On Monday night at Central Park’s SummerStage, Emmylou Harris joined the Levon Helm Band for a rendition of “Evangeline,” a song written by the Band’s Robbie Robertson and immortalized in the concert film The Last Waltz. Harris later used “Evangeline” as the title track for an album composed mostly of leftover material from past recording sessions, however the version she recorded with the Band in 1977 for their triple album and movie is the ostensible original.
The Last Waltz scene captures a performance of the song featuring Helm on mandolin, Harris on guitar, and Rick Danko on violin, all splitting lead vocals and joining in harmony for the chorus. Harris is a vision of grace and beauty, dressed in a powder blue gown with long locks extending down her back. The Band posses the stately manner of seasoned musicians, uncaring or unsentimental to their last concerts’ significance.
As the scene ends, the camera angle switches to a bird’s eye view from the back of the stage. It is reasonable to posit that Martin Scorsese, the director of the film, intended this final cut to be clever trick. Given Harris and The Band’s energy, you’d never suspect that the recorded performance was merely a sound check.
Nearly thirty-five years later, Harris and Helm once again shared the stage. This time the band was the Levon Helm Band. This time Harris, aged but no less a beauty, wore a black dress with white hair shaped near her shoulders. Helm, a throat cancer survivor, sat hunched on a chair playing mandolin, inaudibly mouthing the words he once sang. But with the same intensity they shared so many years before, Harris and Helm played to an audience who remembered them as they were and appreciated them as they are now. There is no greater fate for a song.
