Every week Rich Terfry looks back in our Rear-View Mirror at a great song from the good ol’ days.

What do you get when cross a group of dusty Canadian boys with beards and blue jeans with a couple of hip hop kids from the mean streets of Brooklyn?

How about one of the most unlikely classics you will ever hear.

The Band started out as the backing band for rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins at the end of the '50s. 

In 1965 they joined Bob Dylan as his backing band for his world tour.

When they recorded their own album in 1968 they chose the name The Band because they had always been the band behind various frontmen.

A few decades after establishing themselves as the top guns for hire in popular music and the progenators of country rock, they found themselves backing the most unlikely of frontmen, Brooklyn rapper Guru of the legendary hip-hop group Gang Starr.

The group's producer, DJ Premier, used a portion of The Band's classic, "Up On Cripple Creak," for a track on their second album, Step in the Arena, released in 1991.

Here's where a dusty country road runs right through the heart of Brooklyn.

Gang Starr and "Beyond Comprehension."

here

 

 

 

Here are some other great editions of Rear-View Mirror:

Bo Diddley, "Bo Diddley"

CCR, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain"

Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightning"

Bobby Womack, "Across 110th Street"

Roy Orbison, "In Dreams"

Foggy Hogtown Boys, "Man of Constant Sorrow"

Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"

Neil Young, "Cortez The Killer"

Bob Dylan, "Subterraneon Homesick Blues"

Little Eva, "Loco-Motion"

Elvis Costello, "Watching the Detectives"

Jimmy Cliff, "The Harder They Come"

The Verve, "Bittersweet Symphony"

Roberta Flack, "Killing Me Softly with his Song"

R.E.M., "Radio Free Europe"

Radiohead, "No Surprises"

Led Zeppelin, "Ramble On"

Glen Campbell, "Wichita Lineman"

Rolling Stones, "Beast of Burden"

John Cougar Mellencamp, "Pink Houses"

posted by Rich Terfry on Jul 03, 2012