The Night they Drove 'Ol Dixie Down

That was such an important album in my life. Took into the world of Doc Watson, Jimmy Martin, Merle Travis ....

 

I don’t know if the song is sympathy for the confederacy as much as sympathy for the poor rank-and-file confederate soldier. Most of them were dirt poor farmers eking out a living or wage laborers in the cities. I suspect most who survived the war were worse off than when it started.

I sat here and listened to 23 different versions of the song. The Band, of course, is the best of all. Charlie Daniels put out a very respectable version. Dobie Gray did a very good soul version of the song performed live at Tennessee Jam.

But I sit here and dwell on the words. It’s a very powerful lament. So many of the lines have nuances and can be interpreted different ways. I think it’s some of the deepest lyrics written in a pop song.

It’s interesting that some versions use the Band’s original “I swear by the mud below my feet,” while others use Baez’s version “I swear by the blood below my feet.” Slightly different images.

It’s interesting that this was the B-side of the single.

@duchen thanks for this thread!

 

It is a fantastic record, the discussion made me recall the cover had Confederate flags on it (and American). Perhaps there is some kind of symbolism in unifying counterculture musicians and southern country music people. The portrait on the cover is a Union admiral, and I have no idea why they did that. Maybe he just looks cool.

 

Those are the same thing I think, especially in Lost Cause mythology

 

You get a bunch of hotheads incapable or unwilling to form a righteous movement who then preach to a bunch of vaguely dissatisfied people incapable or unable not think for themselves, then voila!, you have an un-righteous movement hell bent on bringing the entire edifice down. That's the MAGA crowd in a nutshell, absolutely convinced democracy needs to be destroyed rather than improved.

 

Not sure if I'd heard this song before but confident that I'd never read the lyrics. I probably would have chalked it up to simply being pro Confederate, and maybe some see it that way either positively or negatively. I can also appreciate that it might have been written to contemplate the horrors and losses with war generally and, in particular, an appeal for Americans to consider a different perspective about Vietnam.

 

Song is in my head now

 

I KNEW the song was about Trump!

 

Just walking around the house saying you're Virgil Kane, worked on the Danville train

 

Which one are you - the hothead or the other? I vote the latter.

 

Loved the Band, loved the tune, and I am no lost cause sympathizer, but being born redneck Caucasian in N Florida, 1959 the song struck a chord as a preteen.

And to answer the OP of course the song would have a completely different reception than when it was originally released. Just like gangsta rap will be less appreciated 50 years from now.

Like Phat, Its no sin to understand that many thousands of young men north and south were responding to a call to duty, in a time when politics were hardly questioned, when folks were scratching out a tough living and were grateful to have something to eat.

Hell a bunch of boys on both sides signed up just to get a couple of squares a day, a uniform and a pair of socks and boots.

Sure the cause of the confederacy was odious, but how many Johnny Rebs shot down by Yankee Cannon and bullets had parents that owned slaves anyway?

The failure was in the leadership, the politics and the economic greed. I don't hold truck against peasant soldiers told to fulfill an obligation they were indoctrinated into from birth......on either side.

"In the winter of 65 we was hungry, just barely alive, by May the 10th, Richmond had fell and its a time, I remember oh so well".......


YEEHAWWW

 

Jerry Garcia did a fine cover of it with one of his other (than Grateful Dead) bands, the Legion of Mary:



That's how I learned of the song. Hope y'all dig

 

I pray for the Balkanization of the US. On the balance, the Balkans aren’t doing terribly badly. And it would be less bloody than another civil war.

 

Dude. You are a hoot.

Thanks

 

I saw Driving Miss Daisy years ago.

I still don’t know why.

 

Actually it wasn't. Trump would have never been in the position of an ordinary Confederate soldier. If Donald Trump were around during the Civil War he would have paid someone to take his place in the draft not unlike Grover Cleveland ironically the only president who was defeated when he ran for reelection and managed to win the presidential election four years after his defeat. When Trump was drafted during the Vietnam era he and his father utilized the modern version of the Grover Cleveland loophole, paying a medical professional to document a condition (in the case of Trump bone spurs) necessary to obtain a medical deferment.
Grover Cleveland Avoided The Civil War Through This Controversial Loophole

Getting back to the real subject of this thread I like both the original version of the song by the Band as well as the Joan Baez cover. I also do not interpret the lyrics of the song as honoring the Confederacy in any way. As far as I'm concerned the song is the tragic lament of an ordinary Confederate soldier who was the victim of circumstances beyond his control fighting on the losing side in war to preserve an institution from which he received absolutely no benefit.

 

I think he is refeering to: "Up on Cripple Creek" Mr. Homer! Got his tunes mixed up!! LOL

 

Trump would have paid off ole "Boss Tweed" to get his free pass out had he been around in those days. Which of course was common practice among Rich folk back then.

Of course many aristocrats, like IDIOTS, thought they were going to some brief "Turkey Shoot" and it would all be over in 2 - 3 weeks.

It turns out they were wrong.