Babe Ruth are a rock music group, primarily active through the 1970s, from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. Their characteristically 'heavy' sound is marked by powerful vocals from Janita Haan and full arrangements by Alan Shacklock. They are acknowledged as having more commercial success in North America than in their home country. When the group was first formed in 1971 (year in music), they were called Shacklock after their guitarist Alan Shacklock. Members included Janita Haan and Dave Hewitt, with Dave Punshon and Dick Powell later joining. The first release was their single "Elusive"; their first album, First Base, went gold in Canada. In 1973, Ed Spevock replaced Powell and Chris Holmes replaced Punshon on the second album. In 1975, Steve Gurl, keyboardist from Glenn Cornick's Wild Turkey replaced Holmes for the third album. The same year, Shacklock exited and Bernie Marsden (Wild Turkey) joined the team for the fourth album. After this, Haan and Hewitt left.

Around the time the Charlie Daniels Band recorded the music that became 1976's Saddle Tramp, the group was experiencing its first wave of success, as both Fire on the Mountain and Nightrider found an audience, and the group became known for their live performances, particularly through Daniels' Volunteer Jams concerts. Saddle Tramp rode this momentum into the country Top Ten and a gold album — all without a Top Ten country single, it should be noted. That's because the Charlie Daniels Band turned into the country equivalent of a radio-oriented rock band, where singles were less important than a unified whole of an album, which sought to replicate the feel of live performances. Arriving so early in the record signals that this is a jam record for jam fans, and on that level, it works very well, since it does showcase the band at a near-peak of its talents. But, like many other jam records, Saddle Tramp winds up not being about the songs (which, apart from the single "Wichita Jail," aren't particularly memorable), but being about the feel of the music and the sound of the band, which can make for good listening, provided that's what you're looking to hear.

When Charlie Daniels released his eponymous debut in 1970, Southern rock was in its nascent stages. It had been a year since the Allman Brothers Band released their debut and Lynyrd Skynyrd wouldn't unleash its first record for another three years, so the genre was in the process of being born, and Charlie Daniels' debut plays a pivotal role in the genre -- not so much because it was directly influential, but because it points the way to how the genre could and would sound, and how country music could retain its hillbilly spirit and rock like a mother. Where the Allmans were firmly grounded in the blues, especially on the first two records, Daniels was a redneck from the start, and all ten songs on his debut were country at their foundation, even if some of it is country via the Band, as Rich Kienzle points out in his brief liner notes to Koch's 2001 reissue of the album. The Band connections derive from Daniels' time as a session musician for Columbia in Nashville, where he played on many country-rock albums, including Dylan's Nashville Skyline, but there's a heavy dose of hard rock, often via the Allmans' extended jams, on this record. Daniels simply wails on his guitar here, most notably on the six-minute closer "Thirty Nine Miles from Mobile," but, apart from the ballads, he doesn't miss a chance to solo. Once he formed the Charlie Daniels Band, he became a star and with Fire on the Mountain, he had another classic, but he would never sound as wild, unpredictable, or as much like a maverick as he does on this superb album.

Charles McPherson delves into a number of standards in this collection of timeless ballads, well accompanied by pianist Steve Kuhn, bassist David Williams, and drummer Leroy Williams...