10. The Band – Acadian Driftwood (live) (Robbie Robertson)
(von: Northern Lights – Southern Cross, Capitol 1975)
Nach diesen etwas leichteren Stücken (obwohl, Poe …) ist jetzt wieder Zeit für Essentials: „Acadian Driftwood“, das vielleicht grösste von Robbie Robertsons historischen Mini-Epen (aus dem natürlîch mein Nickname entliehen ist) und eins der drei Meisterwerke auf dem letzten richtig guten Album der Gruppe, „Northern Lights – Southern Cross“.
Rob BowmanThe song chronicles a people displaced: the Acadians, who were exiled from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the 1750s. (Most of the Acadians eventually made their way to Southwest Louisiana, where they became known as Cajuns.) Robbie’s ability to create a fictitious historical voice that speaks so eloquently for several thousand real ones is a rare gift.
His initial fascination with the story was a result of seeing a Canadian film entitled „L’Acadie“ on TV in Montreal. „The power and emotion of this story,“ recalls Robbie, „moved me in the same way that I was moved by ‚[The] Grapes of Wrath‘, where people just have to move, have to go somewhere to find a new home. Plus there was a parallel in this to my own story of going from Canada down to the deep South. I’m taking the side once again of the underdog in this like I did in ‚The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,‘ looking at the story from the side that didn’t win. It also gave me the opportunity to explore the musicality of the Acadian sound being transformed in to the Cajun sound. It was very rich territory for me to explore.“
To create the appropriate feel, The Band invited ace bluegrass fiddler Byron Berline to overdub violin on the finished backing track. Incredibly enough, Berline had first seen the members of The Band with Ronnie Hawkins back when he was a college student in Norman, Oklahoma in 1962 or 1963. A couple of years later he went to see The Hawks on their own. Arriving early, Berline and a friend of his killed time in the parking lot out back, playing violin for a couple of girls that were hanging out with them. Partway into their little session Levon Helm came up to them and asked Berline to sit in with The Hawks that night.
Berline traf in den folgenden Jahren erneut auf Robertson, sang Background Vocals auf Dylans „Knockin‘ on Heaven’s Door“ und er brachte 1975 Bob Dylan mit seinem ehemaligen Boss Bill Monroe zusammen von dem Dylan lernen wollte, die Mandoline zu spielen. Mit Garth Hudsons Akkordeon sorgt seine Fiedel für den passenden Tonfall. Die drei Stimmen der Band – Levon Helm, Rick Danko und Richard Manuel – wechseln sich ab und machen den Song damit zu einem der letzten der Gruppe, in dem sie diese Stärke ausspielt.
Rob BowmanRichard plays clavinet while Robbie adds an acoustic guitar and Garth further contributes piccolo and bagpipe chanter. To capture the old-time feel of the French at the end, Robbie consulted Quebecois lyricists and playwrights Marcel Lefebvre and François Cousineau to help with the translation. It is hard to imagine another group in the world of popular music being able to pull this off.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #156 – Benny Golson (1929–2024) – 29.10.2024 – 22:00 / #157: Benny Golson & Curtis Fuller – 12.11.2024 – 22:00 / #158 – 19.12.2024 – 20:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba