RIP Levon Helm, who was not only of course the voice of The Band, but also of The Right Stuff, the voice warning softly,
There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.
Helm also played Ridley, the trusted friend of Chuck Yeager, as depicted by Sam Shepard. I thought it was a kind of subversive genius, casting those two countercultural Dylan-associated types as these otherwise strait-laced American heroes.
As Pierce says, and as seems appropriate in this particular sidelight on Helm’s career, Godspeed.
The Edge of the American West 
5 comments
April 20, 2012 at 4:53 am
Dave
God damn I love that book! The film, not so much – not enough relentless emphasis on just how amazingly dangerous it all was.
April 20, 2012 at 9:05 am
ajay
Yeah, the decision to turn it into a grossout comedy with Jeff Goldblum doesn’t really hold up well in the cold light of history. But the first fifteen minutes – the Chuck Yeager bit – are great.
April 20, 2012 at 9:11 am
Jacob
My favorite bit of advice from Levon: “Hey look, stick this in the handle, take your good arm, and just wang it down.”
April 20, 2012 at 3:44 pm
TF Smith
“Ridley” would be Jack Linnwood Ridley, who was a test pilot, Oklahoma BSME, and a Caltech MS who developed the basic concepts of flight control in supersonic aircraft while assigned to the X-1 project, concepts that remain in use today. He was a protoge of then-Col. Albert Boyd, who commanded the flight test engineering center (McCook and then Wright-Patterson) during WW II and afterwards, and was the sponsor of the X-1 within the Army and Air Force.
After the X-1, Jack Ridley rose to become chief of the USAF Flight Test Engineering Lab before his death in a plane crash in 1957 in Japan while serving with the MAAG attached to the JASDF; he was a full colonel (0-6).
Had he lived, Col. Ridley would have been on the short list for general and presumably, chief of the Flight Test Center and then presumably Air Material Command.
See:
http://www.nationalaviation.org/ridley-jack/
April 21, 2012 at 2:54 pm
mrearl
The first fifteen minutes, yes, and the last fifteen minutes, with Yeager/Shepard coming on foot out of the smoke in the distance, after the crash. “Who’s the best pilot I ever saw? I don’t know. Well. . . there was this one guy . . . ”
Who’s the best drummer I ever saw? Well, there was this one guy . . .
Ave atque vale, Levon.