Across the Great Divide The Band and America

by Barney Hoskyns

The Band's members - four Canadians: Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and one drummer from Arkansas, Levon Helm - fashioned something magically new out of components that were musically traditional: old-time country and gospel, Preservation Hall jazz, medicine-show vaudeville. They started as The Hawks, a teenage backup group for rockabilly renegade Ronnie Hawkins, touring the endless highways through the heart of the South. Eventually they headed north, where they left Hawkins to become Bob Dylan's band on the revolutionary electric tours of 1965 and 1966. From there they retreated to Woodstock, and, during a period of intense personal closeness and creativity, produced two of the most revered and hallmark albums of the era - Music from the Big Pink and The Band.

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