Charlie Daniels Band Wins Crowd At Saratoga
by Bob Drzewiczewski. Rutland Daily Herald, September 7, 1980
Only a few years ago, the Charlie Daniels Band was just another Southern country rock band jammed in the middle of the pack of groups that started the southern renaissance that made it permissible for a Southerner to wear his hair long on his home turf without fear of repercussions.
When the Southern revival was at its zenith, the Marshall Tucker Band, the Allman Brothers Band, Little Feat, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, Sea Level, and Wet Willie were flooding the Top-40 market with a unique blend of twangy rock that inspired the labelers of the recording industry to invent new names for this unique brand of music.
The death of key members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, Little Feat, and the Allman Brothers dealt a crippling blow to the Southern rock movement in the late 1970s.
As the aforementioned groups diminished in stature, the Charlie Daniels Band rose to the top of the field after the release last summer of the “Million Mile Reflections” album and the subsequent single, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
Those who flocked to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center last Saturday night with Confederate flags, wine botas and the required cowboy hat to see CDB in concert during a driving rainstorm will argue incessantly that the group is, without a doubt, the best countrified group in the nation, bar none.
The CDB, in turn, responded with a vibrant two-hour, 10-minute performance (including three encores), which those in attendance will not forget for some time. Saturday’s concert was intensified by the use of a huge projector that flashed images of the Full Moon album cover, caricatures of departed rock stars and the American flag on the stage backdrop during certain songs.
Unlike most groups, the CDB did not play a few new ones, a few old ones and walk off stage. The six-piece band, which turned into a 14-piece entourage for some numbers, played all of the cuts from the recently released “Full Moon” album, most of the cuts from the “Reflections” albums and numerous “older” tunes.
At various points of the concert, Daniels dedicated certain songs to departed rock stars. The CDB did a spunky version of the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Can’t You See” and dedicated it to the group’s deceased co-founder, Tommy Caldwell.
When the CDB played “Reflections,” the images of Ronnie Van Zant, of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Elvis Presley, Duane Allman, Tommy Caldwell, and Janis Joplin were depicted on the black stage backdrop.
During these songs (and a few others), Confederate flag-waving fans ran up and down the aisles, cheering the band on. The crowd was perhaps as responsive to a group’s performance as is humanly possible.
One of the emotional highlights of the night occurred during the playing of “In America,” a hit record about four months ago. The theme of the song is that we as a nation have molded together again. During the playing of the song, the flagwavers (this time using Old Glory) dashed through the aisles.
About 90 minutes after Daniels started playing (Levon Helm, formerly of the Band, jammed with Cates Brothers as a warm-up act), the celebrated leader brought out his fiddle, which made the already-rowdy crowd nearly uncontrollable.
Few people in the business play the fiddle as “hot” as Daniels. He earned his reputation in the late 1960s and the early 1970s as one of Nashville’s premier session men. It was his work on Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album, released in 1969, that brought him national recognition.
The immense success of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” can be attributed to Daniels’ fiddle solos, which comprise the heart of the song. It is the tale of a fiddle duel between Johnny, a young fiddle player, and the devil. The prizes are either a golden fiddle for Johnny or Johnny’s soul for the devil. Like any wholesome tale, the hero (Johnny) wins.
Daniels also played “The Orange Blossom Special” and The South Is Going to Do It Again” as encores, but it was “The Devil” that brought on the mayhem.
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