the band

The Band took that ride across the great divide and found their king's harvest in the rustic nostalgia of this drunkard's dream.  With the acclaim of their debut 'Music From Big Pink', the group began work on the self-titled follow up in earnest.  They recorded in a rented house at 8850 Evanview Drive in West Hollywood that had once belonged to Sammy Davis Jr.  The sessions featured Rick Danko on bass guitar, fiddle, trombone, and vocals;   Levon Helm on drums, mandolin, rhythm guitar, and vocals;  Garth Hudson on electronic organ, clavinet, acoustic piano, accordion, melodica, soprano, tenor and baritone saxophones,  slide trumpet, and bass pedals;   Richard Manuel on acoustic piano, drums, baritone saxophone, harmonica, and vocals;  and Robbie Robertson on electric and acoustic guitars, and engineering;   with John Simon on production, engineering, tuba, electric piano, baritone horn, tenor saxophone, and "high school and peck horns";   and engineers Tony May and Joe Zagarino.   The record company agreed to supply equipment for the makeshift studio in the Hollywood hills.  

Simon recalls:   "Capitol took a long time delivering the stuff and installing the equipment.  Meanwhile, Robbie was writing and we were rehearsing some of the songs, but the group had a deadline because they were playing a gig that Bill Graham had put together in San Francisco. That meant we had to finish things up, and since we didn't quite finish them up we did 'Whispering Pines', 'Get Up Jake' and 'Jemima Surrender' at the old Hit Factory in New York, when Jerry Ragavoy owned it...I remember we needed a piano, and instead of getting a grand piano we got an old upright that we picked up some place in town. Meanwhile, Levon got his drums from a pawn shop, a set with wood rims...Sammy Davis had this pool house; a big, cavernous, barn-like room — and we had the mixing console in there along with the instruments. And what we would do to get our sound was do rough takes during our rehearsals, listen back to those rough takes, fix them up again, and then by the time we were ready to do it we didn't have to do any monitoring of the sound. The bass was recorded direct, the guitars were recorded with amps, and I know the drums were sitting behind some baffles in the room... The photo of that set-up on the album cover is pretty accurate, although we removed the baffles and a lot of the mics — aside from one RE15 — so that you could see the drums ... They had very few ego problems.  None of The Band's members cared who played what instrument. Whatever worked for the song was good. They'd been playing together for years and were consummate musicians."

Robertson would reveal at the time:    "On the new album, most of it was written while we were there. "To Kingdom Come," for example, was written while we were doing it...I am [really tired]. Ive been going for a long time. I'm just one of those kind of people who insists on doing more than he can. I've been wasted for a year. The new album has really wasted me too. We got this brainstorm of doing it ourselves, and I was writing the songs while we were doing it...One of them I wrote with Levon, and about three of them I wrote with Richard. And I wrote all the rest of them myself. Half of them were written while we were recording, and I engineered it. It was really a lot of work. I was wasted before we began, and I'm just not together after that...I don't really understand how it works, it just goes that way. Everybody plays a total different part in the group. There is no leader, nobody in the group wants to be a leader. I do a lot of the out-front stuff, but the guys do a lot of the back-front stuff...The new album is more complex. It was harder for us to play, for us to cut it. It's not the same thing over again. It sounds a lot different. We played it for quite a few people, and a lot of people who found it difficult to get next to Music From Big Pink find it easier to get close to this album. For what reason I, for the life of me, can't understand. I don't understand not being able to get next to Big Pink. It almost seems it should be the other way to me, but it isn't for some reason. I don't understand any of it anymore, I've come to realize. You do your best just trying to make it and I can't figure it out at all. It gets too complicated...On the new album, Richard plays drums on about half the songs. Not that he's a drummer at all, but it gives it a loose floppy feeling. You can tell the two styles very distinctly. Levon plays very fat, you know-boom, boom, boom-while Richard sounds very chunk, chunk, chunk. It's much higher sounding. It's an interesting thing to have two people who can do that. You can change your rhythm, it isn't always the same person doing the same thing. We switch instruments just to take some of the staleness out of it...I sang on "To Kingdom Come." On the new album I don't sing at all. I can hear it when someone else is doing it, but when I'm singing I can't hear it. That way I can tell if it's right if they're doing it. I was engineering, writing, and playing guitar, and I just didn't have time. Everybody played many, many instruments on this album.  Levon sings the lead on "Rag Mama Rag" which is very interesting because it has no bass, it has tuba instead. Richard's playing drums on it, Levon's playing mandolin. John Simon's playing tuba, and Garth's playing piano. Rick plays fiddle. It's totally switched around."

Helm considered:  "Some of the lyrics came out of a discussion we had one night about the times we’d seen and all had in common. It was an expression of feeling that came from five people. The group wanted to do one song that took in everything we could muster about life at that moment in time. It was the last thing we cut in California, and it was that magical feeling of ‘King Harvest’ that pulled us through. It was like, there, that’s The Band."


'The Band' went to number twenty-five in the UK, fifteen in Norway, nine in the US, and number two in Canada.  






http://theband.hiof.no/









"Up on Cripple Creek" became their biggest single, floating to number twenty-five in the US and ten in Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQq-jcT3qTY



When I get off of this mountain
You know where I want to go
Straight down the Mississippi river
To the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles Louisiana
Little Bessie, girl that I once knew
She told me just to come on by
If there's anything that she could do

Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Good luck had just stung me
To the race track I did go
She bet on one horse to win
And I bet on another to show
The odds were in my favor
I had 'em five to one
When that nag to win came around the track
Sure enough we had won

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

I took up all of my winnings
And I gave my little Bessie half
And she tore it up and threw it in my face
Just for a laugh
Now there's one thing in the whole wide world
I sure would like to see
That's when that little love of mine
Dips her doughnut in my tea

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Now me and my mate were back at the shack
We had Spike Jones on the box
She said, "I can't take the way he sings
But I love to hear him talk"
Now that just gave my heart a throb
To the bottom of my feet
And I swore as I took another pull
My Bessie can't be beat

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

As there's a flood out in California
And up North it's freezing cold
And this living on the road
Is getting pretty old
So I guess, I'll call up my big mama
Tell her I'll be rolling in
But you know, deep down
I'm kind of tempted
To go and see my Bessie again

Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don't have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one





"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOTNQF-o_mQ



Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again.
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive.
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it's a time I remember, oh so well,

The night they drove old Dixie down, and the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down, and the people were singin'. they went 
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,

Back with my wife in Tennessee, when one day she called to me,
"Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E. Lee!"
Now I don't mind choppin' wood, and I don't care if the money's no good.
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest,
But they should never have taken the very best. 

The night they drove old Dixie down, and the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down, and the people were singin'. they went 
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,

Like my father before me, I will work the land,
Like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand.
He was just eighteen, proud and brave, but a Yankee laid him in his grave,
I swear by the mud below my feet, 
You can't raise a Caine back up when he's in defeat. 

The night they drove old Dixie down, and the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down, and all the people were singin', they went 
Na, la, na, la, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,

The night they drove old Dixie down, and all the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down, and the people were singin', they went 
Na, la, na, la, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na







'The Band' 
full album:




All songs written and composed by Robbie Robertson, unless otherwise noted.

Side one
1. "Across the Great Divide"   2:53
2. "Rag Mama Rag"   3:04
3. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"   3:33
4. "When You Awake" (Richard Manuel, Robertson) 3:13
5. "Up on Cripple Creek"   4:34
6. "Whispering Pines" (Manuel, Robertson) 3:58
Side two
7. "Jemima Surrender" (Levon Helm, Robertson) 3:31
8. "Rockin' Chair"   3:43
9. "Look Out Cleveland"   3:09
10. "Jawbone" (Manuel, Robertson) 4:20
11. "The Unfaithful Servant"   4:17
12. "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)"   3:39