Day #26: 30 Day Challenge, Music-Style...Up On Cripple Creek

Day #26: 30 Day Challenge, Music-Style...Up On Cripple Creek

I continue along the home stretch of my 30 Day Challenge, Music-Style... today with a song that's been one of my favorites for a long time- and one by a band that is just plain cool. Heck- they're so danged cool, they didn't tell folks they were a band when they sang. They told folks they were The Band. Today, I salute one of their greatest hits, Up On Cripple Creek, words and music Robbie Robertson.

Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me,
I don't have to speak, she defends me,
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one...

I first saw The Band's The Last Waltz in the mid-eighties, as I was discovering a lot of music from my parents' generation. I thought it was cool that they could assemble so many artists to play their farewell gig- so may that were still in their own prime. Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and more put on one heck of a show.

The Band was the big attraction, though- and they were in fine fashion with everything from The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down to the song I salute today in today's Day #26: 30-Day Challenge, Music-Style...Up on Cripple Creek.

I have always said that The Weight is my favorite song by The Band, but the fact that Mavis Staples' vocals are so strong in it tilts the table in favor of Cripple Creek and Levon Helm's vocal.