He Shall Be Levon...

The Helmsman of The Band, sadly gone ten years ago today.

On this day in 2012, ten years ago, Levon Helm, singer and drummer with The Band and then several fine solo albums, died at the age of 71. So: a grab bag of tribute memories below. Enjoy, then subscribe, it’s still free.

Easter Sunday, 1968, outside a pinkish house upstate.

Not long ago, on one of my visits.

And also, outside Woodstock….

Here from 1978, he sings and drums “Up on Cripple Creek.”

Levon on how they ended up in the pink near Woodstock.

His acting debut, in Coal Miner’s Daughter.

You’ve enjoyed the fantastic“Don’t Do It” opening to The Last Waltz, but that was severely truncated, so here’s the rarely-viewed full, B & W, version.

And way back at the beginning, Levon getting his start, drumming and singing, with Ronnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, in Canada.

A few decades later, Levon on Letterman, after his famous no-show.

And Remembering Sandy

Forty-four years ago this week Sandy Denny collapsed down a flight of stairs in London and died four days later. She was 31. This, below, was one of her last (and more obscure) songs--sort of her "Four Seasons"--and reveals, sadly, that her finest songwriting and singing, contrary to what some have suggested, possibly lay ahead. Greil Marcus in his obit at Rolling Stone: "Denny was less a folk singer than a singer who meant to defeat time, and that may be why, in her strongest moments, no female singer of the last ten years could touch her. As with Van Morrison on 'Astral Weeks' and 'Veedon Fleece' no one else could go where she went." Her daughter, happy to say, in New Zealand (we are Facebook friends), is keeping her legacy alive with art work and re-issues, including a new one we will cover later.