The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

How about Charlie Daniel's "The South is Going to Do It (Again)" or Skynyrd​'s "Sweet Home Alabama." 

Well gather 'round, gather 'round children
Get down, well you can get down children
Get loud, well you can get loud and be proud
Well you can be proud here
Be proud to a rebel 'cause South's gonna do it again
Yes it is

Yes that was stellar, thank you. I've never heard this song as a neo-confederate anthem, but I don't hear what some others may. I've always understood it as a perspective of the social and political stratification in the south of the time, than a celebration of the "southern thing". agree with your take El Niño, and that Joan Baez wouldn't have touched it if she thought it could be interpreted that way.

P.S. it was Roy Buchanan who taught Robbie Robertson, who replaced Roy in the Hawks, how to play the telecaster. 

Is Virgil Kane an unreliable narrator? The scenes depicted don't glorify the South--"In the winter of '65 / We were hungry, just barely alive / By May the 10th, Richmond had fell"--and the title of the song itself paints a picture of ruin. Where's the unreliability?

I never saw the song as anything more than a depiction of loss from the perspective of the losers, and I think Virgil Kane himself would disagree with Charlie Daniels' take on the south rising up again: "You can't raise a Kane back up / When he's in defeat." But hey, that's just me. Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.

The song was never played live again by the reformed Band 1983-1986 and that pretty much sums up what Levon Helm thought of it, being the only southerner non Canadian in The Band. 

As a fully Reconstructed southern libtard I always heard the song as a lament that none the less accepts defeat with the notion that it was time to try to move on.

Never really gave it much more thought than that.

A couple years ago I was sitting around with a bass player friend doing the improv and talking about maybe getting a group going.  We didn't and he died of covid last summer.

That day I showed him a list of tunes that I might be interested in working up, hippie trash tunes with mostly vocals different from my last group, an instrumental trio.

Drove dixie down was on there and my friend really reacted negatively to it.  Got me to reconsider my ambivalence  and I decided I would never play it.

Fuck that confederate shit.  Hell they even got rid of the Admiral Semmes statue after BLM demos last year. He lost the Battle of Mobile Bay to Farragaut. the damn the torpedoes guy  

I still listen to pack up the plantation and southern accents

It's a good song, always liked it, always will.

The song was never played live again by the reformed Band 1983-1986 and that pretty much sums up what Levon Helm thought of it

I think it sums up more what Levon thought about Robbie than anything else.

> But they should never / Have taken the very best

Those are very ambiguous lines to hang an argument on, Nino. Who are "they"? The North presumably? And likewise, "the very best" is not well-defined at all. Does "the very best" refer back to the losses noted in earlier verses? Richmond? Dixie? The honor and dignity of the Southern Gentleman as embodied in Robert E. Lee? Or does "the very best" that's been taken foreshadow the loss of Virgil's brother a few verses later? If that's the case, then the ones who did the taking could very well have been the rebel army that conscripted him.

All we can do here is raise questions and speculate about what it all means, but again, I don't see Virgil as unreliable. I do see something like truth is aiq's assessment of the song as "a lament that none the less accepts defeat" and it feels like an honest lament to me. That fits the overall tone of the piece, but still doesn't really explain those major chords in the chorus.

Interesting discussion there, guys.

I think the best songwriter's wanna keep you geussing. Hey, they were using doped-up back then, too.  ;-)

>>>>Have taken the very best

I always assumed it was referring to the narrator's brother.  Poor people have always fought and died for rich people's wars and how many southerners dealt with ruin and defeat is an integral part of the American experience that the song captures quite well. 

Yeah, well, it's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy that I'm doing in D [pause] minor, which, I always find is really the saddest of all keys, really, I don't know why; it makes people weep instantly to play...

I always assumed it was referring to the narrator's brother. <<

I always assumed everyone assumed this.

Both Paul. 

What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?

A♭ minor

I like how Jerry Garcia can turn it into a loooonnngg Dirge when he's all Junqued up. Those long, slow versions are a bit soporific,  but if you're in the mood for that,  Great stuff.

John Kahn also is a big part of "Those" versions as he can space it out and not be in a rush.

Defeat sucks!

@Freebird

-this one's called Lick My Love Pump