Levon Helm, key member of The Band, dies at 71

ALBANY, N.Y. — With songs like “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.