the song.
