Night They Drove Old Dixie Down....3rd verse

[John A]

This has always been one of my favorite JGB numbers. It can possess as haunting a delivery as Jerry can muster, entering into a universe all its own. I was surprised to learn the degree of disparity between Jerry's 3rd verse and the 3rd verse as written by Robbie Robertson. Some of the tweaks are subtle, some very much not.

Here are the original 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 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

I have long known that Jerry changed the second part of the first line to “I’m a peaceful man”, but Jerry’s tweaking of the final lines completely changes the thrust of the song. Instead of a man with beaten down resignation, we have a man expressing righteous indignation. Rather than mud beneath the narrator’s feet, “blood runs on” his feet. And I’m almost certain that in the last line “can’t raise” becomes “can raise”. So we no longer have a passive farmer, a simple tiller of the land, but instead a man who has been beaten and bloodied but nonetheless vows revenge. And while more subtle, rather than the older brother “who” took a rebel stand, Jerry’s Virgil Caine proclaims that “I” took a rebel stand. I must admit, however, that “brother above me” works better than Jerry’s “brother before me”. Nobody’s perfect.

As an aside, Joan Baez recorded the song in 1971, prior to Jerry covering it, and in her top 3 Billboard hit version she sang, “blood below my feet” which undoubtedly influenced Jerry’s reading of the song. She apparently had never seen the lyrics, and recorded it how she had heard them. In subsequent renditions, after seeing Robertson’s lyrics, she sang them as originally penned.

I think this is fascinating stuff, and I’ve never seen it discussed. Thoughts?

[Ammagamalin Crew]

I switch back and forth whenever it finds it's way on to the fret board, anyone at the Reno February 1987 show when Jerry shut down the first set with it? WOW

[Mango]

I'm pretty sure that Jerry was just mumbling most of the time anyway....or stumbling...or something like that....

[John A]

I'm pretty sure that Jerry was just mumbling most of the time...

Some of the time. Just some of the time.

[Rusty the Scoob]

Awesome post! I knew some of that but learned a ton. I never really knew which lyrics Jerry changed, and how purposeful he was in doing so.

I like "Brother Before Me". It's a little more musical, and while it doesn't expressly state that the brother is dead, it's still implied that they are/were not fighting side by side like they probably would be if he were alive - and only later after he practically spits the word Yankee out in disgust, do we learn for sure that he's gone.

Using the word Before twice echoes the first line too much, maybe, but it highlights the duality of our narrator. He was a peaceful man like his father, yet took a rebel stand like his brother out of necessity. It's one more reason to hate the Yankees, they made him fight.

As far as Can/Can't raise a Caine - I've been wondering this for years. Is it a song of defeat or defiance? You have to assume defiance by Jerry's delivery, and I feel it gives the song more power. It's a great song as Robbie wrote it and Levon's voice was just perfect for it, but I really feel that Jerry improved it. Out of the whole GD/JGB catalog I find it the most consistently emotionally moving, and I don't even really like the South all that much.

[John A]

Another tidbit about Dixie - it was a source of bitterness for Levon Helm, who felt he should have been given partial song writing credit for it. After 1976, he refused to perform it. He 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.

[chuckvegas]

I won't submit a treatise on this song, but as a proud product of the South ("would y'all lahk fries with that?") I will just say that I have always appreciated the defeat/defiance ambiguity of the lyrics. When I was a child Reconstruction was almost within living memory and "Forget, Hell!" wasn't just a catch-phrase for a bumper stickers. And "Damn Yankees" was definitely not a reference to the play and movie.

[woodpile]

This has always been one of my favorite JGB songs being as studying "The War of Northern Aggression" is one of my hobbies.( I live 45 minutes from Gettysburg and Sharpsburg) I've never actually noticed the lyric change though,I guess I always heard it the same way in my head.Its actually a historically accurate song,I remember reading an interview where Robbie Robertson was told by Levon something along the lines of this- -If a Canadian is going to right a song about the Civil War,he better not put the South in a bad light or they will never play there again.And then a year later fellow Canadian Neil Young does just that!In my mind Jerry's versions are some the most heartfelt songs that he did.