Remembering Charlie Daniels

Daniels, whose song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” became an international smash in 1979, died of a stroke five years ago this week at the age of 83.

In some ways, the Charlie Daniels Band was the last keeper of the flame of Southern rock, one of the most important musical forces of the Seventies. The great names from the genre’s heyday—the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Marshall Tucker Band—had fallen by the wayside, either through turbulence and tragedy or simply the shifting of musical styles.

That Southern rock still retained its power to move people was evident from the Charlie Daniels Band’s 1979 hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which described a fiddling contest between the Devil and a good ol’ boy named Johnny. The vivid narrative soared to the top of both the country and the rock charts at the height of disco fever.

From the album Full Moon, “In America” was a reaction to the difficult issues facing the country, from the Iran hostage crisis to the troubled economy: “This lady may have stumbled, but she ain’t never fell/And if the Russians don’t believe it they can all go straight to hell.”

“I talk to a lot of people, not just politicians or big businessmen, but carpenters and plumbers and truck drivers and college students and just rank and file US citizens,” Daniels said. “And that’s the feeling I got about this country when I wrote the song, something that was very important to them. I felt a uniting of people that I had not felt since the second World War in this country.”

The song’s passionate patriotism captured the national mood and became a huge pop and country hit, becoming an anthem for many groups associated with right wing causes. But love for it wasn’t universal. It was savaged by some as jingoistic and trite, faulting Daniels for writing things he didn’t really feel just to create a hit. The normally good-humored man-mountain fired back.

“I’ve been accused of writing a pro-war song and all kinds of things,” he said. “I don’t have anything against criticism, but they try to get inside my head as to the reasons I wrote the song, and their reasoning is all wrong. All I was trying to say was that I’m proud of being an American and I think this is a great country.”

None of Daniels’ peers were Las Vegas kind of guys, but the mountain man headlined in a casino shortly after “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “In America” became hits.

“Up until then, I always thought casinos were the domain of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr.—people of that generation,” he noted backstage at Denver’s McNichols Arena in 1981. “But my friend Willie Nelson was asked to headline Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe for seven nights, filling in because Sinatra had cancelled. Willie could only do four nights, so he asked me to headline the other three. They sold out in advance—I had no idea we would get that kind of reception. I played in Vegas soon after that, at the Sands. There were a lot of cowboy hats there!”

Daniels continued to be active in the American West. He was inducted into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Hall of Fame in 2002 and, entering his sixth decade producing music, he wrote and recorded “It Don’t Get Better Than That,” the official theme for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR), in 2015.

“They wanted a tune talking about cowboys and cowgirls, broncos and bulls, horses and roping,” Daniels explained. “But they said they also wanted it to mention Vegas specifically, because it’s become such a big part of the NFR (Las Vegas has hosted the rodeo since 1985). I wanted to have lyrics about qualifying for and competing at the NFR: ‘To be one of the cowboys headed to Nevada to try for the December gold/Where the lights shine bright in the clear desert night and the people come to rock and roll.’ Some of the terminology about the sights and sounds might not be understood by the general public, but rodeo fans get it.”

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Paid subscribers can read on for an excerpt on The Charlie Daniels Band, taken from On Record–Vol. 7: 1979, available wherever books are sold!