Rag Mama Rag - the Band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiJpP33F_rs

In 1970, a single, "Rag Mama Rag" scraped into the UK Top Twenty for 4 weeks, peaking at number 16. At fifteen, and a devotee of the UK charts, the style of music on this disc was different to anything I had hitherto heard, by a group I had never heard of, with the minimalist moniker "the Band". The whole thing was inexplicable to me, how could a song that was so unprepossessing, so uncommercial, by a group with an almost self-effacing name, be a hit?

When I was next in London, I sought out their album in the Oxford Street HMV. The cover was 5 scruffy looking guys on in grainy photograph, suggesting working man urbanity, none of the in vogue hippy-style long hair, no sense of youth but rather a feeling of premature middle age, all five band members staring at the camera as if not quite comfortable about being caught on film. I couldn't resist it, and shelled out my two pound five shillings on spec.

If I had been reading my weekly Melody Maker more thoroughly, I would have known that the Band were Bob Dylan's backing group on his 1965/66 world tour. Also, being only 15, I hadn't been able to see the sixties defining genre movie "Easy Rider" which carried an "X" certificate (no-one below 18 years old permitted entry), so hadn't heard the Band's iconic "The Weight" which was featured in the movie, and was from their first album "Music from Big Pink".

Their deliberately "ordinary" sound, a kind of mixture of rock and honky-tonk, with a pinch of soul in the vocals, and maybe a touch of a Salvation Army Band going down the street on a rainy Tuesday, was consciously what is nowadays known as "Americana". Perhaps it's strange that what was essentially a Canadian group (four of them were Canadian, only drummer / singer Levon Helm was from the US) wanted to create an authentically American working man's sound, but often it's the outsider who has the best eye, or in this case ear, for what is in the air.

Listening to "The Band" it feels as though you're hearing the background of the USA. It's the music of ordinary tragedy, of small, prosaic joys, the nitty gritty of daily life.

"Rag Mama Rag" demonstrates the versatility of the Band with Rick Danko (normally on bass) on sawing violin, Garth Hudson on rollicking piano while their usual pianist Richard Manuel switched drums and drummer Helm played mandolin and sang the lead vocal. No song better captures the smoke, heat and bustle of a busy basement bar, complete with card games, pool table, arguments and laughter, and of course, an upright in the corner.

Unusually for a 60s / 70s band, all of their classic line-up are now diseased, the last, Garth Hudson, passing away on January 21st of this year. His wonderful ragtime style piano is a s good a tribute to him as one could wish for.

Uncommercial maybe, but I'm still humming it 55 years on. Americana indeed.