Nashville Sound Presented at SPAC

by Marilyn Nason, The Post-Star, September 2, 1969

A truly wonderful evening of music, delightful, melodic, straight music designed to please all tastes was offered in the Festival of Music Saturday night at Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

To say Chet Atkins is better than Floyd Cramer, Cramer is better than Boots Randolph or Jerry Reed or the Nashville
Sound would all be impossible and untrue.

This was simply an excellent musical revue, performed by professionals and completely captivating the 5,000 attending.

That Boots Randolph just has to be the world’s greatest sax player. He does fantastic things with this instrument, sounding occasionally like trumpet player Al Hirt in the way he gets strange sounds from his instrument. As for Chet Atkins, well, they don’t call him “Mr. Guitar,” for nothing and his more than 40 records are ample proof of his ability.

Floyd Cramer, too, has the distinctive Nashville sound with his piano and is very handsome, to boot.

Thanks to the Music City Sound of Strings, some 12 strong, and the Nashville Brass of eight, a real big band sound was achieved to back these excellent stars. During the first half, the strings had moments of shrillness, overshadowing the performers but this was remedied for the second half by SPAC’s excellent stage crew.

It was a smooth show, an all-family one meant for lovers of all types of music, truly rang ing from country/western to rock, jazz, swing, ballads, blues, in fact, everything that blends into the so-called Nashville Sound.

Boots Randolph’s “Yackety Sax” is one of the greatest showman numbers I’ve ever seen/heard onstage and he got a sustained ovation for his playing of it.