Levon Helm of The Band passed away on Thursday afternoon at 71 after battling throat cancer for over a decade. Billboard has a thorough overview of Helm’s career (singer, drummer, mandolin player) in The Band and beyond.

For a super-long stretch of time, my familiarity with The Band began and ended with “Up On Cripple Creek,” a 1969 single that was part of a giant haul of records that my dad picked up a garage sale in the early ’80s. I didn’t really much care for “Up On Cripple Creek” — at all, frankly — but enough folks did in 1969 to send it to #25 on the Billboard Hot 100

“Up On Cripple Creek” is The Band’s highest charting hit, but their best-known song is one that did comparatively worse. “The Weight,” their 1968 debut single, only managed to eke out a #63 peak. Now a certified classic, other artists were quick to cover it even back then. In fact, less than a year passed before Aretha Franklin recorded “The Weight” and took it all the way to #19 in 1969, the song’s best-ever showing. (“The Weight” appeared on 1970’s This Woman’s In Love With You, a covers-heavy album that also featured her interpretations of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and “Let It Be.”)

In college, many years after “Up On Cripple Creek,” I re-introduced to The Band thanks to discovering Aretha’s version of “The Weight” on the amazing 1992 box set, Queen Of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings. Recorded with the studio dream team of Arif Mardin, Jerry Wexler, and Tom Dowd, and featuring Gregg Allman on slide guitar, Aretha takes “The Weight” to church as only she can. Funky gospel fire.

With Levon Helm now gone, only Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson remain from The Band (Richard Manuel died in 1986, Rick Danko in 1999). On Friday night at Coachella, The Black Keys covered “The Weight” (written by Robertson) in tribute to Helm, with John Fogerty on acoustic guitar.

Purchase Aretha Franklin – “The Weight” (The Band cover) via iTunes, Amazon MP3.