newsmakers

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Levon Helm of The Band dies at 71

ALBANY, N.Y.

With songs such as “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek,” The Band fused rock, blues, folk and gospel to create a sound that seemed as authentically American as a Mathew Brady photograph or a Mark Twain short story.

In truth, the group had only one American — Levon Helm.

Helm, the drummer and singer who brought an urgent beat and a genuine Arkansas twang to some of The Band’s best-known songs and helped turn a bunch of musicians known mostly as Bob Dylan’s backup group into one of rock’s most legendary acts, has died. He was 71.

Helm, who was found to have throat cancer in 1998, died Thursday afternoon of complications from cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said Lucy Sabini of Vanguard Records. On Tuesday, a message on his website said he was in the final stages of cancer.

Helm and his bandmates — Canadians Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel — were musical virtuosos who returned to 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,” and its follow-up, “The Band,” remain landmark albums of the era, and songs such as “The Weight,” “Dixie Down” and “Cripple Creek” have become rock standards.

In some ways, The Band was the closest this country ever came to the camaraderie and achievement of the Beatles. Each of the five members brought special talents that through years of touring, recording and living together blended into a unique sound.

They bid farewell to live shows with a bang with the famous “Last Waltz” concert in 1976. Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Dylan were among the stars who played the show in San Francisco, filmed by Martin Scorsese for a movie of the same name, released in 1978.

Though Helm’s illness reduced his voice to something close to a whisper, it did not end his musical career. Beset by debt, in 2004 he began a series of free-wheeling late-night shows in his barn in Woodstock that were patterned after medicine shows from his youth. Any night of the biweekly Midnight Rambles could feature Gillian Welch, Elvis Costello or his daughter Amy on vocals and violin.

He recorded “Dirt Farmer” in 2007, which was followed by “Electric Dirt” in 2009. Both albums won Grammys. He won another this year for “Ramble at the Ryman.”

Original members of The Band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Jonathan Frid of ‘Dark Shadows’ dies at 87

LOS ANGELES

Jonathan Frid, the man known to fans around the world as Barnabas Collins, the suave vampire from the cult hit soap opera “Dark Shadows” has died at age 87.

The Hamilton Spectator, of Hamilton, Ontario, reports the Canadian actor died in his hometown of Hamilton at Juravinski Hospital on Friday, April 13.

Frid’s final screen role was a cameo in “Dark Shadows,” the soap opera’s upcoming big-screen revamp directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas.

“Dark Shadows” ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. Originally conceived as a straightforward gothic soap opera by creator Dan Curtis, it languished in the ratings until Curtis began adding supernatural elements, first a ghost, and then Barnabas Collins. Frid joined the show in 1967, and it began to take off as a cult hit, especially with younger children, who rushed home from school to watch the show.

Vindicator wire services