King Harvest Has Surely Come:

‘The music he matched to his passionate yarns mined the roots of every essential American genre, including folk, country, blues and gospel. Yet when his history-minded compositions first appeared on albums by the Band in the late 1960s, they felt vital as well as vintage….’ (The New York Times obituary)

When I came home from traveling during the summer of 1968, my good friend and partner in music discovery said “I’m not sure you’re going to like this,” handing me the newly-released Music From Big Pink, The Band’s seminal first album. He could not have been more wrong and he did not stop apologizing for a long while. No music moved me more, or brought me more joy, during the late ’60’s and into the ’70’s. The deaths of Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, its pathos-ridden vocalists, and now Robertson, the Band’s guitar voice, leave all our hearts more speechless.