Robbie Robertson’s Finest Musical Moments: With the Band, Bob Dylan, Solo, and for Martin Scorsese’s Films
variety.comA.D. Amorosi Long before Robbie Robertson became Martin Scorsese’s go-to film composer or music supervisor, the Canadian singer-songwriter-guitarist had a cinematic, storytelling edge to his songwriting.
Most of the minutely detailed songs that Robertson wrote for the Band, ragged classics such as “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “The Shape I’m In,” were hauntingly filmic and evocative, as if you had stepped from the present day into a light-sensitive daguerreotype, like the image used for the photos in the Band’s galvanizing 1968 debut album “Music from Big Pink.” After Scorsese helmed the film of the Band’s 1976 farewell concert, “The Last Waltz,” the two went on to work together on “Raging Bull,” “The King of Comedy,” “The Color of Money,” “Gangs of New York,” “The Departed,” “Shutter Island,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Silence,” “The Irishman” and the upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Robertson — who died Wednesday at the age of 80 — led a storied career that spans the early ‘60s up to his work on the forthcoming “Killer Moon.” Here are just 10 highlights from one of contemporary music’s most legendary artists.Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks’ “Hey Baba Lou” (1959)Arkansas rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins made Robertson a part of his crew after the six-stringer’s rollicking ensemble, the Suedes, opened for his Hawks.
An easy friendship was formed between the pair, and Robertson co-wrote the Yma Sumac-sounding bit of hillbilly exotica, “Hey Baba Lou,” for Hawkins’ “Mr.
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