I agree that it is a rocking song--and it was tailor made for Baez's voice, even though Levon refused to sing it after a while because her cover was so much more popular.
That said, there are lots of things we *don't* sing anymore--there are any number of children's tunes that had plantation origins that we sang in my kindergarten (one repeated over and over "Jump, Jim Crow!") that no one is heir rightmmind would sing nowadays. To pick another? The Stones' "Brown Sugar." Between Charlie Watts's beat and Keith Richards' wailing blues melody, it couldn't be more fun to dance to. But a song about white men roaming around raping Black women? No. You never hear to on the radio anymore.
Nd interestingly, when I was looking for YouTube videos to link, an abnormally large number of version of "The Night..."--including Baez's--were preceded by advertising for right-wing podcasts. So people know what they are singing about,
I was thinking of Brown Sugar, too! But I watched the video with Baez and the Indigo Girls. They were singing as the man Virgil, and they seemed to emphasize the gender bending part, hitting the word "wife" really hard. And the lyrics are a bit ambivalent about the war and the South. Brown Sugar is a lot more in your face. I would love to hear what the Indigo Girl's take on the song was.
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down is just a rocking song. Plenty of songs have lyrics that make us cringe but we sing them anyway.
I agree that it is a rocking song--and it was tailor made for Baez's voice, even though Levon refused to sing it after a while because her cover was so much more popular.
That said, there are lots of things we *don't* sing anymore--there are any number of children's tunes that had plantation origins that we sang in my kindergarten (one repeated over and over "Jump, Jim Crow!") that no one is heir rightmmind would sing nowadays. To pick another? The Stones' "Brown Sugar." Between Charlie Watts's beat and Keith Richards' wailing blues melody, it couldn't be more fun to dance to. But a song about white men roaming around raping Black women? No. You never hear to on the radio anymore.
Nd interestingly, when I was looking for YouTube videos to link, an abnormally large number of version of "The Night..."--including Baez's--were preceded by advertising for right-wing podcasts. So people know what they are singing about,
I was thinking of Brown Sugar, too! But I watched the video with Baez and the Indigo Girls. They were singing as the man Virgil, and they seemed to emphasize the gender bending part, hitting the word "wife" really hard. And the lyrics are a bit ambivalent about the war and the South. Brown Sugar is a lot more in your face. I would love to hear what the Indigo Girl's take on the song was.