The band never did take much stock in garishness, so it's not surprising that Levon Helm and Rick Danko would introduce their first solo albums with humility and sobriety more akin to a Sunday-morning service than a Saturday-night session. And while it was impossible to imagine the Band without one of its members, it was equally fruitless to isolate any one of them as the linchpin to the sound.

Levon Helm's response to being on his own is as idealistic as the Band's original intentions. The RCO All-Stars are no publicist's exaggeration. Helm has formed a band that on paper, at least, ought to lead the division, boasting R&B greats at almost every position (Booker T. Jones, Duck Dunn, Steve Cropper. Fred Carter Jr., Dr. John, Paul Butterfield and a four-piece horn section that includes Howard Johnson). Unlike most such gatherings, the group goes after and actually achieves an ensemble sound—no grandstanding, no egos flashing. In the best R&B tradition, they emphasize fills over solos, which are kept short and to the point. Section work is precise, the choice of covers imaginative.

Yet none of it seems to mean much. In aiming to be a cohesive band, rather than a collection of hotshots, the All-Stars leave out exactly those elements that make R&B and rock & roll exciting—humor, tension, exuberance and drama. The band behaves as if it were at a formal dinner party. The music sounds decorous and polite. Helm and the rest deliver "Milk Cow Boogie" with all the flair of the postman bringing in the morning mail, and Berry's wonderfully eerie "Havana Moon" is about as exotic as a Halloween trinket. Before this album appeared, nobody could have convinced me that the All-Stars wouldn't make this year's play-offs. But at this point, they're struggling to reach 500.

Danko, too, has employed a number of name players (Eric Clapton, Doug Sahm, Tim Drummond and all of the Band, none of whom appears on the same cut) but primarily as designated hitters, relying instead on an anonymous, more flexible crew for his starting lineup. And there's no question whose record this is. Danko's cracked country voice dominates. The sound, C&W tinged with the blues, is a perfect mirror for the faith and fatalism that war in Danko's best songs. Solos snap and snarl at each other; the rhythm section swirls. Unlike Helm, Danko (along with Bobby Charles) has written almost the entire album. The modesty of his lyrics and the passion of his tone would make this record endearing if it weren't for its understated despair. Danko seems to be fighting for his identity here and he's not sure he's winning. The love songs (especially "Sip the Wine" and "Sweet Romance") rank with anything the Band has done in years, and the rockers ("Brainwash," in particular) jump with an energy I once thought the Band had completely lost. There are some throwaways here ("What a Town" and a curiously offhand version of "Small Town Talk"), but Danko has made a record on which modesty is not an excuse for failure. (RS 256)

KIT RACHLIS