Helm Goes Commercial for Cingular

Former Springdale resident Levon Helm is belting out The Band’s most famous song in a new nationwide television ad for Cingular Wireless.

The commercial shows road-trippy scenes from Chicago to San Francisco as Helm sings “Pulled into Nazareth, was feelin’ ’bout half past dead.” It’s the first line from “The Weight,” which was on The Band’s 1968 album “Music From Big Pink.”

The song mentions several real-life acquaintances of The Band’s including “Crazy Chester,” who hung out on Fayetteville’s Dickson Street in the early 1960s with two cap guns at his side.

But we hear the ad has Helm rankled.

Randy Stratton, Helm’s Fayetteville agent, said Helm, who lives in Woodstock, N.Y., is talking about suing Cingular because he hasn’t been paid for their use of the song. Stratton said it’s somewhat difficult to determine who owns the rights to The Band’s songs, with Band guitarist Robbie Robertson claiming the rights to some and even Bob Dylan possibly owning others. Dylan hired The Band for his first electric tour in 1965 and for several years afterwards.

Helm, Robertson and organist Garth Hudson are the three surviving members of The Band. The other two Band members, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel, are deceased.

Helm, who stopped singing in 2000 because of throat cancer, is starting to sing again and may sing a few songs the next time he performs in Fayetteville, Stratton said.