Music / The Charlie Daniels Band

The Charlie Daniels Band winning a Grammy.^note Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (1980), for "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Daniels' arm is in a cast because he was rocking too hard.

The Charlie Daniels Band was the primary musical output of American singer, fiddler and guitarist Charlie Daniels (born October 28, 1936), who started out his music career playing these instruments, along with the banjo and mandolin, in a local Bluegrass band in The '50s, before getting interested in Rock & Roll and Jazz and branching out into playing for these kinds of groups in The '60s. After playing sideman for Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Ringo Starr, Daniels sought to establish himself as a band leader, not just a participant, of his own Rock band.

Between 1971 and '73, Daniels released three albums under his own name: his Self-Titled Album, Te John, Grease, & Wolfman and Honey in the Rock. However, afterwards, most of Daniels' musical output was credited under the name The Charlie Daniels Band. His first three albums were monumental, however, as they were credited for influencing a whole new musical movement; Daniels' music blurred the lines between Country Music, Rock & Roll and Blues, making Daniels one of the pioneers of Country Rock and Southern Rock. Daniels' Jazz influences also helped establish Progressive Country, as the CDB's blend of Jazz Rock, Blues Rock, Folk Music, Bluegrass and Country Rock created a kind of Progressive Rock Meets Country sound.

Daniels, it should be noted, said that he never claimed to be a Country musician, and instead categorized his own music as simply being "American Music", as he played different genres of music pioneered in the United States, such as Country, Rock & Roll, Jazz, Gospel Music and Blues.

The Charlie Daniels Band is best known for their song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", a Progressive Bluegrass/Talking Blues mashup with elements of Disco and proto-Country Rap telling the story of a fiddle competition between Satan and a Southern boy named Johnny, over a shiny fiddle made of gold and Johnny's soul, in which Johnny defeats the Devil with The Power of Rock and calls him a son of a bitch because Johnny's the best there's ever been. It's noted for a astounding instrumental section with epic fiddle solos.

After this song's massive success, the CDB, who were primarily a Rock band in the '70s, became primarily associated with Country in the '80s, with Charlie appearing in the movie Urban Cowboy as himself. Daniels was also inducted into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame in 2002, the Grand Ole Opry in 2008, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.

Daniels died on July 6, 2020.

Not to be confused with Cheer Up, Charlie Daniels.

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The Charlie Daniels Band's musical career contains examples of:

• Archive Panic: Including albums recorded under his own name and as The Charlie Daniels Band, as well as with the Swamp Rock band Beau Weevils, Daniels recorded 31 albums, not counting the recordings he made as a sideman before he was famous or albums he was a Special Guest on.
• Blues Rock: Throughout their career, but emphasized on the album Blues Hat.
• Bowdlerise:
  • The radio edit of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" changes the phrase "son of a bitch" to "son of a gun".
  • "Looking for My Mary Jane", from their 1974 album Way Down Yonder, made explicit references to smoking marijuana. When the song was re-recorded for Blues Hat, these references were removed.
  • The original version of "Long Haired Country Boy", from 1974's Fire on the Mountain, contained the lyrics "People say I'm no good and crazy as a loon / 'Cause I get stoned in the morning / And get drunk in the afternoon", which were changed in later live performances and the Blues Hat re-recording to "I get up in the morning / And I get down in the afternoon" to remove the references to smoking pot and getting hammered.
  • The original "Uneasy Rider" is about a Long Haired Country Boy who finds himself in a conflict with hardcore conservatives who hate hippies. A Sequel Song, "Uneasy Rider '88" is about a couple of Good Ol' Boys who accidentally end up at a gay bar.
• Christian Rock: Two albums in The '90s, The Door and Steel Witness, stand out from Daniels' later Gospel Music albums by featuring an overt Blues Rock sound not present on Daniels' traditional Gospel and Bluegrass Gospel albums.
• Colbert Bump:
  • Bob Dylan specifically requested that Daniels play on Nashville Skyline as Bob was very impressed with the then-unknown Daniels's playing, giving Daniels the Colbert Bump and leading to more session gigs with major recording stars.
  • The Charlie Daniels Band campaigned for Jimmy Carter. Carter's affiliation with the CDB and The Allman Brothers Band gave Carter the Colbert Bump for young voters.
• Comically Missing the Point: In "Uneasy Rider", the singer accuses a hostile redneck threatening to beat him up of everything from being an undercover FBI agent to having a Commie flag tacked up on the wall of his garage, so as to turn the redneck's equally conservative friends against him and slip away in the resulting chaos. The redneck's rebuts most of Daniels' charges in kind, but his rebuttal to the last charge is to just note that he doesn't have a garage, not that he doesn't own any kind of Communist material.
• Cover Version:
  • The CDB recorded an album of Bob Dylan covers called Off the Grid: Doin' It Dylan, calling back to Daniels' time as part of the backing band for Dylan's Country Rock albums.
  • The rap group K.M.C. Kru released a Hip-Hop version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" entitled "The Devil Came Up to Michigan" in 1991, featuring The Devil and a DJ competing for a turntable of gold.
  • Primus recorded a version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" that was released as the soundtrack for a Stop Motion animated Music Video. This version is pretty stylistically close to the original, but the Devil's band of demons plays Heavy Metal in this one.
  • Blues Traveler often plays "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" live, in which John Popper's harmonica playing is emphasized and the competition involves playing the harmonica instead of fiddling.
  • Steve Ouimette recorded a cover of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, in which the competition involves guitar playing rather than fiddling. Daniels objected to the Video Game's mechanics, as The Devil could win against Johnny in the game, which Daniels said violated the essence of the song.
  • Nu Metal band Korn and rapper Yelawolf covered "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", with Jonathan Davis as the Devil and Yelawolf as Johnny.
  • Nickelback covered "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with the competition involving electric guitar playing instead of fiddling.
• The Devil Is a Loser: The Devil first goes down to Georgia because he hasn't stolen a soul in a while. His challenge to Johnny is made on a flimsy pretense and he even has an entire demonic band for backup. Nevertheless, Johnny handily defeats Satan with The Power of Rock and tells him off by saying "I done told you once, you son of a bitch, I'm the best there's ever been!"
• Epic Rocking: Aside from "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", the CDB's catalog is full of Epic instrumental jams.
• Genre Mashup: CDB albums often include a mix of Country Music, Western Swing, Bluegrass, Blues, Folk Music, Southern Rock and Jazz Fusion, making them difficult to categorize.
• Let's Duet: The album Deuces features a massive Special Guest Star list of prominent Rock, Country and Bluegrass musicians, including Dolly Parton, Darius Rucker, Brenda Lee (of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" fame), Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn and Gretchen Wilson.
• Location Song: "Mississippi".
• Mundane Made Awesome: "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is about a fiddler entering a competition with The Devil for a fiddle made of gold, but if he loses, the Devil gets his soul.
• Patriotic Fervor: Aside from the non-album single "This Ain't No Rag, It's a Flag", Daniels put out enough patriotic songs throughout his career to fill up a 2010 compilation, Land That I Love.
• Retroactive Recognition: Before he was famous, Charlie Daniels played on albums by Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Leonard Cohen.
• Sequel Song: Aside from "Uneasy Rider '88", there was Mark O'Connor's "The Devil Comes Back to Georgia", which features Daniels, Marty Stuart, Travis Tritt and Johnny Cash, in which The Devil is looking for a rematch with Johnny years later.
• Signature Song: "Long Haired Country Boy" for Daniels and "The South's Gonna Do It" for the Southern Rock genre.
• Southern Gothic: "The Legend of Wooley Swamp" is about a swamp haunted by the ghost of a rich man who had been murdered by a couple of "white trash" rednecks who wanted to steal his money and feed his corpse to the alligators. The ghost, however, was determined to take his killers with him, so the spirit dragged his killers into the quicksand.
• Southern Rock: The song "The South's Gonna Do It" is a Southern Rock anthem full of lyrics that Shout-Out fellow Southern Rock bands Grinderswitch, The Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and Barefoot Jerry.
• Special Guest: Daniels played on The Marshall Tucker Band's A New Life and Where We All Belong.
• United States: Daniels described his music as simply being "American Music", rather than Country or Rock.
• Viewers Are Geniuses:
  • "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" contains interpolations of the folk tunes "Fire on the Mountain" (also the name of a CDB album) and "The House of the Rising Sun" and some lyrics quoted from "Ida Red" (by the Western Swing band Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, famously the basis for Chuck Berry's song "Maybelline").
  • "Blind Man" contains an interpolation of a guitar melody from Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (appearing at around 20 minutes into Part One).
• Vigilante Man: The title track of Simple Man (not to be confused with the unrelated Lynyrd Skynyrd song) caused controversy because Daniels appeared to endorse abdicating due process for rapists, murderers and child molesters in the lyric "Just take them rascals out in the swamp / Put 'em on their knees and tie 'em to a stump / Let the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest". Daniels clarified in subsequent interviews that he did support due process and did not actually advocate vigilantism.

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