01/07/2025
RELEASED: FRIDAY 8th AUGUST 2025
THE CHARLIE DANIELS BAND WITH SPECIAL GUESTS & FRIENDS:
VOLUNTEER JAM 111 AND 1V
FLOATING WORLD: FLOATS 6476
The late Charlie Daniels was one of American roots-rock’s most talented of musicians. A virtuoso on Fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and all manner of stringed instruments, in a career spanning six decades, Daniels had played on albums by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Marty Robbins, Pete Seeger, Ringo Starr, Flatt & Scruggs, Hank Williams Jr, Marshall Tucker Band, and he even turned producer for Elephant Mountain, the classic 1969 album by The Youngbloods. He formed the Charlie Daniels Band in the early seventies, quickly becoming an integral part of the burgeoning ‘Southern Rock’ scene.
As concert performance was an integral part of the Charlie Daniels Band appeal, and on October 4th, 1974, he hosted the first Volunteer Jam show, at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The event began something of a musical institution over the years, with a broad range of artists, such as The Allman Brothers Band, Marshall Tucker Band, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, Billy Ray Cyrus, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tammy Wynette, Roy Acuff, Carl Perkins, Don Henley and Barefoot Jerry amongst many others. Many of the shows were broadcast live on the radio. ‘Volunteer Jam’ also lent its name to a series of albums released by Daniels over the years.
This album consists of performances from the Volunteer Jams III, recorded on January 8th 1977, and IV, which was recorded on January 14th 1978, and was first released as a double vinyl set in the spring of 1978. Apart from The Charlie Daniels Band, it also features performances from Grinderswitch, The Wet Willie Band, Sea Level, Willie Nelson, and sundry other sons and daughters of the South lending their talents to the throng.
It’s a hugely enjoyable melange of fine musicianship and roots-rock stylings; Willie Nelson offers up a real mini-gem of a cameo appearance, wowing the crowd with such choice Nelson fare as ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’, and ‘Crazy’. The recording also includes a Jam with sometime Jefferson Airplane violin player, Papa John Creach, a real treat to hear such masters of the fiddle playing arts flaying the rosin from their bows.
All musical styles are served up here, almost; from bracing Western Swing, Southern Boogie Rock, Country, a smidge of the Blues and his beloved Gospel strands also on display. Daniels was a firm believer in the old adage that there was only two types of music – good and bad, and he celebrated his eclectic musical roots in every show he played.
In his later years, Daniels would express increasingly conservative views; a seeming volte-face turnaround from the man who played pro-Marijuana Legalisation benefits and campaigned for the Democrat presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in the mid-seventies. In the end, though, it was Daniels’ music, and the massive contribution he made as a session player or as a performer and recording artist in his own right for which he will be long-revered and remembered. There’s a truckload of that on this excellent set.