The band - The Weight (Take a load off Annie/Fanny)

RIP , Levon Helm !!!!!

Levon Helm, whose drumming merged muscle, swing, economy and finesse, and who helped forge deep-rooted American music as part of the Band, was 71.

Helm was the American linchpin of the otherwise Canadian group that became Bob Dylan’s backup band in the mid-1960's and then the Band. Their songs, largely written by the Band’s guitarist, Jaime Robbie Robertson, and pianist, Richard Manuel, are rock-ribbed with history and tradition yet hauntingly surreal.

After the Band broke up in 1976, Mr. Helm continued to perform at every opportunity, working with a partly reunited Band and leading his own groups. He also acted in films, notably “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980). In the 2000s he became a roots-music patriarch, turning his barn in Woodstock — which had been a recording studio since 1975 — into the home of down-home, eclectic concerts called Midnight Rambles, which led to tours and Grammy-winning albums.

The Band had only a couple of top 40 hits including "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "Up on Cripple Creek" but In 2008, Helm was included in Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

His death was the result of complications of cancer.