Joan Baez's 1971 cover of The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" became her biggest chart success, reaching number three on the US charts. This was particularly significant for Baez, whose album sales had been declining as music trends shifted from folk to rock during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The cover version brought the song to much wider audiences than The Band themselves had achieved, as their original releases rarely charted as major hits.

The Band released the song on their 1969 self-titled album after songwriter Robbie Robertson drew inspiration from Civil War history and personal circumstances, including a desire to write quietly to avoid waking his newborn child. Baez recorded her version in Nashville with session musicians and a large group of backing singers, but without access to the official lyrics, she sang from memory and made several errors, including mishearing "Stoneman's cavalry" as "so much cavalry came," altering "By May the tenth, Richmond had fell" to "I took the train to Richmond had fell," and changing "work the land" to "working man." Despite these inaccuracies, the song became her biggest single success, though listeners familiar only with her version would have received a different interpretation than Robertson intended.