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THE BAND’S 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink, was such a bolt of originality — creating what came to be known as Americana — that it reverberated throughout the rock world. Eric Clapton said he broke up Cream immediately after hearing it and even trekked to Woodstock, New York, to meet its makers, as did George Harrison. “I knew the album was good and different, but I was surprised by the impact on people like Clapton and the Beatles,” guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson says, 51 years later. “We were together for six or seven years before we recorded our debut, honing our skills, learning our craft and gathering music — gospel, blues, mountain music, sacred harp singing, Anglican hymns. We were putting everything in our big pot of gumbo, and when we made a record sounding like that, all these guys asked, ‘Where the hell did this come from?’ That’s what happens when you really go out in search of a sound.

“We were bringing a musicality that wasn’t already there. So there was a freshness and newness to it. And it opened up some people’s ears. They really thought it was coming from another world — and it was, in a way.”

Robertson is Canadian, as were all of his Band-mates, with the notable exception of the Arkansas native Levon Helm, the