Back in the early 1970's there was a rebirth of sorts that happened in Rock and Roll music in the United States. Rock and Roll got its birth in the United States in the South when people like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis started to combine the country music they grew up listening to, with the Blues music that Black people were playing all around them.
The resulting Sun Records recordings were nothing short of revolutionary in the impact they had on popular music in the States. In those days the business of Rock and Roll was still pretty innocent. There weren't many marketing executives around then packaging performers and pasting label on their music. I mean how could you have a cross over hit between Country and Rock and Roll when that's exactly what you're playing, Country and Rock and Roll.
I don't think those original Sun Record touring shows of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Johnny Cash, and whoever else they crammed into the cars and buses that took them around, were even called Rock and Roll shows. If anything they toured under the banner of Sun Records and the name of the sponsor.
Even though all of them were from well below the Mason Dixon line, calling what they did something like Southern Rock was as alien to them as calling it Afro-Cuban. Twenty years later one could see how much the industry had changed when a group of bands who had far less in common musically than the groups from Sun Records did, were lumped together as Southern Rock.
Charlie Daniels, of The Charlie Daniel Band, in an interview done this year for the release of the DVD of his 1975 Volunteer Jam, made the same point. He said that while they may all have been born in the same part of the world, The Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers, and Z. Z. Top never played music that could have been call similar. He could never understand why they were all called Southern Rock.
Article comments
1 - John
I sing this song as an older man who's took his share of drugs
But I as much as anyone else have no sympathy for thugs
But you're new-found anti-drug crusade strikes me as hypocrasy
Do you really want your old friends to swing up from a tree?
REPEAT REFRAIN
2 - John
Charlie Daniels
you used to be one o' my heros//
but you stuck you finger in the air and found out which way the wind blows//
kinda like a chameleon you've become as you've grown old//
and you might have alot of money//
but you sure ain't got no soul//
REFRAIN: And I ain't asking you for nothin'//
if I can't get it on my own//
if you don't like the way I'm livin'// you just leave this long-haired country boy alone.
3 - John
Charlie Daniels, you're old song meant alot to me
but why you had to change your tune is something I can't see
you've become that old Greenteeth that you kicked right in knee
and you can keep your neocon politics the devil away from me
REPEAT REFRAIN
4 - jojo
I've bought the volunteer jam dvd and i shouldn't have done that. It's because i own the real volunteer jam movie on vhs. When i compared the two recordings, i immediately noticed that there were things altered in the new recording. For exemple the music doesn't match with the images. There is a one second difference in sound and image. You see the drummer hitting the drums and one second or maybe less after that you hear the drums. There's no synchronocity with sound and image. Further more. The quality of the recording in the movie is far better than on the new dvd. |I've written Eagle Eye records about this. If you can get the real original volunteer jam movie you're better of.
5 - James In San Diego
I read about it today and ran out to buy it. This movie was shot about 3 months before I was born, and I'm 31 (not 21 like you said). Beyond that I am totally jazzed about this being released at all. jojo if I knew where to buy this on VHS I will. I grew up in Spartanburg SC so Marshall Tucker is like big stuff to me. I want to find the Marshall Tucker movie (long trailer) for LONG HARD RIDE. Film, Videotape, (ugh)Youtube as long as I can finally see it, so if ya'll know anything post it, please?
6 - Joyce
I have waited over 20 years for this DVD to come out. Now that I have it, I can truely say it was worth the wait. My long-time boyfriend, Gary Peacemaker plays drums on some of the songs. He'd told me about the fun, egoless, exciting, free-jam that night and now I can see and feel it myself through the DVD. I've loved this music since the '70's and still do. To whomever made this possible, I send out a huge Thank you!
7 - RomanticKerouac
Does anyone know where I can find the Marshall Tucker Band's performance from this Volunteer Jam? Has it ever been bootlegged, or released? I seen the videos on youtube, would like to have a copy for viewing on my big screen.