The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is drawn from the final concert by The Band – The Last Waltz – held on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. Superlatives are scarcely suffice when describing The Band’s performance that evening. You know you’re in the presence of true artistic greatness when your only honest response is: How on God’s earth did they do that? I remain in awe of this spellbinding concert, and of how one of America’s finest directors, Martin Scorsese, managed to capture and preserve its full majesty on film.

Today’s featured song stands as one of the evening’s crowning achievements – and that’s no small feat considering the brilliance on display throughout the show. Old Dixie is already the ninth performance to appear here from The Last Waltz.

It’s hard to find a song more steeped in the roots of old Americana, and Levon Helm’s rugged, time-worn voice feels inseparable from its soul and story. It has that ring of truth and the whole aura of authenticity. In fact the performance in The Last Waltz below is last time the song was performed by Helm. He refused to play the song afterwards.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down was written in 1969 by Robbie Robertson. Through the voice of Virgil Caine, a destitute Southern farmer, the song chronicles the harrowing toll of the Civil War – marked by shattered livelihoods, hunger, and heartbreaking personal loss. It is set during the last days of the American Civil War, when George Stoneman was raiding southwest Virginia. Dixie is the historical nickname for the states making up the Confederate States of America.

Creation (from Wikipedia)

Robbie Robertson spent about eight months working on the song. He said he had the music to the song in his head and would play the chords over and over on the piano but had no idea what the song was to be about. Then the concept came to him and he researched the subject with help from the Band’s drummer Levon Helm, a native of Arkansas. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel’s on Fire, Helm wrote, “Robbie and I worked on ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ up in Woodstock. I remember taking him to the library so he could research the history and geography of the era and make General Robert E. Lee come out with all due respect.”

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is considered one of the highlights of The Band, the group’s second album, which was released in the fall of 1969. The album has been viewed as a concept album, with the songs focusing on the peoples, places and traditions associated with an older version of Americana. The Band have frequently performed the song in concert, and it is included on the group’s live albums Rock of Ages (1972) and Before the Flood (1974) featuring Bob Dylan and was the first record I procured of him or The Band. 

Although it has long been believed that the reason for Helm’s refusal to play the song after The Last Waltz was a dispute with Robertson over songwriting credits, according to Garth Hudson the refusal was due to Helm’s dislike for Joan Baez’s version.
Joan’ Baez’s version peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 on October 2, 1971. Baez later said she initially learned the song by listening to the recording on the Band’s album, and had never seen the printed lyrics at the time she recorded it, and thus sang the lyrics as she had (mis)heard them. In more recent years in her concerts, Baez has performed the song as originally written by Robertson.

[Verse 1]:
Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train
‘Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of ’65, we were hungry, just barely alive
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell
It’s a time I remember, oh so well

[Chorus]:
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, “La, la, la”

[Verse 2]:
Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
“Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E.Lee”
Now I don’t mind choppin’ wood
And I don’t care if the money’s no good
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best

[Verse 3]
Like my father before me, I will work the land
And like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand
He was just eighteen, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can’t raise a Caine back up when he’s in defeat

References:
1. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down – Wikipedia