Songoftheday - Got on a plane and got off in Vietnam, walked into a different world of past forever gone...

The Charlie Daniels Band - "Still In Saigon"

from the album Windows (1982)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (two weeks)

weeks in top 40: 8

Today's Song of the Day is by the Southern rock icons the Charlie Daniels Band. Daniels, an accomplished fiddler from North Carolina, sold over 3 millions records of his 1979 LP Million Mile Reflections, which included the classic #1 country and #3 pop hit "The Devil Went Down To Georgia". At the time he was a vocal supporter of Jimmy Carter and the working man in the tradition of Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp, and in 1982 he released his top-40 album Windows, which included his most serious single to date, "Still In Saigon", which detailed the pain and hardships afforded to veterans of the Vietnam War.

Since then his views have become more right-wing, and a virulent gun-rights supporter. "Still In Saigon", which was a little too rock so didn't make the country chart, was his last Hot 100 pop appearance as a lead artist, though the group did score a top-10 country hit in '86 with "Drinkin' My Baby Goodbye". Daniels himself guested two years ago on Staind lead singer Aaron Lewis' #87 hit "Country Boy". He was also inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2008.

Up tomorrow: the theme from a groundbreaking gay-themed movie.