who recorded the night they drove old dixie down
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by Robbie Robertson and originally recorded by the Canadian-American roots rock group the Band in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. Levon Helm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the American Civil War. Frequently appearing on lists of the best rock songs of all time, it has been cited as an early example of the genre known as roots rock.
Nashville sound In the early 1960s, the Nashville sound began to be challenged by the rival Bakersfield sound on the country side[3] and by the British Invasion on the pop side; compounding these problems were the sudden deaths, in separate airplane crashes, of Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves, two of the Nashville Sound's biggest stars. Nashville's pop song structure became more pronounced and it morphed into what was called Countrypolitan - a smoother sound typified through the use of lush string arrangements with a real orchestra and often, background vocals provided by a choir. Countrypolitan was aimed straight at mainstream markets and it sold well throughout the later 1960s into the early 1970s. Among the architects of this sound were producers Billy Sherrill (who was instrumental in shaping Tammy Wynette's early career) and Glenn Sutton. Artists who typified the countrypolitan sound initially included Wynette, Glen Campbell (who recorded in Hollywood and not Nashville), Lynn Anderson, Charlie Rich, and Charley Pride,[4] the latter being a rare example of a top-selling African-American country performer.