Bob Dylan said he regarded The Band at their best when they performed Motown covers, rather than for their celebrated original songs such as ‘The Weight’ and ‘King Harvest’. His comments underline the group’s versatility and suggest that, for Dylan, their greatest strength lay in their ability to reinterpret soul and R&B material as a tight live ensemble.

In a 1987 Rolling Stone interview, Dylan recalled the musicians’ earlier period as Levon and the Hawks, before they became The Band after backing him on his 1965 electric tour. He singled out their versions of Marvin Gaye’s 1964 song ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’, a concert staple later featured in The Last Waltz (1976), calling those performances “the golden days”.