.................................the blog nobody reads: Remembering Levon Helm (May 26, 1940

Sunday, May 26, 2024

Remembering Levon Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012)

Levon Helm poses for a portrait in October 1969 in Woodstock, New York. 
(Photo by David Gahr)

Mark Lavon Helm was born near Marvell on May 26, 1940. He grew up in Turkey Scratch, working on the family’s farm and singing and playing music at home and at church. Helm said he decided to become a musician at the age of six, after seeing bluegrass legend Bill Monroe perform. Two years later he began playing guitar but switched to drums after seeing a left-handed drummer in a traveling musical show. It was in nearby West Helena that he met another Arkansas native, Ronnie Hawkins, who was playing a show without a drummer. His piano player knew Levon and suggested that he join the band that evening on drums. It was Helm’s “big break.”
(If you're wondering, it became Levon when, the story goes, his band mates had "trouble pronouncing Lavon." His family and close friends just called him Lee.)
After graduating high school in Marvell, he joined Hawkins’ band full time. Hawkins and his group headed to Canada – Ronnie Hawkins liked living and playing in Canada, where rockabilly was extremely popular. In 1959, Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks were signed to a record deal. During this time, Hawkins added several musicians to the roster – pianist Richard Manuel, bassist Rick Danko, keyboard and saxophone player Garth Hudson and guitarist Robbie Robertson. The four Canadian musicians and Helm would go on to form their own group after leaving Ronnie Hawkins…and eventually, after playing as Bob Dylan’s backup band, the five went out on their own…and The Band was formed.
In 1968, the Band released their critically acclaimed debut album, Music from the Big Pink. They continued to record and perform together until 1976, when one of the members decided he’d had enough of life on the road. The Band’s last concert, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving 1976, was recorded and directed by Martin Scorsese as a documentary, The Last Waltz. Also on hand for the one-of-a-kind musical event was Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John and Van Morrison. The Last Waltz is considered by many to be the greatest concert documentary ever made.
However, Levon Helm was not one of those people. Helm, according to his autobiography This Wheel’s on Fire, wanted the Band to continue recording and performing live. One of the other band members did not. Levon continued recording and performing live (sometimes on his own or with former members of the Band or even with other groups such as Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band). It was his friend Tommy Lee Jones that suggested him for the part of Loretta Lynn’s father in the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter. After that, he appeared in nearly 20 movies, including the The Right Stuff, The End of the Line and In the Electric Mist, his last film performance.