THE NIGHT THEY DROVE OLD DIXIE DOWN
JOAN BAEZ
SONGWRITER: ROBBIE ROBERTSoN
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: 20th CENTURY (HOW SWEET THE SONG)
LABEL: VANGUARD RECORDS
GENRE: COUNTRY FOLK
YEAR: 1971
Joan Chandos Baez (/baɪz/;
born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and
activist. Her contemporary
folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice.
Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish and English,
she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages.
Baez is generally regarded as a folk singer,
but her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s and
encompasses genres such as folk rock,
pop,
country,
and gospel music.
She began her
recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her
first three albums, Joan Baez,
Joan Baez, Vol. 2 and Joan
Baez in Concert, all achieved gold record status. Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets other
composers' work, having recorded songs by the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles,
Jackson Browne,
Leonard Cohen,
Woody Guthrie,
Violeta Parra, the
Rolling Stones, Pete
Seeger, Paul Simon,
Stevie Wonder,
Bob Marley,
and many others. She was one of the first major artists to record the songs of Bob Dylan in the early 1960s; Baez was already an internationally celebrated
artist and did much to popularize his early songwriting efforts. On her later
albums she has found success interpreting the work of more recent songwriters,
including Ryan Adams,
Josh Ritter,
Steve Earle,
Natalie Merchant,
and Joe Henry.
Baez's acclaimed songs include "Diamonds & Rust" and covers of Phil Ochs's
"There but for Fortune"
and The Band's
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". She is also known for "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word",
"Forever Young", "Here's to You", "Joe
Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We
Shall Overcome". Baez performed fourteen songs at
the 1969 Woodstock
Festival and has displayed a lifelong
commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence,
civil rights,
human
rights, and the environment. Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 7,
2017.
The most successful version of the song was
the one by Joan Baez,
which became a RIAA-certified
Gold record on 22 October 1971. Besides its aforementioned chart action on the
Hot 100, the record spent five weeks atop the easy listening chart. Billboard ranked it as
the Nº. 20 song for 1971.
The version reached
number six in the pop charts in the UK in October 1971.
The Baez recording had some changes in the
lyrics. Baez later told Rolling Stone's
Kurt Loder that she initially learned the song by listening to the recording on
the Band's album, and had never seen the printed lyrics at the time she
recorded it, and thus sang the lyrics as she had (mis)heard them. In more recent years in her
concerts, Baez has performed the song as originally written by Robertson.
Virgil Caine is my name and I drove on the Danville train
'til Soneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive
I took the train to Richmond that fell
It was a time I remember, oh, so well
(CHORUS)
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringin'
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singin'
They went, "Na,
na, na, na, na, na, ¡¦¡¦¡¦ "
Back with my wife in
Tenesse
Whene one day she said to me,
"Virgil, Quick! Come see!
There goes Robert E. Lee."
Now I don't mind, I'm chopping wood
And I don't care if the money's no good
Just take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best
(CHORUS)
Like my father before me, I'will work the land
And like my brother above me, I took a rebel stand
Oh, he was just eighteen, proud and brave
But a yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the blood below my feet
You can't raise the Cane back up when he's in defeat.
(CHORUS)
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