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The Band

For about six years, from 1968 through 1975, the Band was one of the most popular and influential rock groups in the world, their music embraced by critics (and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the public) as seriously as the music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Their albums were analyzed and reviewed as intensely as any records by their one-time employer and sometime mentor Bob Dylan. And for a long time, their personalities were as recognizable individually to the casual music public as the members of the Beatles.

The Band, 1968.Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson in the Catskills posing for Music From Big Pink. Photo © Elliott Landy.

The group's history went back nearly as far as the Beatles, to 1958 (just about the time that the formative Beatles gave up skiffle for rock & roll). Ronnie Hawkins, an Arkansas-born rock & roller who aspired to a real career, put together a backing band that year that included his fellow Arkansan Levon Helm (born May 26, 1940), who played drums (as well as credible guitar) and had led his own band, the Jungle Bush Beaters. The new outfit, Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks, was recording by the spring of 1958 and gigged throughout the south and also up in Ontario, Canada, where the money was better than in their native American south. It was the fact of being based in Canada late in 1959, coupled with pianist Willard Jones leaving the lineup, that got Hawkins to start looking at some of the local music talent in Toronto; Hawkins approached a musician named Scott Cushnie about joining the Hawks on keyboards. Cushnie was already playing in a band with Robbie Robertson (born in 1944), however, and would only join Hawkins if he came along.

After some resistance from Hawkins, Robertson came into the lineup on bass, replacing a departing Jimmy Evans. More multiple lineup switches took place over the next few years, Robbie Robertson shifting to rhythm guitar behind Fred Carter's (and, briefly, Roy Buchanan's) lead playing. Rick Danko (born December 29, 1942) came in on bass in 1961, followed by Richard Manuel (born April 3, 1944) on piano and backing vocals. Around that same time, Garth Hudson (born August 2, 1937), a classically trained musician who could read music, became the last piece of the initial puzzle as organ player.

For four years, from 1959 through 1963, Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks were one of the hottest rock & roll bands working, which was very special in a time when rock & roll had supposedly died. Hawkins himself was practically Toronto's answer to Elvis Presley, and he remained true to the music even as Presley himself softened and broadened his sound. The mix of personalities within the group meshed well, better than they did with Hawkins, who, unbeknownst to him, was soon the odd man out in his own group. As new members Danko, Manuel, and Hudson came aboard — all Canadian, and replacing Hawkins' fellow southerners — Hawkins lost control of the group, to some extent, as they began working together more closely.

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3
Album Review

The Band: Stage Fright 50th Anniversary Edition 2CD

Read "Stage Fright 50th Anniversary Edition 2CD" reviewed by Doug Collette


In order to more fully appreciate the 50th anniversary edition of the Band's third studio album, Stage Fright (Capitol, 1970), it is best to resist the temptation to go off on tangents regarding the revisionism visited upon the release. The supervision administered by the group's guitarist/songwriter Robbie Robertson may be as questionable as that visited upon other such packages in recent years, but rampant skepticism and suspicion about his motives ultimately precludes deeper enjoyment of the work both past and ...

5
Album Review

The Band: The Band: 50th Anniversary Edition (2CD)

Read "The Band: 50th Anniversary Edition (2CD)" reviewed by Doug Collette


If ever there was an album so complete unto itself it did not call for, but rather forfended, an expanded remaster, The Band's eponymous album of 1969 is it. Yet this double-CD is the second such release and stands on its own, apart from the larger 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Box Set (Capitol/UMe, 2019). The first came in 2000, after multiple other anthologies containing similar material--To Kingdom Come (Capitol, 1989), Across The Great Divide (Capitol, 1994), and A Musical History ...

10
Album Review

The Band: Woodstock

Read "Woodstock" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


When the Band took the stage at Woodstock, late Sunday evening, August 17, 1969, they were a little over a month away from releasing their second recording, The Band (Capitol, the “Brown Album") and a year past the release of their debut recording, Music from Big Pink (Capitol, 1968). Later, on January 12, 1970, the group was featured in Time Magazine as “The New Sound of Country Rock." All of this was happening smack dab between stints as Bob Dylan's ...

3
Book Review

The Band Photographs 1968-1969

Read "The Band Photographs 1968-1969" reviewed by Doug Collette


The Band Photographs 1968-1969 Elliott Landy 160 Pages ISBN: # 149502251X Backbeat Books 2015 As much as the Band disavowed imagemaking, preferring to focus as strictly as possible on their music when they emerged from the shadows Bob Dylan's backing ensemble, when embarked upon their own career, they definitely nurtured a distinctive collective persona and the photography of Elliott Landy, in the midst of an illustrious career that found him capturing the essence ...

6
Book Review

The Band: Pioneers of American Music by Craig Harris

Read "The Band:  Pioneers of American Music by Craig Harris" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


The Band: Pioneers of American Music Craig Harris 214 Pages ISBN: #978081089040 Rowman & Littlefield 2014 It is difficult, if not impossible or unadvisable, to consider Bob Dylan and The Band separately. Theirs was an artistic event horizon that changed much of music afterwards. Writer and percussionist Craig Harris has lovingly committed to pixels The Band: Pioneers of American Music, the thoroughly researched and considered story of the Band, and necessarily, its ...

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Extended Analysis

The Band: Rock of Ages

Read "The Band: Rock of Ages" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


I'd rather die happy than not die at all... Even its name is an enigma—The Band: a collection of four Canadians and one Arkansan, born to back up another Arkansan, Ronnie Hawkins, as “Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks," then Bob Dylan and then to exist as their own entity—The Band. Five disparate and different individuals who united for a decade, helping define it musically by producing music so much part of the North American collective unconscious as to ...

431
Extended Analysis

The Band: A Musical History

Read "The Band: A Musical History" reviewed by Doug Collette


The Band A Musical History Capitol/EMI 2005

A Musical History is at once as unassuming and all-encompassing as the name of the group it anthologizes, The Band. With each successive compilation devoted to the group, beginning with the two-CD set To Kingdom Come (subtitled definitive), then the three disc package Across the Great Divide, more detail appears in the story before during and after the group assumed their given name (from the ...

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9

Recording

"Recalled To Life - Chapter One" CD/FLAC/MP3 Album By British Guitarist Steve Robinson Formerly With The Band 'igginbottom Which Also Included Guitarist Allan Holdsworth Now Available From Art Of Life Records.

"Recalled To Life - Chapter One" CD/FLAC/MP3 Album By British Guitarist Steve Robinson Formerly With The Band 'igginbottom Which Also Included Guitarist Allan Holdsworth Now Available From Art Of Life Records.

Source: Art of Life Records

Art of Life Records is proud to present, Recalled to Life-Chapter One, the debut release by British guitarist and composer Steve Robinson. Steve was a member of the British group 'Igginbottom which recorded the album “Igginbottoms Wrench" in 1969 which also included guitarist Allan Holdsworth. Recalled to Life-Chapter One includes ten original compositions by Steve and features Pat Schroeder on drums, Dave Bryant on drums, Steve Zerlin on electric & acoustic bass, Marc Duby on electric bass, Andrew Ford on ...

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Recording

Neal Hefti: The Band Years

Neal Hefti: The Band Years

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Hearing Neal Hefti: Forever in Time, a newly released double-CD from the U.K.'s Jasmine label, reminded me how superb Hefti was in the 1950s as a composer, arranger and conductor of his own studio orchestras. Most of these dates were of the jazz-pop, dance-band ilk, with an emphasis on clever melodic hooks, patient swing and sectional punch. And the musicians in the bands he assembled for recording were the cream of the studio scene. For example, on Hefti Hot 'N ...

1

Music Industry

The Album Release Cycle And The Band That Proved The Power Of Digital 7 Years Ago

The Album Release Cycle And The Band That Proved The Power Of Digital 7 Years Ago

Source: HypeBot

This article offers a breakdown of the album release cycle explaining why, in the digital age, the conventional timeline for releasing and promoting an album is riddled with inefficiencies and examines how one metalcore band figured out the right way of doing it way back in 2008. Guest Post by Dan Wagster on LinkedIn Pulse In my previous article The Job That Steve Didn’t Finish I said Steve Jobs left a part of the disruption of the music business unfinished. By launching ...

Music Industry

LMFAO, The Band Sues LMFAO, The Beer

LMFAO, The Band Sues LMFAO, The Beer

Source: HypeBot

Legal action is in the house tonight. As the massive growth of the craft brewing industry continues, so too has the number of trademark disputes related to beer names. The latest involves the pop duo LMFAO's fear that Pigeon Hill Brewing Co.'s LMFAO Stout could potentially be confused with the band. By Timothy Geigner on TechDirt It's been quite clear over the past two years or so that the alcohol industry, and specifically the craft beer industry, has a massive trademark problem. ...

Radio

This Week On Riverwalk Jazz: Battle Of The Bands With Banu Gibson, Savion Glover & William Warfield

This Week On Riverwalk Jazz: Battle Of The Bands With Banu Gibson, Savion Glover & William Warfield

Source: Don Mopsick

Riverwalk Jazz this week presents an old-fashioned Battle of the Bands pitting the Jim Cullum Jazz Band against Banu Gibson and her New Orleans Hot Jazz. The program is distributed in the US by Public Radio International, on Sirius/XM satellite radio and can be streamed on-demand from the Riverwalk Jazz website. You can also drop in on a continuous stream of shows at the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound. Early 20th-century New Orleans demanded live music for almost every occasion, ...

Festival

Harlem Jazz Shrines Fest: Legends On The Bandstand with Heath/Hart/Mance/Sands

Harlem Jazz Shrines Fest: Legends On The Bandstand with Heath/Hart/Mance/Sands

Source: Carolyn McClair Public Relations

Jazzmobile, Inc. Presents Minton’s Playhouse: Legends on the Bandstand at Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival May 6 and 8 Third Annual Festival, Presented by The Apollo Theater, Harlem Stage and Jazzmobile, Inc., Celebrates Historic Harlem Venues May 6 – 11, 2013 Harlem, USA – Jazz was born in New Orleans, but it grew up in Harlem in legendary venues like Small’s Paradise, The Savoy Ballroom, The Alhambra Ballroom, Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, the Cotton Club, The Baby Grand and Minton’s Playhouse. ...

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Contest

Battle Of The Bands Swings Into Finals

Source: Mikki Royce

Boca Raton, FL: The final four in the Battle of the Bands PBC 2012 will compete for the high school and middle school Swing Jazz top spot sponsored by the Swing and Jazz Preservation Society on March 30, 7 pm at the Spanish River Performing Arts Center, 2400 Yamato Road, in Boca Raton. Out of an original field of 16 public schools, 22 bands and over 400 students, the four finalists are: Don Estridge High Tech MS vs. Omni MS, ...

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Performance / Tour

Battle of the Bands PBC Semi Finals

Source: Mikki Royce

Battle Of The Bands Palm Beach County Semi-Finals Takes Place Tomorrow Only the best (rated Superior) Middle and High School Jazz Bands, will compete in the semi-finals of the Battle of the Bands Palm Beach County. Four winning schools receive $1,000 each and go on to the finals. The event is sponsored by the Swing and Jazz Preservation Society (JSPS) in cooperation with District 14 of the Florida Bandmaster's Association. Awards will be presented by Palm Beach County School Board ...

68

Festival

Manly International Jazz Festival and Viva the band 2011

Manly International Jazz Festival and Viva the band 2011

Source: Peter Rappolt

Manly Council on the Northern Beaches of Sydney will be conducting their 34th Manly International Jazz Festival over the October long weekend on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd of October 2011. With a vibrant family atmosphere and a breathtaking ocean beachfront backdrop, the festival location is considered to be the best for a Jazz Festival in Australia and is reputed as Sydney's premier Jazz event. The usual patronage for this festival is in excess of 45,000 visitors per day and there ...

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Radio

Battle of the Bands This Week on Riverwalk Jazz

Battle of the Bands This Week on Riverwalk Jazz

Source: Don Mopsick

This week, Riverwalk Jazz presents an epic battle of the bands between The Jim Cullum Jazz Band and Banu Gibson's Hot Jazz from New Orleans. The battle, captured for our broadcast, took place in 1994 at the Zaragoza Theater at the Fiesta Texas Park in San Antonio Stage legend William Warfield acted as referee. Tap dancing sensation Savion Glover performed with both bands—with Banu Gibson in “Wrap Your Cares in Rhythm and Dance" and with the JCJB in the Bill ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Stage Fright 50th...

Universal Music Group
2021

buy

Woodstock

Left Field Media
2019

buy

The Band: 50th...

Universal Music Enterprises
2019

buy

The Band: A Musical...

Capitol Records
2005

buy

Rock of Ages Deluxe...

Capitol Records
2002

buy

The Band: Rock of Ages

Capitol Records
2000

buy

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