Levon Helm, the drummer and gritty-voiced singer with The Band, a revered rock group that recorded and collaborated with Bob Dylan and was one of the most influential music acts of the 1960s and ’70s, died Thursday at a hospital
Levon Helm, the drummer and gritty-voiced singer with The Band, a revered rock group that recorded and collaborated with Bob Dylan and was one of the most influential music acts of the 1960s and ’70s, died Thursday at a hospital in New York. He was 71.
The death was announced on his website. Helm, a former three-pack-a-day smoker, learned he had throat cancer in the late 1990s. Even as the disease diminished his voice, he continued to perform, holding all-star concerts at his farm in Upstate New York to pay his medical bills.
Helm received two Grammy Awards: “Dirt Farmer” was 2007’s Best Traditional Folk Album, and its follow-up, “Electric Dirt” was 2009’s Best Americana Album. The recordings showed Helm in strong form despite his health — his voice weathered but still resonant.
During The Band’s heyday, from 1968 to 1976, Helm sang many of its most enduring songs, including “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek.”
Director Martin Scorsese’s documentary, “The Last Waltz,” filmed in 1976 and released in 1978, chronicled the final concert appearance by The Band’s original members: guitarist Robbie Robertson, organist Garth Hudson, bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel and Helm.
After The Band split up in 1976, the handsome and lean-faced Helm launched a secondary career as an actor. In Time magazine, film critic Frank Rich wrote that Helm brought a “flinty dignity” to his sympathetic role as country singer Loretta Lynn’s father in “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980).
Helm served as narrator in “The Right Stuff” (1983), the film adaptation of writer Tom Wolfe’s account of the Mercury astronauts.
Mark Lavon Helm was born May 26, 1940, near Elaine, Ark.; he later went by Levon (pronounced LEE-von). He was raised on the family’s cotton farm in Turkey Scratch, Ark., and started playing guitar at 8.
In 1981, Helm married Sandra Dodd. Besides his wife, survivors include a daughter, Amy Helm, a singer and pianist, from a previous relationship with songwriter Libby Titus.
Manuel committed suicide in 1986, and Danko died in 1999 after a heart attack. Helm’s 1993 memoir, “This Wheel’s on Fire,” written with Stephen Davis, described the debauched lifestyle and professional tensions that led to the dissolution of the group. Helm developed a frosty relationship with Robertson, whom he accused of hogging song credits.
As he struggled with cancer, Helm said he appreciated making music more than ever.
“We’re just trying to make music now,” Helm told the Woodstock Times in 2008. “Having it taken away from me has made it more so. This many years later, that’s the most peaceful time in my day, when I’m playing. There’s nothing to worry about, I don’t owe anybody anything, just play the songs and try to make them good.”
