Fire On The Mountain Can't You See This Ol' Cowboy The Marshall Tucker Band

Fire On The Mountain Album: Searchin' for a Rainbow (1975)
Can't You See Album: The Marshall Tucker Band (1973)
This Ol' Cowboy Album: Where We All Belong (1974)
by The Marshall Tucker Band

Fire On The Mountain was written by George McCorkle, guitarist for the Marshall Tucker Band. Set during the California gold rush, it tells the story of a family that sets out from their home in Carolina looking to strike it rich. The singer ends up getting shot dead, and his widow is left with a worthless claim.

When George McCorkle wrote Fire On The Mountain, he knew Charlie Daniels was working on an album called Fire on the Mountain, and was hoping Daniels would record it. Daniels liked the song and helped out by playing fiddle on the track, but he decided not to record it as he felt it didn't fit in with the rest of his album, which was released in 1974.

Daniels was a frequent Marshall Tucker collaborator, having been "blown away" by their performance when he first saw them onstage.
This was the first song George McCorkle brought to the band. "It wasn't really a thought-out song," he said in an interview with Craig Cumberland. "Me and my brother came up with the intro to it. The two of us were just playin' acoustics and that little hook line just came up from me and him sitting around playing."

Toy Caldwell played steel guitar on Fire On The Mountain, but according to McCorkle, he played it out of tune because he had just recently bought the instrument and didn't know how to tune it properly.

The flute on this song comes courtesy of the band's multi-instrumentalist Jerry Eubanks.

A common point of confusion is "Where's Marshall Tucker?" There is no actual such person in the band; they got the name off the key to the door to the warehouse they rented to practice in. Marshall Tucker was the person who had rented the warehouse before them and his name was still inscribed on the key.

Fire On The Mountain was The Marshall Tucker Band's second-highest hit, the highest being "Heard It In A Love Song." It was also one of their only two Top 40 hits.

Can't You See became the anthem song for The Marshall Tucker Band, similar to "Free Bird" for Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was never a Top 40 hit, but was very popular on Album Oriented Radio (AOR) and continues to get a lot of airplay on Classic Rock stations.

The open in unusual - it starts with the picking of a guitar and the playing of a flute. Jerry Eubanks of the Marshall Tucker Band played the flute, giving the song a very distinctive sound - it's not a common instrument in the world of Southern Rock.

Can't You See was featured in the soundtrack for the movie Blow.

There is no Marshall Tucker in The Marshall Tucker Band. They saw the name on a key ring where they used to rehearse and decided it would make a good name for their band.

Can't You See was named the #1 greatest Southern Rock song ever recorded by Ultimate Classic Rock with Sweet Home Alabama as runner-up.

Said the site, "Next time you hear this song in public, take notice and you'll make the strangest observation, especially if there is booze involved. There seems to be something about this particular song that makes the majority (very ironically) close their eyes and sway their head from left to right while singing the song's famous 'Can't you see' line. That universal connection earns this song the top spot on our Southern Rock songs list."

Where We All Belong is the third album released in 1974, the double album consists of a studio album and a live album; the former focuses on progressive country songs, while the latter focuses on jazz rock and Southern rock jamming. Musician Charlie Daniels guests on two songs, one from each album. This Ol' Cowboy is the opening track.

Where We All Belong is a double album, consisting of a studio album and a live album. The staff writers of Classic Rock had differing opinions on where the style of the studio disc placed, with one writer opining that, despite the band's status as a Southern rock group, the studio recordings were not Southern rock at all, but somewhat jazzy, commercial rock music, comparable to the band Chicago. Another staff writer within the same piece said that the studio recordings were progressive country. The live recording fits the categorization of Southern rock more definitively, as well as falling into the genre of jazz rock.