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Levon Helm
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Mark Lavon Helm (born May 26, 1940), better known as Levon Helm, is an American rock musician and actor most famous as the drummer (and often vocalist) for the rock group The Band. Helm is known for his deeply soulful, country-style voice, and powerful drumming style highlighted on many of the The Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", "Ophelia" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #91 in the list of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.
was born in Marvell, Arkansas, and grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet west of Helena, Arkansas, the son of Nell and Diamond Helm, who were cotton farmers and also great lovers of music who encouraged their children to play and sing.
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Encyclopedia
Mark Lavon Helm (born May 26, 1940), better known as Levon Helm, is an American rock musician and actor most famous as the drummer (and often vocalist) for the rock group The Band. Helm is known for his deeply soulful, country-style voice, and powerful drumming style highlighted on many of the The Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", "Ophelia" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #91 in the list of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Biography
Early years
Helm was born in Marvell, Arkansas, and grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet west of Helena, Arkansas, the son of Nell and Diamond Helm, who were cotton farmers and also great lovers of music who encouraged their children to play and sing. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe & his Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided right then to become a musician.
Arkansas in the 1940's and 50's was at the confluence of a variety of musical styles -- blues, country and R&B -- that later became know as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles listening to the Grand Ole Opry and R&B on radio station WLAC out of Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw travelling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time.
Another early influence on Helm was the work of blues harmonica, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, aka "Rice Miller," who played blues and early R&B on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Jr. Lockwood. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire - Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, The Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and a fellow Arkansan, Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. After graduating from high school, he was invited to join Hawkins's band, The Hawks, who were a popular bar and club act across the South and also in Canada, where rockabilly acts were very popular. Soon after Helm joined The Hawks, they moved to Toronto where, in 1959, they signed with Roulette Records and released several singles, including a few hits.
In the early 1960s Helm and Hawkins recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring under the name "Levon and The Hawks," and later as "The Canadian Squires" before finally changing back to "The Hawks." They recorded two singles, but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada and on the East Coast where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore.
The Band
By the mid 1960s, Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music, and asked The Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm returned to Arkansas for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by Mickey Jones. During his absence, The Hawks had taken up residence in Woodstock, New York, and began writing their own songs; Danko and Manuel also shared writing credits with Dylan on a few songs. Here they recorded a large volume of demo tapes, many with fellow Woodstock resident Dylan (who had completely withdrawn from public life the previous year). These recordings were widely bootlegged, and the best tracks were officially released only in 1975 as The Basement Tapes double album. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style.
In 1967 Helm returned to the group, which by then was christened simply as The Band. They recorded Music From Big Pink, which catapulted them into stardom. On Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist and Helm sang mainly backup, with the outstanding exception of "The Weight," but as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked south for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's growling but eerily plaintive vocals (alone or in harmony with Danko), both enriched by and anchored in lush Southern texture. Singing lead, Helm brought out common elements in folk and blues vocal styles, often assuming the character of a kind of mythical Southern everyman, who witnesses bewildering events and reacts to them with wonder and rage. Helm played drums for perhaps 85% of The Band's songs, including most of those for which he sang lead. But the entire group was multi-instrumental, and for certain songs the group featured Manuel on drums, Helm on mandolin (as on "Evangeline"), rhythm guitar (the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp" is by Helm), or bass (while Danko played fiddle).
Helm remained with The Band until their 1976 farewell performance, The Last Waltz, which was recorded in a documentary film by Martin Scorsese. Although many now know Helm through his appearance in the concert film – a performance remarkable for the fact that Helm's vocal tracks appear substantially as he sang them during a grueling concert – he repudiated his involvement with the film shortly after the final scenes were shot and, in his autobiography, offers scathing criticisms of the film and of his former bandmate, Robertson, who produced the film.
As solo artist, The Band reunited
With the breakup of The Band in its original form, Helm began working on a solo album Levon Helm and the RCO All Stars, which was followed soon thereafter by Levon Helm. He recorded solo albums in 1980 and 1982 entitled American Son and (once again) Levon Helm. Helm also participated in Paul Kennerley's 1980 country music concept album, The Legend of Jesse James, singing the role of Jesse James alongside Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Albert Lee.
In 1983, The Band reunited without Robbie Robertson, but then Manuel committed suicide while on tour in 1986. Helm, Danko and Hudson continued in The Band, releasing the album Jericho in 1993 and High on the Hog in 1996. The final album from The Band was the 30th anniversary album, Jubilation, released in 1998.
Helm published an autobiography entitled This Wheel's on Fire in 1993.
Acting
Helm has also had a considerable career as an actor. He has appeared in the movies The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Shooter, Smooth Talk, The Right Stuff, Feeling Minnesota, End of the Line and Coal Miner's Daughter, among many others.
The Midnight Ramble
Helm's performance career in the early 2000s revolved mainly around the Midnight Ramble, at his home and studio, "the Barn" in Woodstock, New York. These concerts, featuring Helm and a variety of musical guests, allowed Helm to raise money for medical bills and to resume performing after a nearly career-ending bout with cancer.
Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in the late 1990s after suffering hoarseness. Advised to undergo laryngectomy, Helm instead underwent an arduous regimen of radiation treatments at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Although the tumor was successfully removed, his vocal cords were damaged, and his clear, powerful tenor voice was replaced by a quiet rasp. Initially Helm only played drums and relied on guest vocalists at the Rambles, but Helm's singing voice grew stronger and on January 10, 2004, he sang for the first time at one of his Ramble Sessions. In 2007, during production of Dirt Farmer, he estimated that his singing voice was 80% recovered.
The Levon Helm Band features his daughter Amy Helm, along with Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Jimmy Vivino, Mike Merritt, Brian Mitchell, Erik Lawrence, Steven Bernstein and blues harmonica player Little Sammy Davis. He hosts Midnight Rambles at his home in Woodstock, New York that are open to the public.
The Midnight Ramble is an outgrowth of an idea Helm explained to Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. Earlier in the 20th century Helm explained, traveling medicine shows and music shows such as F.S. Walcott Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, featuring African-American blues singers and dancers would put on titillating performances in rural areas. This was also turned into a song by the Band, "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show", the name altered so the lyric was easier to sing.
"After the finale, they'd have the midnight ramble," Helm told Scorsese. With young children off the premises, the show resumed: "the songs would get a little bit juicier. The jokes would get a little funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it a few times. A lot of the rock and roll duck walks and moves came from that."
Helm's Rambles do not feature nudity but often go on into the wee hours. Artists who have performed at the Rambles include Helm's former bandmate Garth Hudson, as well as Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Chris Robinson, Allen Toussaint, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan and Jimmy Vivino of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien's" The Max Weinberg 7. Others have been Sean Costello, The Muddy Waters Tribute Band, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Bow Thayer, Luther "Guitar" Junior Johnson, Ricki Lee Jones, Kate Taylor, Ollabelle, The Holmes Brothers, Catherine Russell, Norah Jones and Johnny Johnson.
For drumming, Levon Helm has switched to the matched grip in recent years, making for a less-busy style of drumming as opposed to his years with The Band, when played with the traditional grip.
Helm tours only occasionally, but in 2007 gave a handful of shows in larger venues including one at the Beacon Theater on March 16-17, 2007. Dr. John and Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers Band, Govt. Mule) and Garth Hudson played at the concerts as well along with several other guests. The Alexis P. Suter Band was the opening act. Helm is a favorite of Don Imus and has been frequently featured on Imus in the Morning.
Dirt Farmer and After
Fall 2007 saw the release of Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo album since 1982. Dedicated to Helm's parents and co-produced by his daughter Amy, the album combines traditional tunes Levon recalled from his youth with newer songs (by Steve Earle, Paul Kennerley and others) which flow from similar historical streams.
The album was released to almost immediate critical acclaim, and earned him a Grammy Award in the Traditional Folk Album category for 2007.
Helm declined to attend the Grammy Awards ceremony, instead holding a "Midnight Gramble" and celebrating the birth of his grandson, named Lavon (Lee) Henry Collins -- Levon's birth name is Mark Lavon Helm and he was called by "Lavon" (luh VAHN) until other member's of Ronnie Hawkin's band started calling him "Levon" (LEE vahn) because they found "Lavon" hard to pronounce.
In 2008 Levon Helm performed at Warren Haynes' Mountain Jam Music Festival in Hunter, NY. Helm played along side Warren Haynes on the last day of the three-day festival. Levon also joined Bob Weir & Ratdog on stage as they closed out the festival.
Levon Helm is scheduled to perform at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, to be held in June from the 12th through the 15th.
According to his publicist, Levon Helm will be releasing a new album in June of 2009.
Tributes
Elton John's 1971 song "Levon" is a tribute to Helm. Marc Cohn wrote the song "Listening to Levon" in 2007.
External links
- Levon Helm's
- Levon Helm's
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