By Andrew Hough
8:45PM BST 19 Apr 2012
UK Telegraph:
The three-time Grammy award-winning drummer and singer, who lent his distinctively Southern voice to classics like "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", died peacefully in New York.
He was surrounded by family, friends and members of the band that once backed Bob Dylan and counted George Harrison and Eric Clapton among its fans.
Announcing his death on Thursday, his family said he would be remembered by “all he touched as a brilliant musician and a beautiful soul”.
Larry Campbell, Helm's longtime guitarist, said his greatest honour was not only helping lead Helm's band, but knowing him.
"We lost Levon at 1:30 (local time) today surrounded by friends and family and his musicians have visited him," Campbell, who has played with everyone from Bob Dylan to BB King, told Rolling Stone.
"All his friends were there, and it seemed like Levon was waiting for them.
"Ten minutes after they left we sat there and he just faded away. He did it with dignity.
"It was even two days ago they thought it would happen within hours, but he held on. It seems like he was Levon up to the end, doing it the way he wanted to do it. He loved us, we loved him."
He added: "As sad as this was, it was very peaceful. What I'm most proud of is he called me his partner.
"For me to arrive at a place like that with a great man like him is the ultimate."
On Thursday night, fans took to Twitter and Facebook to pay tribute to the musician. At one point his name was the fourth top "trending" topic on Twitter.
His death came just days after his wife of 30 years Sandy, and daughter, Amy, a vocalist and instrumentalist who recorded with her father, posted a message on his official website saying that Helm was “in the final stages of his battle with cancer”.
They added on Tuesday: “Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.
“Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration.
“He has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat and make the people dance. He did it every time he took the stage.”
A number of artists took to Twitter to pay tribute.
Helm was best known for his years with The Band, where he played drums, guitar and mandolin and sang until the group's 1976 "The Last Waltz" farewell performance, which was filmed by director Martin Scorsese.
Levon Helm was born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, on May 26, 1940, the son of a cotton farmer.
He grew up near the community of Turkey Scratch, outside Helena, Arkansas, with the intention of being a musician. He was a teenager when he became the drummer for another Arkansas native, rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins.
Hawkins took the group to Canada, where he added guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko and keyboardists Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson to The Hawks. Eventually the four Canadians and Helm would split off.
Helm and his band mates were musical virtuosos who mined the roots of American music in the late 1960s as other rockers veered into psychedelia, heavy metal and jams.
The group's 1968 debut, "Music From the Big Pink," remains a landmark album of the era.
Early on, The Band backed Dylan on his sensational and controversial electric tours of 1965-66 and collaborated with him on the legendary "Basement Tapes," which produced "I Shall Be Released," "Tears of Rage" amongst others.
The group’s regular drummer, Helm was also among its lead vocalists, adding his southern voice to songs including “Up on Cripple Creek” — which reached No. 25 on the Billboard chart in 1970, making it The Band’s biggest hit.
Helm, who also toured with Ringo Starr's All Star band in the 1980s and won a Grammy Award last year had cancelled a series of gigs recently due to his ill health.
“The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its roots,” wrote the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which inducted the group in 1994.
“With their ageless songs and solid grasp of musical idioms, The Band reached across the decades, making connections for a generation that was, as an era of violent cultural schisms wound down, in desperate search of them.”
Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998. At one point, the musician, who was born in Arkansas native lost his voice to cancer.
He underwent 28 radiation treatments, recovering to produce a Grammy Award-winning album, “Dirt Farmer,” in 2007.
He fell on hard times as cancer took his voice and medical bills threatened his house in Woodstock, New York home.
"You got to pick one – pay your medical bills or pay the mortgage. Most people can't do both, and I'm not different," he told CNN in 2010.
Instead, he turned his home, better known as The Barn, into a weekly concert hall that attracted sell-out crowds, big names such as Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson and ended up both paying the mortgage and rejuvenating Helm's career.
For someone who played before packed out venues including Wembley Stadium and New York's Madison Square Garden, and Radio City Music Hall he found some of his biggest success staging house concerts at his home.
"If I had my way about it, we'd probably do it every night," Helm said. "I never get tired of it."
Helm also had a career as an actor.
He made his film debut in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), playing the father of Loretta Lynn, and he performed Bill Monroe's “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the soundtrack. He also had roles in The Right Stuff (1983), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), Shooter (2007) and In the Electric Mist (2009).
Jane Fonda was amongst his fans.
"I got to know Levon personally because he played my husband in the movie The Dollmaker," she wrote two days ago.
"He was kind and deep and devoted to music, as a singer and playing not only drums, but harmonica, fiddle, mandolin, you name it."
Earlier this week Robertson, 68, described how he set aside years of acrimony to visit Helm in hospital.
"I am so grateful I got to see him one last time and will miss him and love him forever," he said.
Hudson has also expressed his sadness on Helm's illness this week, posting a video of Knocking on Heaven's Door.
"I am too sad for words right now," he wrote on his website.
"It hit me really hard because I thought he had beaten throat cancer and had no idea that he was this ill. I spoke with his family and made arrangements to go and see him."
He died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
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