Ironically, the origins of Americana — or, perhaps we should just call it “roots music” — lie in the States’ neighbor to the North. As guitarist and principal songwriter and guitarist for The Band, Robbie Robertson, who passed away last week about a month after his 80th birthday, is one of a small number of figures who can truly be said to have changed the shape of contemporary music.

Born on July 5, 1943 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Robertson had a mother of First Nations heritage and a Jewish father who split up when he was in his early teens. Robertson got into the show business life at a young age: The summer when he was 14, he worked at carnivals. He’d already joined his first band, Littler Caesar and the Consuls, a year earlier. In 1959, he started working with the Arkansas-born rockabilly Ronnie Hawkins in his backing band, the Hawks.