James Beaty: OPINION: RAMBLIN: Robbie Robertson and The Band -- creating Americana music

Aug. 13—It's always a shame to lose a great musician, singer or songwriter — but the loss seems even more acute when all of those talents are held by a single artist.

A brilliant songwriter, a distinctive lead guitarist and also a singer — more on his later solo albums than with The Band — Robbie Robertson filled all of those roles.

Maybe because in his last recorded interviews I'd seen, he appeared full of energy and drive, the news of his passing on Aug. 3 after what his family called "a long illness" came as a shock.

Sure, Robertson turned 80 this year, but some of his well-known contemporaries have also reached that milestone or passed it and are still actively performing and recording, including Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Mick Jagger and Robertson's former boss, Bob Dylan.

I'd been anticipating seeing a new round of interviews with Robertson in the next few months, since he's written and performed on the soundtrack of director Martin Scorsese's new movie, the Oklahoma-filmed "Killers of the Flower Moon," now set for an October release.

Not only is The Band one of my all-time favorite bands, I also admired Robertson as a solo artist, ranging from his self-titled debut album "Robbie Robertson" in 1987 all the way up to 2019's "Sinematic."

How many artists can be said to have created an entire genre of music?

Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys are credited with creating bluegrass music and musicians around Stillwater and Texas created Red Dirt music, but other examples are harder to find.

Robbie Robertson and The Band are widely credited with creating what is now known as Americana music — not bad for a band consisting of four Canadians and one American from Arkansas.

Robertson also wrote one of my favorite music books ever, his 2016 autobiography "Testimony."

He also figures largely in what many — myself included — consider one of the best concert movies ever filmed, "The Last Waltz." The Martin Scorsese film features. not only The Band in concert, but many of their musical friends including Dylan, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton. Dr. John, Paul Butterfield and others joining them for their last performance as a group with all of the original members onstage.

Not only did The Band perform their own songs during the concert, they performed alongside all of the aforementioned artists as well.

When Robertson and The Band arrived on the music scene in America and Europe, they did so with a resounding bang — first backing up Dylan on the concert stage after he began performing live, electric rock music to the dismay of many of his folkie purist fans in 1965 and 1966.

They were the group backing Dylan during that tumultuous British tour when they were constantly booed by folk music fans for daring to play loud rock music.

They were onstage with Dylan when a British fan famously yelled "Judas" at him for daring to play — gasp! — rock music instead of sticking to an acoustic folk style.

Unfazed, Dylan responded with "I don't believe you. You're a liar" before he and the group that would later become known as The Band launched into an incendiary version of "Like a Rolling Stone."

Soon after they returned to the states, Dylan had a motorcycle wreck. Although there have lingering questions about the nature of his injuries, Dylan's scheduled tour dates were canceled.

While he recovered at his home near Woodstock, New York, the guys who would comprise The Band lived nearby. Mainly working in a studio basement at the house they called Big Pink due to its bright pink color, they recorded what became known as the legendary "Basement Tapes."

Dylan wouldn't tour again for eight years, but when he did, his former bandmates, now known simply as The Band, would once again be backing him up on the concert stage, as well as now performing a set of their own.

Long after The Band had ceased backing Dylan and became huge artists in their own right, my brother Larry once gave me a musical reality check .

I had returned home elated after seeing Bob Dylan perform with his then-current band at the Zoo Amphitheater in Oklahoma City.

Former News-Capital Editor Matt Lane and Matt's nephew Clint Bagley, also attended the outdoor concert. We didn't have advance tickets, so as we stood in line to purchase some from the box office, heavy storm clouds with flashes of lightning loomed to the north and were headed our way.

No matter. We were determined to see the Dylan and his then-new band.

We purchased our tickets, then got in line to wait for the gates to open as the storm clouds approached.

Dylan and his band took the stage, opening with the old Johnny and Jack song "Hummingbird."

By the time they launched into their eighth song, the rain clouds were overhead — but instead of the threatened deluge, a gentle rain, little more than a sprinkle, fell on the outdoor audience.

I don't know if Dylan planned the set list or if it happened spontaneously, but his next song as the rain started falling was "A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall."

That's one of the things I most remember about the concert.

Another is the smoking hot band Dylan had backing him up for the performance. Of course he had longtime musical leader Tony Garnier on bass, both electric and standup acoustic, and David Kemper, a fantastic drummer, played in Dylan's band at that time.

But his not-so-secret weapons came from blazing guitarist Charlie Sexton and from multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell, another remarkable guitarist who also played mandolin, fiddle, steel guitar and electric slide guitar.

Not only that, Sexton and Campbell doubled on harmony vocals on a number of songs, giving them an added dimension.

A few days later, I ran into my brother, Larry, and he asked what I'd been up to lately.

I told him I'd just seen Bob Dylan perform with his best band ever.

My brother, who knew a bit about my concert-going history, raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Better than The Band?"

Well, of course not better than The Band — but looking back on that time, although The Band had once been Dylan's band and had indeed backed him up during their dual concert when I saw them together at the Tarrant County Convention Center in Fort Worth, I no longer considered The Band as Dylan's band.

By that time, The Band were already colossal recording and performing artists in their own right, having changed the course of music with their albums such as "Music From Big Pink," "The Band" and "Stage Fright."

Consisting of virtuoso musicians and three of the best singers in rock or any other field for that matter, the group consisted of Robertson, drummer Levon Helm, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel and keyboardist Garth Hudson. Sadly, Hudson is now the The Band's only surviving member.

Helm, Danko and Manuel were the three main vocalists in The Band, but it didn't take me long to figure out Robertson's role when it came to the group's material. Although they all wrote songs in the beginning, sometimes in collaboration, Robertson took on more and more of the songwriting role with each successive album.

Robertson later said he had to write more because Helm, Danko and Manuel were writing less and less.

Their first three albums were brilliant.

By the time they got to their fourth album, "Cahoots," some of the earlier magic started to dissipate. Some songs, such as "Last of the Blacksmiths," sounded like a forced effort to return to earlier themes.

Even so, "Cahoots" contained one of the group's best one-two punches ever on the album's two opening tracks, "Life is a Carnival" and the debut of a then-new Dylan song "When I Paint My Masterpiece."

They rebounded later with another brilliant album, "Northern Lights-Southern Cross."

Following "The Last Waltz," a reformed Band would continue to perform — but Robertson never performed with all of The Band members again, moving to solo work and as a writer and musical director for Scorsese's movies.

More than many of their more famous rock music contemporaries, I have a feeling the music created by Robbie Robertson and The Band will endure — not only for their own recordings and performances but for their impact on contemporary and future generations through their creation of Americana music as well.