This Southern-fried country ballad 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 this song, 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."
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