"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" Was a Lament Against War, Not a Confederate Anthem

Last week, Robbie Robertson, best remembered as the principal songwriter for the 1960s & 1970s group The Band, passed away of prostate cancer at the age of 80.

Among Robertson's best known his works is his most controversial, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Originally released in 1969 as part of The Band's eponymous second album (a.k.a. The Brown Album), Robertson tells the fictional account of a Tennessee farmer named Virgil Kane during the Civil War.

To the extent there should be a controversy pertains to the authorship of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". While Robertson has sole writing credit for "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and most of their well-known hits such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek" and "Ophelia", the late Levon Helm contended that these songs were written collaboratively among all members of The Band including Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. 

In recent years, however, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" has been criticized for glorifying the Confederacy, most notably by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. In a 2009 essay for The Atlantic, Coates wrote in part:

I was thinking about the Richmond yesterday, and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."... I'm told that it's a great song, and I don't so much doubt this, as I doubt my own magnanimity.....I can no more marvel at The Band then a Sioux can marvel at the cinematography of "The Died With Their Boots On." I wouldn't fault the man who could, but it's not me. My empathy is a resource to be rationed like all others....I started to play the song yesterday, and stopped myself. Again, I was angry. Again, another story about the blues of Pharaoh, and the people are invisible. The people are always invisible.

Yet by his own admission, Coates cannot bring himself to listen to "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" in its entirety. Coates ought to consider some of Robertson's lyrics:

Like my father before me
I will work the land
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel stand

He was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can't raise a Kane back up
When he's in defeat

This is not a Confederate anthem much less a glorification of Confederacy, it is a lament against war.

It also strikes me how Coates invokes the Sioux Nation. I wonder if Coates is aware that the Canadian born Robertson was of Cayuga and Mohawk descent and was honored by the Six Nations of The Grand River upon his passing. Given his background, Robertson seems like an unlikely candidate to glorify the Confederate States of America. In a 2019 interview with John Fugelsang, Robertson explained the genesis of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down":

I was writing a movie about a Southern family that lost in the war, in the Civil War, and from their side, the story of that family. And I don't know, I was trying to write a song that Levon (Helm) could singer better than anybody in the world and that's all it was.

Now over the past half century plus, many have sung "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Joan Baez would score the biggest hit of her career with her 1971 cover although she misheard some of the lyrics when she recorded the song. Like Robertson, Baez is an unlikely poster child for the Confederate cause. Perhaps Baez's version of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" would fill Coates with every bit as much anger as the original. If that is the case, then what emotions would be conjured in Coates had he heard versions of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by the late African-American artists Richie Havens and Dobie Gray?

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was part of Havens' live repertoire throughout his four decade plus performing career and appears on his 1990 album Live at The Cellar Door and The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, a collection of songs captured in concert between 1970 and 1972. Between 1999 and 2005, I had the privilege of seeing Havens in concert in both Canada and the United States half a dozen times as well as meeting him on several occasions. When Havens would perform "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", he invariably described it as an anti-war song.

Dobie Gray is best remembered for his 1965 hit "The In Crowd" and his 1973 hit "Drift Away". The latter song would return to the charts 30 years later when Uncle Kracker covered it accompanied by Gray himself. While Gray never recorded "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" on any of his studio albums, the song was a regular part of his concert repertoire. While Havens' interpretation is introspective and quiet, Gray's rendition is passionate and soulful. Perhaps Gray identified with the song because he was born in Texas to a family of sharecroppers. If that isn't sufficient to soothe Coates' anger, it is also well worth noting that Gray was the first international artist to perform in front of integrated audiences in South Africa in 1976. 

If I had the opportunity to speak with Ta-Nehisi Coates, I would ask him this question. If "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a pro-Confederate anthem offensive to the ears of African-Americans, then why would Richie Havens and Dobie Gray spend a good part of their respective careers performing the song in public?

Given that such a conversation will unlikely ever come to pass, I think the answer is that the power of music gave Richie Havens, Dobie Gray, Joan Baez and, Robbie Robertson the sort of magnanimity which Ta-Nehisi Coates simply does not possess. Just as one cannot raise a Kane laying in defeat, one cannot open the heart of one with a closed mind.