The Band has a deserved reputation as one of the true oracles of American music at its essence — their seamless distillation of blues, jazz, folk, country, rockabilly, and soul can tell a 200-year musical saga in a span of one 4-minute song. But the story of the group itself and the inimitable individuals who formed its ranks has more in common with a 19th century Russian novel: epic, historical, and mainly tragic. The haunting beauty of their finest work exudes a kind of sweeping, panoramic melancholy, which for all of its beauty can be almost too difficult to listen to. Their confederate and key collaborator Bob Dylan once lamented in song that “death kept following us/ tracking us down,” as appropriate an epitaph as any for this extraordinary, star-crossed group of musical greats.