Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm (born May 26, 1940), is an American rock multi-instrumentalist and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and frequently lead and backing vocalist for The Band. Helm is known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, and creative drumming style highlighted on many of The Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", "Ophelia" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". His 2007 comeback album Dirt Farmer earned the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in February 2008, and in November of that year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #91 in the list of The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2010, Electric Dirt, his 2009 follow-up to Dirt Farmer, won the first ever Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, an inaugural category in 2010.
EARLY YEARS
Helm was born in Elaine, Arkansas, and grew up in Turkey Scratch, a hamlet west of Helena, Arkansas, the son of Nell and Diamond Helm, who were cotton farmers and also great lovers of music who encouraged their children to play and sing. Young Lavon (as he was christened) began playing the guitar at the age of eight and also played drums during his formative years. He saw Bill Monroe & his Blue Grass Boys at the age of six and decided right then to become a musician.
Arkansas in the 1940s and 50's was at the confluence of a variety of musical styles -- blues, country and R&B -- that later became known as rock and roll. Helm was influenced by all these styles listening to the Grand Ole Opry on radio stationWSM and R&B on radio station WLAC out of Nashville, Tennessee. He also saw traveling shows such as F.S. Walcott's Rabbit's Foot Minstrels that featured top African-American artists of the time.
Another early influence on Helm was the work of blues harmonica, guitarist and singer Sonny Boy Williamson II, who played blues and early R&B on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena and performed regularly in Marvell with blues guitarist Robert Jr. Lockwood. In his 1993 autobiography, This Wheel's on Fire - Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, Helm describes watching Williamson's drummer, James "Peck" Curtis, intently during a live performance in the early 1950s and later imitating this R&B drumming style. Helm established his first band, The Jungle Bush Beaters, while in high school.
Helm also witnessed some of the earliest performances by southern country, blues and rockabilly artists such as Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Bo Diddley and a fellow Arkansan, Ronnie Hawkins. At age 17, Helm began playing in clubs and bars around Helena. After graduating from high school, he was invited to join Hawkins' band, The Hawks, who were a popular bar and club act across the South and also in Canada, where rockabilly acts were very popular. Soon after Helm joined The Hawks, they moved to Toronto where, in 1959, they signed with Roulette Records and released several singles, including a few hits.
Helm reports in his biography, This Wheel's On Fire, that fellow Hawks band members had difficulty pronouncing "Lavon" correctly, and started calling him "Levon" (LEE vahn) because it was easier.
