Sparkling New Releases of Early Albums by the Band

The Band was such a soulful and original group that it deserves to rank high on any list of the great rock outfits ever to come out of North America.

The quintet’s first two albums--the superbly crafted “Music From Big Pink” from 1968 and “The Band” from 1969--have just been re-released in special-edition CDs, and they should delight longtime fans of the group and anyone else with a taste for passionate and purposeful music.

For the fans, these new editions are treats because the sound quality is far superior to earlier CD copies, thanks to digital remastering. The albums also feature bonus tracks (alternate versions and outtakes) and detailed liner notes by Rob Bowman.

And the reward for newcomers to the Band?

An introduction to some of the most captivating rock ‘n’ roll ever made.

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**** The Band, “Music From Big Pink” and “The Band” (Capitol).

Rock ‘n’ roll was still in its infancy in the early ‘60s when the five musicians who would later compose the Band came together in Canada as members of the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins, a rockabilly singer from Arkansas who had some minor hits in the U.S. in the late ‘50s and then became a hot item on the Canadian club circuit.

With Hawkins, the future Band members--guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, drummer Levon Helm, and keyboardists Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel--played a raw and frantic brand of rock ‘n’ roll, drawing mostly from the country and blues musical roots of the American South.

The group caught the ear of Bob Dylan in 1965 and ended up backing him on his controversial “electric” tours of 1965 and 1966. The quintet then followed Dylan to Woodstock, N.Y., recording the classic “Basement Tapes” album material with him in 1967.

It was during this period that the Band began moving to the personal and ambitious music that would characterize its later albums--music that was rooted in Southern rock tradition and mythology, yet remained fresh and playful.

“Music From Big Pink” even included two songs from the “Basement Tapes” sessions--”Tears of Rage” and “This Wheel’s on Fire,” both co-written by Dylan and various Band members.

But the most revealing track on the album, in terms of the evolution of the Band’s music, may well have been “Long Black Veil.”

The tale of murder and devotion is a classic example of folk music storytelling that sounds as if it were handed down for generations. The opening lines: “Ten years ago on a cold, dark night / There was someone killed ‘neath the town hall light.”

In fact, the song was written in the late ‘50s by Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill, and was a Top 10 country hit in 1959 by Lefty Frizzell.

Robertson, who emerged as the Band’s primary writer, contributed “The Weight,” which combined the storytelling of “Long Back Veil” with the literary accent of Dylan and became the song most identified with the Band.

Besides Dylan, Robertson says in the album’s liner notes, “I was just as influenced by [filmmakers] Luis

Bun~uel or John Ford or Kurosawa. I got this hunger for education and knowledge because I hadn’t gone to school since I was 16. I started to read a whole lot and I started to see these kinds of films. I got into all kinds of mythologies, European, Nordic. . . . It influenced me in a style of storytelling.”

The Band’s strengths, however, were as much in musicianship and vocal character as in songwriting. To give just the right accent to a song, the group could employ any of three extraordinarily soulful singers--Danko, Helm and Manuel. The musicianship too was impeccable.

Eric Clapton was so impressed by the group’s music, he has said, that he traveled to Woodstock to meet the musicians and secretly hoped the Band would invite him to join the group.

Critics have been equally enthralled.

“Astonishing instrumental prowess makes the band one of the strongest musical forces in rock & roll history--but what elevates the group to greatness is the power and clarity of its vision,” declared the 1992 edition of the Rolling Stone Album Guide. “Exercises in elegiac Americana that work as metaphors for very modern states of mind, Robbie Robertson’s songs fuse folklore and history into a mythology of moonlit cornfields and small-town dreaming, of faded natural beauty and the immediate anxiety of individual souls.”

Despite its dazzling, original vision, “Music From Big Pink” was still just a beginning for the Band. Its masterpiece was its second album. In “The Band,” all the songs were written by the members, and the musical touchstones ranged from the historical detail of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to the raucous good fun of “Up on Cripple Creek.”

The word “timeless” has often been applied to the Band’s music, and time has been on the group’s side, thanks to songs that still breathe with a sense of human character and tradition.

“With ‘The Band’ album, that’s when I really knew who we were,” Robertson says in the liner notes.

In its reissue campaign, Capitol Records also has new editions of the Band’s third and fourth albums, 1970’s “Stage Fright” and 1972’s “Cahoots.” While both albums have strong moments, the first two are the group’s essential works. Capitol is also releasing a “Greatest Hits” package Tuesday and the Band’s four other albums, including the live “Rock of Ages,” next year.

The Band ultimately fell victim to many of the “fast-lane” cliches of the rock world, and internal tensions led to the breakup of the group.

Its farewell in San Francisco was captured by director Martin Scorsese in “The Last Waltz,” which is one of the most engrossing concert films ever made. In “Waltz,” the group was joined by many of the most honored musicians of the rock era: Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).

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Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com