Sandra B. Tooze - Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of The Band and Beyond

More Praise for

Sandra Tooze has not only written the definitive biography of Levon Helm, but shes also written an outstanding life-story of modern American music, encompassing all of the colorful characters that Levon Helm met along the way. Levon embodied the evolution of blues, rockabilly, country, and folk that meant so much to so many, defined the soundtrack of my life, and inspired a generation. Levon Helm was a musicians musician. This book is a must-read musical odyssey of a true hero of rock n roll.

Steve Katz, founding member of Blood, Sweat, and Tears;

author of Blood, Sweat, and My Rock n Roll Years

Levon Helm went from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, to Bob Dylans first electric tour, Woodstock, and The Last Waltz. And thats only scratching the surface of where author Sandra Tooze takes us as she deftly tells the story of a modern music icon. Levon brilliantly puts readers behind the scenes of many of the most important moments in rock n roll history with a man whose influence on them was immense.

John Glatt, author of Live at the Fillmore East and West:

Getting Backstage and Personal with Rocks Greatest Legends

I thought I knew a lot about my old friend Levon Helm, but Sandra Tooze has captured all the nitty-gritty details of the life and times of the man who was, arguably, the most soulful and beloved drummer/singer in the history of rock n roll. From Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, to Woodstock, New York, this rollicking, raunchy, riveting account of Levons life and times takes us on a wild journey that is exhilarating and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Happy Traum, folk musician, Woodstock, New York

Also by Sandra B. Tooze

Muddy Waters: The Mojo Man

For

Mary and Anna Lee,

whose love for Levon

still burns bright

Copyright 2020 by Sandra B. Tooze

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email

Diversion Books

A division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

New York, NY 10016

www.diversionbooks.com

First Diversion Books edition, June 2020

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-63576-704-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63576-702-5

Printed in The United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data is available on file.

Best Seat in the House

L evon Helm always said of the Arkansas Delta, Its where blues, country, and gospel hit in a head-on collision, which became rock n roll.

Round about cotton-picking time each fall while Levon was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, tent shows would stop off in Marvella bustling little town near his home in Turkey Scratch. For Levon, a precocious, fun-loving child, there was nothing better. Across the road from the fairgrounds, troupes such as Silas Green from New Orleans or Levons favorite, the F.S. Walcott Rabbits Foot Minstrels, would pitch a large four- or five-pole tent around a couple of flatbed trucks, positioned side by side to create the stage. Smaller tents served as dressing rooms and refreshment stands. A master of ceremonies, dressed in a top hat and twirling a cane, introduced the performers: singers, black-face comedians, a chorus line of beautiful dancers, and a nine- or twelve-piece band with horns and a full rhythm section that includedmost cruciallya drummer.

It was the only time that country people like us could see a real staged show with costumes and lights and music and everything, Levon remarked. So that was high rollin back in the cotton countryAnd we always went, of course. You couldnt beat that show.

In those days, Helm noted, the audience was segregated: People with red hair and freckles would be on one side, and darker complexions on the other. Id be sitting there right in front of the drummer, just staring at him all night.

To young Levon, the drum stool looked like the best seat in the house.

The main program ended at about 10:30 or 11:00, when most families with children went home, but Levons father would let him stick around. For an extra dollar or so, the late-night showcalled the midnight ramblecontinued until twelve. Thats when the jokes would get spicier, and the girls would do a little hoochie-coochie dance, Levon often said, with a twinkle in his eye. Back then, to get down to a bikini was like, Goddamn!

Looking back on a career that coincided with the evolution of modern music, Helm cited those tent shows as seminal to the development of rock n roll: Today when folks ask me where rock n roll came from, I always think of our Southern medicine shows and that wild midnight ramble. Chuck Berrys duckwalk, Elvis Presleys rockabilly gyrations, Little Richards dancing on the piano, Jerry Lee Lewiss antics and Ronnie Hawkinss camel walk could have come right off F.S. Walcotts stage.

Mark Lavon Helm w as born in Elaine, Arkansas, on May 26, 1940, to Nell and Diamond Helm, the second of four surviving children. It was a tiny townpopulation 634situated in the heart of the Arkansas Delta, the alluvial plain of the Mississippi River, twenty-five miles southwest of Helena and ninety miles southwest of Memphis. His parents were sharecroppers, both with their roots in the area.

Bubba Sullivan, the same age as Levon, was also born in Elaine, and he recalls it as a lively town when he was growing up. It did, however, have an infamous past. Back in 1919, Phillips County was a hotbed of racial unrest, with black citizens protesting unfair sharecropping practices, trying to organize a farmers union, while white planters were quaking in fear of a Communist revolution. Terrified that a black insurrection was at hand, white women and children were evacuated to Helena while those who stayed behind were barricaded in heavily guarded buildings.

When shots were fired at a black church meeting, authorities claimed a riot was underway. The Helm family heeded the warnings, armed with guns to defend themselves and their property, but the unrest never reached them. Some whites rampaged through the countryside, killing all the blacks they encountered. Troops were sent in, and all blacks in the area were thrown into a stockade. Those who supported unionization were charged with murder and tortured to elicit confessions.

Morse Gistwho became the proprietor of a Helena music storeremembered his mother telling him that his father, an ex-trooper, was called back into service. His dad was sent to Elaine where, Gist said, I got the impression he was not very proud of what took place down there.

Levon was born into a state that had never fully recovered from the Civil War. The economy had been devastated, and slavery was replaced by sharecropping, which was still a form of peonage for blacks and poor whites. Following a feeble recovery in the 1920s, the Great Flood, Great Drought, then Great Depression brought more disaster to Arkansas. Of the 1930s in the Arkansas Delta, English novelist Naomi Mitchinson wrote, I have travelled over most of Europe and part of Africa, but I have never seen such terrible sights as I saw yesterday among the sharecroppers of Arkansas.

Elaine is situated only a couple of miles from the Mississippi River, and when Nell and Diamond lived there with their first baby, Modena, before Levon was born, there were gangs of itinerant laborers working on the nearby levee. Some of these drifters were ruthless criminals, and on one occasion, the Helm family found their country cabin surrounded. As Levon heard it,