First thing: This album rocks. If you only know The Charlie Daniels Band from “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” you have no idea what great musicians these guys are. The title track of 1976’s Saddle Tramp is right up there with the country-jazz-rock fusion of Little Feat, The Dixie Dregs, and The Marshall Tucker Band. Check it out:
So that’s the good news, and then there’s that album cover. I can’t place what carnival ride this painting might have come from, or maybe it’s van art. I don’t know, but I do know this: In its Franklin Mint Collector Plate way it bears an uncanny resemblance to a couple of seventies icons:
Can you find the gay cowboy in the photos above? If you said #3 you know your Village People. If you said “all of the above,” well, it’s kind of hard to argue based on the photographic evidence presented here.
Please welcome Saddle Tramp (that has to be a gay porn title) to the Bad Album Cover Hall of Fame.
Why It Matters 
Responses to “From the Stacks: The Charlie Daniels Band – Saddle Tramp”
Charlie’s son Charlie Jr. said the painting is a composite of several different people in or associated with the band. The Hat is like one Charlie had at the time.
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That’s the real magic of a bad album cover, the fact that marketing signed off….
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I do like The Charlie Daniels Band. As for the cover art…well, 1976 was a strange time. Someone got ahold of that art and said “Yes! It is the perfect image to make everyone pick up and purchase this album! Just look at that stellar ‘stache!”
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