Charlie Daniels

This article is about the musician Charlie Daniels. For the football player of the same name, see Charlie Daniels (football player) .

Charlie Daniels (2007)

Charles Edward "Charlie" Daniels (born October 28, 1936 in Wilmington , North Carolina , † July 6, 2020 in Nashville , Tennessee ) was an American country musician . His biggest hit is the Grammy- winning song The Devil Went Down to Georgia from 1979.

Life

Beginnings

In his youth Daniels played fiddle and guitar in various bands. At 21, he decided to become a professional musician and played in a rock band called the Jaguars. The band did not get very well known, but managed to record a record with producer Bob Johnston , who later became head of Columbia Records . His first success was his song It Hurts Me , which appeared in 1964 as the B-side of a single by Elvis Presley .

In the late 1960s, Charlie Daniels moved to Nashville to work as a studio musician. He played on various Bob Dylan albums such as Nashville Skyline , Self Portrait and New Morning , and he also became a member of Leonard Cohen's live band.

The 1970s

Daniels, who throughout his life identified himself very strongly with the American southern states and their conservative values, but was also influenced by the culture of the hippies , felt drawn to the musical genre of Southern Rock , which emerged from 1969 , and whose most recognized protagonists he shared with the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd . In 1970 he recorded his first solo album, Charlie Daniels .

In 1972 he founded the Charlie Daniels Band . Daniels played lead guitar, violin and sang. Also in the band were Don Murray (guitar), bassist Charlie Hayward and drummer James W. Marshal, on keyboards Joe DiGregorio. 1973 the band had their first hit with the song Uneasy Rider from the second album Honey in the Rock (1972). In 1974 they released Fire on the Mountain with the hit Texas . The album made it into the top 40 and achieved gold status. Another hit for Daniels was The South Is Gonna Do It Again , a hymn to southern rock and the southern lifestyle. The album Saddle Tramp followed in 1976 - this record also went gold. During the 1970s, the Charlie Daniels Band became one of the main protagonists of southern rock. In 1974 he organized the first of several volunteer jam concerts in which southern rock musicians performed.

In the late 1970s, as southern rock began to decline in popularity, the band's music turned more and more towards country and the violin became Daniels' trademark. It also determined Daniels' biggest hit, The Devil Went Down to Georgia (1979). The song reached number 1 on the country charts and number 3 on the pop charts. The song was named single of the year by the Country Music Association (CMA). The follow-up album Million Mile Reflections was awarded several platinum awards.

From the 1980s

The success of The Devil Went Down to Georgia was never matched by Charlie Daniels, although the band had a few other hit singles such as In America , Long Haired Country Boy , Still in Saigon, and The Legend of Wooley Swamp . The records Full Moon and Windows (1980 and 1982) received gold and platinum awards. Daniels' commercial success waned. It wasn't until 1989 that the band had another gold hit with Simple Man . In the 1990s things got quieter around Daniels, as he no longer fit into the mass market with his traditional, edgy music. He lost his record label and founded his own, on which he continued to publish regularly.

In January 2008, Daniels was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry . He last lived in Mount Juliet in the US state of Tennessee, where a park was named after him. In January 2010, he suffered a minor stroke while on a snowmobile ride in Colorado . In 2019 he recorded a cover version of the song Rhinestone Cowboy with David Hasselhoff for his album Open Your Eyes . Daniels died in July 2020 at the age of 83.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Charlie Daniels suffers a minor stroke

Web links

Commons : Charlie Daniels  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Charlie Daniels in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Charlie Daniels at Discogs (English)
• Daniels' web presence