Remembering When Joan Baez Messed up the Lyrics to a Classic by The Band… And Walked Away With Her Biggest Hit in 1971

The Band’s music received a ton of acclaim from fans, critics, and other musicians. But one measure of success that generally eluded them was a runaway hit single. They placed only two songs in the US Top 40, none higher than No. 25. At least Joan Baez’s cover of The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” soared to No. 3 in 1971. Too bad the lyrics that she sang didn’t quite match the original.

The Original

Robbie Robertson wrote “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” via inspiration from a variety of sources. They included a conversation with Levon Helm’s Arkansan family, a trip to the library to get his facts straight (some critics say he didn’t quite meet that bar), and the necessity to write a quieter song to keep from waking his newborn baby. (It should be noted that Helm complained in later years that he helped Robertson and was deprived of credit.)

The Band included the song on their self-titled sophomore album, released in 1969. Coming on the heels of their debut Music From Big Pink, the so-called “Brown” album pushed the level of adoration for the group to new levels.

“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was the centerpiece for a lot of that praise. The Band included it as the B-side to “Up On Cripple Creek”, the song that reached that No. 25 peak we mentioned above. But a cover song by one of the most famous voices in all of American music brought “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to much higher levels of exposure.

The Remake

As the folk music boom of the early 60s gave way to the harder rock scene of the late 60s and early 70s, Joan Baez’s album sales started to drop. Her decision to do a cover version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” changed that trajectory.

Recorded in Nashville with a bunch of session aces, Baez had the idea to sing the song’s chorus with an oversized group of backing singers that she corralled from the studio. The song’s chart position made it easily the biggest single success of her career.

There was one issue with Baez’s version. Without the internet to consult back in those days, she didn’t have the song’s official lyrics on hand. Hence, she sang the words that she thought she heard when listening to The Band’s original. Let’s just say her ears deceived her a tad.

By Joan, I Think She’s Got It

A couple of Baez’s errors can be heard in the first verse. She sings, “Till so much cavalry came,” instead of “Stoneman’s cavalry,” a reference to a Civil War general. Later in the first verse, she sings, “I took the train to Richmond had fell,” when the actual line was “By May the tenth, Richmond had fell.”

She also messed up a line in the final verse, changing “work the land” into “working man.” Strangest of all, she sings, “There goes the Robert E. Lee,” as if he were a sailing vessel of some kind.

None of this stopped the song from soaring up the charts, of course. But those who only know Baez’s version of this classic might take away a much different meaning than intended.

(Photo by David Redfern/Redferns)