drove old dixie down meaning
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The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is a song written by Robbie Robertson and originally recorded by the Canadian-American roots rock group The Band in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. Levon Helm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the American Civil War, when George Stoneman was raiding southwest Virginia. The song appeared at number 245 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
Joan Baez’s version peaked at #3 on the Hot 100 on 2 October 1971; it did likewise on the Cashox Top 100 chart. However, on the Record World Magazine Top Singles chart for the week of September 25, 1971, the Baez single hit #1 for one week.[1]
Behind the Song: The Band, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
The Band is one of the most respected and successful acts of the rock era, but you wouldn’t know it from their chart history. Some of the group’s legendary songs, like “The Weight” and “Ophelia,” never even cracked the top 50 as singles. “The Night They Drove OId Dixie Down,” from the group’s second album, became one of their best-known numbers as well as a classic story song, even though it was originally the B-side of the single “Up On Cripple Creek.”
A Civil War narrative written in the first-person voice of a southerner by The Band’s guitarist Robbie Robertson, and sung by The Band’s southern drummer Levon Helm, “The Night They Drove OId Dixie Down” chronicles the final days of the War Between the States through the eyes of a southern farmer and Confederate soldier named Virgil Caine. In his 2016 book Testimony, Robertson recounted the origins of the song, discussing the fact that he, like everyone in the group but Helm, was from Canada and not all that educated about the Civil War.
Civil War
“There was a chord progression and melody rumbling through my head, but I didn’t know yet what the song was about. I played it on the piano one day for Levon. He liked the way it stopped and started, free of tempo. I flashed back to when he first took me to meet his parents in Marvell, Arkansas, and his daddy said, ‘Don’t worry, Robin – the South is going to rise again.’ I told Levon I wanted to write lyrics about the Civil War from a southern family’s point of view. ‘Don’t mention Abraham Lincoln in the lyrics’ was his only advice.
‘That won’t go down too well.’ I asked him to drive me to the Woodstock library so I could do a little research on the Confederacy. They didn’t teach that stuff in Canadian schools. When I conjured up a story about Virgil Caine and his kin against this historical backdrop, the song came to life for me. Though I did stop and wonder, Can I get away with this? You call this rock ‘n’ roll? Maybe!”
Robertson
The song has faced criticism for some historical liberties and inaccuracies, but it’s always worked with the listeners, most of whom probably don’t know Civil War history any better than Robertson did, and who just view it as a good story song sung by a guy with a distinctive voice. The song found its greatest commercial success not through The Band, though.
But through folksinger Joan Baez, who took the song to number three on the Billboard charts for her highest chart appearance ever. It included a lyric change, as Baez had misheard the original; where Helm sang By May 10th Richmond had fell, Baez sang I took the train to Richmond that fell. But her mis-hearing it gave Robertson a big hit as the writer, no matter what the words were.
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” established Robertson as a formidable songwriter, and Helm went on to become a beloved Americana figure. You can visit The Band’s website to see a page with numerous facts, opinions and discussions about Robertson’s lyrics for this song here.
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Earlier this month, Rolling Stone published an interview with singer-songwriter Early James in which James spoke of his decision to change the lyrics to the Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” while performing the song at a recent Last Waltz–themed tribute concert in Nashville, Tennessee. He had rewritten the text to be a celebration of the Confederacy’s fall and an excoriation of the Lost Cause mythology that’s stubbornly refused to die in the 155 years since the war’s end.
Recalling his Alabama childhood, James says, “People take that song as their anthem. When people had songs as their ringtone, I remember that being one.” As someone who has lived in the South since 2014, I too can attest to this, a curious position for a song written by a Canadian in the late 1960s. (James himself wryly remarks that if the Alabamians of his youth had known of Robbie Robertson’s nationality, “they would’ve hated it!”)
Troublesome
I have found myself thinking quite a bit about “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” lately, probably the most troublesome piece of music in the catalogue of the Band, who are one of my favorite artists. Any experience of art is by definition subjective, which is one of the reasons that discussing troublesome art is often so tricky; everyone’s mileage will vary.
By “troublesome” art I don’t mean things like Triumph of the Will or The Birth of a Nation, worksthat are so odious that if you’re unbothered by them, there is something wrong with you. I mean things like Lolitaor Heart of Darknessor The Searchers that provoke a spectrum of responses. I have heard thoughtful people express great (if usually qualified) admiration for these works, and I’ve heard other thoughtful people emphatically say that they’d rather spend their time elsewhere, and I think all of these reactions can be right.
The Weight
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is not my favorite Band song by any stretch, but with the exception of “The Weight,” it’s probably their most well-known composition, partly due to Joan Baez’s hit cover of the song, which reached No. 3 on the charts in 1971. (The original recording appeared on the Band’s self-titled second album, released in September 1969.) It’s also one of their most acclaimed works, making lists of history’s greatest songs as compiled by everyone from Rolling Stone and Time to Pitchfork.
The song is set sometime in the late 19th century and tells the story of a Southern man looking back on the fall of the Confederacy, and it’s come to resonate among a certain good-old-boy set as a musical emblem of regional chauvinism and neo-Confederate nostalgia, as James’ recollection suggests. I happen to think this is a mishearing of the song (more on that in a bit).
2009
But the meaning of music never entirely belongs to the music itself, and for that reason I understand the position of those who’d prefer to relegate it to the dustbin. Back in 2009, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a brief essay on his own response to the song that still sticks with me: “Another story about the blues of Pharaoh,” wrote Coates, caustically and not incorrectly.
1971
Time named “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to their “All-Time 100 List of Greatest Songs.” It’s been enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs the shaped the genre. Pitchfork called it the 41st best song of the 60’s, and Rolling Stone put it at #245 on their list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Beyond The Band and Joan Baez, the song has been covered by countless artists, from Johnny Cash, to The Allman Brothers, to soul artist Dobie Gray, to the Jerry Garcia Band.
Is in defeat
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