THE HAWKS
The Band was a Canadian-American roots rock group formed in Toronto, Ontario in 1968. The members of The Band first came together as rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins’s backing group, the Hawks, which they joined one by one between 1958 and 1963. In 1964, they separated from Hawkins; the next year, Bob Dylan hired them for his U.S. tour in 1965 and world tour in 1966. Following the 1966 tour, the group moved with help from Bob Dylan and his manager, Albert Grossman, to Saugerties, New York, where they made the informal 1967 recordings that became The Basement Tapes, and also the basis for their 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink. (More from Wikipedia)
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While there is a lot to love on The Basement Tapes, and I cannot argue with the 5-star rating on Allmusic and other sources, I gather that I am not the only one who was somewhat disappointed. By the time The Basement Tapes came out, the Band had gained considerable stature in the music world and were no longer just “the band” backing Bob Dylan (they were actually called the Hawks in the basement-tape days). Still, I certainly hadn’t expected that fully one third of the songs (8 out of 24) on The Basement Tapes would be songs by the Band alone, with no involvement from Bob Dylan.
(September 2017)
