MEXICO CITY (apro).- A singular Canadian gem meant for world rock the remarkable guitarist and composer Jaime Robbie Robertson, who died at the age of 80 on Wednesday, August 9 in Los Angeles, California, after a long fight against cancer of prostate.
Between 1968 and 1976 Robbie Robertson created fifty songs that modified Anglo-Saxon popular music (later classified under the epithet “American”), thanks to the interpretive cohesion that he achieved with his group The Band on the handful of studio albums that the Canadian-Gabacho quintet recorded during those years.
Without a doubt, the voice of the North American drummer Levon Helm was definitive in The Band to provide the great master touch and popularity to many of those great songs, as well as the unison singing of his Canadian colleagues: the pianist Richard Manuel and the bassist Rick Danko, being also Garth Hudson on sax and keyboards who spread enormous sparks of love and strength to those emblematic pieces, for being the only one in the group who read music.
It is true that Robbie Robertson (son of an indigenous Mohawk mother and a Jewish father) achieved other recognitions with The Band for having been the guitarist who electrified Nobel folklorist Bob Dylan, in addition to producing good recordings as a soloist (some in support of the tribes of the Reservation of Six Nations in Canada), in addition to his musical contribution in films and series produced by his compadre Martin Scorsesse (“The Irishmen”); but it was his artistic career with The Band that made him famous and a billionaire.
Here are 10 songs to remember Canadian Jaime Royal Robertson, aka Robbie Robertson, born in Toronto, Ontario, on July 5, 1943.
1.- The Weight
Literally “The Load” is a fun song about how the best intentions turn into tremendous frustrations. Robbie Robertson took this idea from Luis Buñuel’s surreal films and sung by all, The Band recorded the piece on their first album, 1968’s “Music From Big Pink.”
2.- King Harvest (Has Surely Come)
Robertson’s masterful “staccato” requinto at the end of this cut (“The Planter King Arrived”), around a social story narrated by the peasant protagonist (in the voice of Richard Manuel) of how the solution against the corrupt landowners is to create a union and go on strike. One of the four songs listed here as favorites from the “brown album”, considered the best of The Band and simply entitled “The Band” (1969).
3.- The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
In total, Robbie Robertson added 31 songs by himself for The Band and 17 more co-authored with his colleagues, the most famous being “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, whose composition was always disputed by Levon Helm (the protagonist Virgil Cane). , born in Arkansas in the southern United States, for dealing with a subject he knew well: the civil war between the Northern States and the southern slaveholders: “The night when they razed old Dixieland.” The piece was made known internationally by the Mexican-American singer Joan Báez in 1971.
4.- Rag Mama Rag
Another magnificent interpretation of Levon Helm, included in the “brown album”. With violin by Danko, one of the must-haves at The Band concerts.
5.- Up On Creeple Creek
Nice piece by Robertson with the singing voice of Levon and the best example of the joint talent of the five stars of The Band.
6.- Stage Fright
From the self-titled 1970 album, stage fright is the theme. An evocation of Rick Danko about when Robbie Robertson got sick with the flu and in order to get on stage, he was hypnotized.
7.- The Shape I’m In
Something like “I feel from the cocol”, sung by Richard Manuel when he began to lose his temper drinking a couple of bottles of cognac a day. Manuel ended up committing suicide in 1986 during a tour of The Band (now without Robertson in the group, who had “dissolved” it in 1976 when they recorded and filmed “The Last Waltz” or “The Last Waltz” by Scorsesse).
8.- Smoke Signal
Helm Charges Again grants excellence to this melody by Robertson, around the “Smoke Signal” that we yearn to discover in life when everything seems uncertain or full of paranoia and “Conspiracies”, as the title of the album “Cahoots” says. ”, 1971.
9.- It Makes No Difference
Excellent introduction by Robertson’s Fender. There is no doubt that this beautiful piece of lost love shines largely due to the fantastic feeling that Rick Danko gave it singing, Levon and Richard’s choirs, plus Hudson’s sax.
10.- Christmas Must Be Tonight
A beautiful ballad from 1975 that speeds up in this alternative version, recalling that “Christmas must be tonight”, from the last studio album The Band recorded, “Islands”, released in 1977.
