 | irishgit (138)
12/20/2006 | The name of this song is "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" NOT "Dixietown" wherever the hell that is.
The reference to Robert E. Lee that Doorgunner mentions is actually about the famous post-bellum Mississippi steamboat the "Robert E. Lee", and the line is "Virgil quick come see, there goes THE Robert E. Lee." presumably running to New Orleans.
Great song. Don't see much right or left about it.
(9 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | DoorGunner (18)
06/22/2006 | First sung by the Band but made famous by Joan Baez' superb rendition, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is not about the burning of Atlanta but about the fall of Richmond. One egregious error in the song occurs in the stanza that has Virgil back with his wife in Tennessee, and the wife says, "Virgil, quick come see/There goes Robert E. Lee." Lee never was in Tennessee, which lay in the western theater of the war and whose ground was fought over by Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee (Battle of Murfreesboro) and later by John Bell Hood at Franklin and Nashville. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps, detached from Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, also fought an engagement at Knoxville in late 1863.
(3 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | EschewObfuscation (61)
06/22/2006 | I thought the title was "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, " telling the sad tale of the burning of Atlanta. I didn't know there was a "Dixietown. " I remember Joan Baez singing it also.
(2 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
