Problems with interpretation inside shellcommands

[Frank Smith]

I am trying to add a shellcommand that is a long chain of pipes
and keep getting the following error:

test.conf:13: Incomplete variable syntax or bracket mismatch 
   
I narrowed it down to the following single command:
shellcommands:
   testbox::
       `/usr/bin/awk  '{print $1}' somefile`

and I can't figure out if it is interpreting the braces and/or
the $1 somehow.  The backquotes work fine (the entire command
I want uses both ' and ") and I got the rest of the pipe to work
by escaping all the ! and * but I can't seem to figure out what
to do with the {print $1}.
   I'm sure its obvious to somebody, but I can't seem to get it
passed through as part of the command.

Any suggestions?

Frank

-- 
Frank Smith                                      fsmith@hoovers.com
Systems Administrator                           Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                   Fax: 512-374-4501