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Levon Helm, performing live on Mountain Stage in 1996. |
It
is nearly impossible to quantify Levon Helm's contribution to the
type of music Mountain Stage has sought to champion for the past 29
years. Levon's voice was
a wide, greasy smear of folk, blues, country, soul, rock, acoustic,
electric, rural, urban, sacred, profane, north, south, black and
white. His music captured something essential about us – the
embodiment of what writer Greil Marcus famously called “The Old,
Weird America.” And it's the very foundation of the broad,
encompassing amalgam of roots music we have come to call Americana.
Mountain Stage was fortunate enough to host Levon Helm
and The Band on two different occasion, in 1994 and 1996. Larry and the guys have been
working overtime the past couple days, pulling the audio from the
original DAT tapes. We'll be posting the performances at NPR Music
soon.