Recent Topics

Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 10,737
  • Total Topics: 1,372
  • Online today: 222
  • Online ever: 879
  • (Jan 21, 20, 05:49:15 PM)
Users Online
Users: 0
Guests: 202
Total: 202

The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Started by Maxx, Apr 13, 11, 01:06:08 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Maxx

The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down


The lyrics[1] tell of the last days of the American Civil War and its aftermath. Dixie is a nickname for the Southern Confederate states. Confederate soldier Virgil Caine "served on the Danville train" (the Richmond and Danville Railroad, the main supply line into the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia from Danville, Virginia, and by connection, the rest of the South). General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia is holding the line at the Siege of Petersburg. As part of the offensive campaign, Union Army General George Stoneman's forces "tore up the track again".
The lyrics capture a lamentation in defeat, and are quite historically specific. Trying to escape along the route of the Danville train was one of the last battles of Robert E. Lee's army—there is a bit of poetic license regarding the year. Stoneman led his dramatic cavalry raid into rebel territory in May 1863, as part of the Battle of Chancellorsville. This was the first time the Union Cavalry was its own Corps and not just broken up and assigned to infantry units; this was the first flexing of Union Cavalry muscle.
A lot of mainstream history and the defeated Union General at Chancellorsville weren't happy with Stoneman's performance. But as this song suggests and as indicated by some Southern sentiment at the time, this behind-the-lines major all-cavalry assault was something new and shocking not done by the Union before. Stoneman "tore up the tracks" on his way in, and he "tore up the tracks" on his way out.
The song's lyrics mention 1865, two years later. This time it was Union General Philip Sheridan leading the cavalry that "cut up the tracks", and blocked the escape of Lee's army after the fall of Petersburg, attacking the fleeing Confederates and holding off their counter-attack. This was the end of Lee's army; he surrendered.
The siege of Petersburg lasted from June 1864 to April 1865, when Lee finally had to flee, and both Petersburg and Richmond fell. Lee's troops were starving at the end ("We were hungry / Just barely alive"). Virgil relates and mourns the loss of his brother: "He was just eighteen, proud and brave / But a Yankee laid him in his grave".
However Stoneman's cavalry did conduct a series of raids from 1864 to 1865 in Southwestern Virginia and Northern North Carolina. During this period the Greensboro-Danville railroad line was a focus and could be what the train mentioned traversed.
Ralph J. Gleason (in the review in Rolling Stone (US edition only) of October 1969) explains why this song has such an impact on listeners:


    Nothing I have read ... has brought home

the overwhelming human sense of history that this song does. The only thing I can relate it to at all is The Red Badge of Courage. It's a remarkable song, the rhythmic structure, the voice of Levon and the bass line with the drum accents and then the heavy close harmony of Levon, Richard and Rick in the theme, make it seem impossible that this isn't some traditional material handed down from father to son straight from that winter of 1865 to today. It has that ring of truth and the whole aura of authenticity.
  Robertson claimed that he had the music to the song in his head but had no idea what it was to be about: "At some point [the concept] blurted out to me. Then I went and I did some research and I wrote the lyrics to the song." Robertson continued:


    When I first went down South, I remember that a quite common expression would be, "Well don't worry, the South's gonna rise again." At one point when I heard it I thought it was kind of a funny statement and then I heard it another time and I was really touched by it. I thought, "God, because I keep hearing this, there's pain here, there is a sadness here." In Americana land, it's a kind of a beautiful sadness