Background and career
Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (May 26, 1940 – April 19, 2012) was an American musician and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Helm also had a successful career as a film actor, appearing as Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), as Chuck Yeager's friend and colleague Captain Jack Ridley in The Right Stuff (1983), the father of Laura Dern's character in Smooth Talk (1985), as a Tennessee firearms expert in Shooter (2007), and as General John Bell Hood in In the Electric Mist (2009). In 1998, Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer, which caused him to lose his singing voice. After treatment, his cancer eventually went into remission, and he gradually regained the use of his voice. His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 91 on its list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, a category inaugurated in 2010. In 2011, his live album Ramble at the Ryman won the Grammy in the same category. In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked him No. 22 on its list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
Born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, his father's earliest American ancestor was English colonist Robert Glidewell, born 1 February 1701 at Bristol, Prince George, Virginia, USA. Robert Glidewell was the father of Nash Glidewell who served in the 10th and 14th Virginia Continental army. Nash was present at Valley Forge under Captain John Tweatt. Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet of Marvell, Arkansas. His parents, Emma “Nell” and Jasper “Diamond” Helm, were cotton farmers who shared a strong affinity for music. They encouraged their children to play and sing at a young age. Helm saw Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys when he was 6, and he decided to become a musician. Helm began playing the guitar at age 8 and also played drums. Arkansas in the 1940s and '50s stood at the confluence of a variety of musical styles, including traditional Delta blues, electric blues, country (including old-time music), and the incipient genre of rhythm and blues (R&B). Helm was influenced by each of these styles, which he heard on the Grand Ole Opry on radio station WSM and R&B on radio station WLAC in Nashville. He also saw the last vestiges of minstrelsy and other traveling variety shows, such as F. S. Wolcott's Original Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, which featured top Black artists of the era. A key early influence on Helm was Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played electric blues and early R&B on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, the Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school. Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by early rock and roll and rockabilly artists, including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley, and fellow Arkansas native Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena.
While he was still in high school, Helm was invited to join Ronnie Hawkins' band, the Hawks, a popular bar and club act in the South and Canada, where rockabilly acts were very successful. Helm's mother insisted that he graduate from high school before touring with Hawkins, but he was able to play with the Hawks locally on weekends. After his graduation in 1958, Helm joined the Hawks as a full-time member; they moved to Toronto, where they signed with Roulette Records in 1959 and released several singles, including a few hits. Helm reports in his autobiography that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly and started calling him "Levon" ( LEE-von) because it was easier to pronounce. In 1961, Helm with bassist Rick Danko backed jazz guitarist Lenny Breau on several tracks recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto. These tracks are included on the 2003 release The Hallmark Sessions. By the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins had recruited an all-Canadian lineup of musicians: guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and organist Garth Hudson, all of whom were multi-instrumentalists. In 1963, the band parted ways with Hawkins and started touring as Levon and the Hawks and later as the Canadian Squires, before changing back to the Hawks. They recorded two singles but remained mostly a popular touring bar band in Texas, Arkansas, Canada, and on the East Coast of the United States, where they found regular summer club gigs on the New Jersey shore. By the mid-1960s, songwriter and musician Bob Dylan was interested in performing electric rock music and asked the Hawks to be his backing band. Disheartened by fans' negative response to Dylan's new sound, Helm left the group in the autumn of 1965 for what turned out to be a two-year layoff, being replaced by a range of touring drummers (most notably Mickey Jones) and Manuel, who began to double on the instrument. He spent time with his family in Arkansas, but also undertook sojourns to Los Angeles, where he experimented with LSD and performed with Bobby Keys, and to Memphis and New Orleans, where he worked on a nearby oil platform. In the autumn of 1967, after what would later be called "the Summer of Love", he returned to the group. After the Hawks toured Europe with Dylan, they followed him back to the U.S., remaining under salary, and settled near Dylan's home in Woodstock, New York. The Hawks recorded a large number of demonstration and practice tapes in nearby West Saugerties, New York, playing almost daily with Dylan, who had completely withdrawn from public life following a motorcycle accident in July 1966. These recordings were widely bootlegged and were partially released officially in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. The songs and themes developed during this period played a crucial role in the group's future direction and style. The Hawks also began writing their own songs, with Danko and Manuel also sharing writing credits with Dylan on a few songs.
Helm returned to the group, then referred to simply as "the band”, as it was known around Woodstock. While contemplating a recording contract, Helm had dubbed the band "The Crackers”, but when Robertson and their new manager Albert Grossman worked out the contracts, the group's name was given as "the Band”. Under these contracts, the Band was contracted to Grossman, who in turn contracted their services to Capitol Records. This arrangement allowed the Band to release recordings on other labels if the work was done in support of Dylan. Thus the Band was able to play on Dylan's Planet Waves album and to release The Last Waltz, both on other labels. The Band also recorded their own album, Music from Big Pink (1968), which catapulted them into stardom. Helm was the Band's only American member.
On Music from Big Pink, Manuel was the most prominent vocalist, and Helm sang backup and harmony, with the exception of "The Weight". However, as Manuel's health deteriorated and Robbie Robertson's songwriting increasingly looked to the South for influence and direction, subsequent albums relied more and more on Helm's vocals, alone or in harmony with Danko. Helm was primarily a drummer and vocalist and increasingly sang lead, although, like all his bandmates, he was also a multi-instrumentalist. On occasion, Manuel switched to drums while Helm played mandolin, guitar, or bass guitar (while Danko played fiddle) on some songs. Helm played the 12-string guitar backdrop to "Daniel and the Sacred Harp".
Helm remained with the Band until their farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, which was the subject of the documentary film The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. Helm repudiated his involvement with The Last Waltz shortly after the completion of its final scenes. In his autobiography, Helm criticized the film and Robertson who produced it.
