The Band – Dave DiPaolo’s Deep Dive

The members of the Band first came together as rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins’s Toronto, Ontario-based backing group, The Hawks, which the members joined one by one, between 1958 and 1963.

In 1964, the members separated from Hawkins and the Hawks after which they toured and released a few singles as Levon and the Hawks and the Canadian Squires. But the next year would be their shot into stardom. Bob Dylan hired them for his U.S. tour in 1965 and world tour in 1966.

Following the 1966 tour, the group moved with help from Bob Dylan and his manager, Albert Grossman, to Saugerties, New York, where they made the informal 1967 recordings that became The Basement Tapes, the basis for their 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink. Because they were always “the band” to various frontmen and the locals in Woodstock, Helm said the name “the Band” worked well when the group came into its own. The group began performing as the Band in 1968 and went on to release ten studio albums. Dylan continued to collaborate with the Band over the course of their career, including a joint 1974 tour.

So, where did Music from the Big Pink get its’ name? Well, Bob Dylan was in a motorcycle accident while the Band was backing him on tour. While Dylan recovered, the members looked for a different place to live and work, and ended up renting a big pink house, and the basement tapes name came from that house’s basement makeshift performance studio.

To continue their streak of successful recordings in interesting houses, they recorded their second album at Sammy Davis Jr’s house, which they also rented.

If you can believe it, The Band being one of the few local artists to play at Woodstock actually earned them a better paycheck than most bands bigger than themselves, including Crosby Stills Nash and Young, The Grateful Dead, and The Who. Though their timeslot at the show wasn’t great at all, having played the final night of the show after the rain muddied and ruined most of the fun.

Portions of this profile were attributed to Wikipedia.org’s The Band entry.

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