The I Index

Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of The Band and Beyond

Maybe someday

48

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

44/100

Critics

53/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Sandra B. Tooze

Publisher:

Diversion Books

Date:

August 25, 2020

Levon Helm's story––told here through research and interviews with close friends and fellow musicians––is the rollicking story of American popular music itself.

What The Reviewers Say

David Kirby,
The Wall Street Journal
Tooze brings a man and a musical era to life.
Alan Moores,
Booklist
Helm gets his due here—it’s about time—in a biography that spans his impoverished but richly lived rural Arkansas boyhood through his salad days with Ronnie Hawkins and then The Band, that group’s bitter dissolution, and Helm’s final, wonderfully redemptive solo albums.
Shanda Deziel,
Quill & Quire (CAN)
[Tooze's] fresh investigation couldn’t come at a better time, seeing how Robertson’s version of events – set out in a recent autobiography, documentary, and what feels like daily media interviews – is currently the uncontested narrative.
David P. Szatmary,
Library Journal
This meticulously researched book offers music fans a thorough introduction and adds to current material, including Helm’s autobiography This Wheel’s on Fire, Barney Hoskyns’s Across the Great Divide, and the film Ain’t in It for My Health..