Day #6 - Up On Cripple Creek

By request I’m playing The Band’s “Up On Cripple Creek”. Actually, I had it in my playlist for this project all along. It’s one of my favorite songs by The Band. I’ve played it on occasion with Michael and Elissa, and their background vocals add quite a bit to the cover. This one took multiple takes with several bad words uttered.

I think the first time I heard The Band was when I snuck in to the Uptown Theater to see Easy Rider (1969). “The Weight” is part of the soundtrack to that movie. Cripple Creek is from their 2nd album. Later, Terri and I would be introduced to The Band by Terri’s sister Karen. Last February I reviewed their live album “Rock of Ages”, which still stands as one of my top 5 albums ever.

We saw The Band in the summer of ‘74 at a “Day on the Green” in Oakland with CSNY, Joe Walsh and Jesse Collin Young. Recently we have attended Warren Haynes’ salute to the “Last Waltz”, in both 2017 and 2022 for the 40th and 45th anniversary concerts.

You could easily credit The Band with creating the Americana genre of music. They mashed together folk, jazz, rock, country and blues, to create a sound unique to themselves during the explosion of music that was the late 60’s. Their first album “Music from Big Pink” was a major influence on many artists of the time including, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and Roger Waters.