Few Arkansas musicians have left as indelible a footprint on American pop culture as Levon Helm. This project, created in collaboration with the Walton Arts Center’s exhibition “This Wheel’s Still on Fire: The Legacy of Levon Helm,” highlights the Pryor Center’s extensive collection of interviews with those Arkansans who knew, worked with, and admired Helm. Below you will find interviews with many who knew Helm personally, including notable Arkansas musicians like Ronnie Hawkins, Earl and Ernie Cate, Terry Cagle, John Ware, Ron Eoff, among others. There are also interviews with people who knew Helm from his earliest days in Phillips County, Arkansas, including A.B. Thompson of Helm’s hometown of Turkey Scratch; Anna Lee Amsden, immortalized as “Miss Anna Lee” from “The Weight,” Bubba Sullivan, the longtime organizer of the King Biscuit Blues Festival, and Morse U. Gist, whose music store in Helena Helm frequented as a young man.
The highlight of this collection is a series of videos from a concert of the Levon Helm Band at the Peabody Hotel in Little Rock in 2005. Helm had lost his singing voice after being diagnosed with throat cancer in the late 1990s, but by 2005 he had recovered it and begun a limited touring schedule with his namesake band, made up of musicians based in and around Levon’s adopted hometown of Woodstock, New York. This iteration of the band featured Amy Helm, Larry Campbell, Erik Lawrence, Little Sammy Davis, and Steven Bernstein.
Filmed by longtime Pryor Center associate director Scott Lunsford alongside Trey Marley and Will Gisler, these recordings include a film of the concert as well as interviews with members of the Levon Helm Band and several of Helm’s close family and friends. These recordings showcase Helm’s magnetism as a performer as well as his enduring connections to Arkansas through family, friends, and the state’s unique musical tradition.
#1: Poster for "This Wheel's Still on Fire: The Legacy of Levon Helm" exhibit at the Alexander Gallery; Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2026
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#2: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#3: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#4: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#5: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#6: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#7: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#8: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#9: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#10: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#11: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#12: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#13: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#14: Still frame from Levon Helm Band concert; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#15: Still frame from interview with Anna Lee Amsden; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#16: Still frame from interview with Mary Cavette Vaiden; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#17: Still frame from interview with Anna Lee Amsden and Mary Cavette Vaide; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#18: Levon Helm dancing with Mary Cavette Vaiden; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#19: Still frame from interview with Steven Bernstein; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#20: Still frame from interview with Larry Campbell; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#21: Still frame from interview with Little Sammy Davis; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#22: Still frame from interview with Amy Helm; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#23: Still frame from interview with Ron Helm; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#24: Still frame from interview with Erik Lawrence; Little Rock, Arkansas, 2005
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#25: Levon Helm in front of the original A.B. Thompson Store, Turkey Scratch, Arkansas
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#26: Photo scanned at Gist Music Company; Levon Helm (right) with Linda Helm
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#27: C.W. Gatlin (left) and Levon Helm playing at Gist Music Company, Helena, Arkansas
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#28: The Band is Back tour book for The Band's 1983 Japan tour
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#29: The Band performs during their Japan tour: (from left) Ernie Cate, Levon Helm, Earl Cate, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, Ron Eoff, and Richard Manuel, 1983
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#30: Terry Cagle, Levon Helm, and Max Weinberg in Connecticut, 1983
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#31: Terry Cagle and his uncle, Levon Helm, on the movie set of End of the Line, 1986
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#32: Earl Cate's Fender Telecaster guitar at Levon Helm's Midnight Ramble; Woodstock, New York, March 10, 2007
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
