After honing their chops backing up rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins and folk hero Bob Dylan, The Band set out on their own with their 1968 debut, Music From Big Pink, a raw roots-rock retort to the era's prevailing psychedelic indulgence. For much of the next decade, through brilliant songwriting and musicianship, they combined the various strains of American music—rock, blues, folk, country, R&B and jazz—into an utterly original hybrid sound. With its members tiring of life on the road, The Band threw themselves one of the greatest going-away parties ever, inviting their many famous friends—Dylan, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell among them—to The Last Waltz, a farewell concert held in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day 1976 and filmed by Martin Scorsese for his legendary documentary of the same name.