"People to understand each other and not be at each other’s throat all the time, that we can find common ground, that we don’t have to be constantly at war with each other, that we don’t have to be concerned with how somebody else lives, that everyone’s different – I’d love to see that. Let’s give each other some room."

Charlie Daniels: The Southern Legend

Charlie Daniels pioneered the blending of southern rock sounds with mainstream country music, mingling musical traditions ranging from folk and bluegrass to gospel, country, and rock. The son of a lumberman, Charles Edward Daniels learned how to play fiddle and guitar in high school. Soon after he was playing in rock & roll bands. By the time Daniels was eighteen, Elvis Presley had cut “It Hurts Me,” a song co-written by Daniels and record producer Bob Johnston. At the urging of Johnston, Daniels moved to Nashville in 1967 to be a session musician. Daniels gained work quickly, playing on recordings by a range of artists including Leonard Cohen, Flatt & Scruggs, Claude King, Al Kooper, Marty Robbins, Pete Seeger, Ringo Starr, and, most famously, Bob Dylan. Daniels began his career as a recording artist on the Kama Sutra Records label in 1970 and soon formed the Charlie Daniels Band, forging a southern rock sound. He broke through with a Top Ten pop single in 1973 with “Uneasy Rider,” and the next year began to define his sound with the album Fire on the Mountain, featuring the Top Forty pop hit “The South’s Gonna Do It Again.”                                                    (Photo: Charlie Daniels)

Moving to Epic Records, Daniels scored an even bigger hit in 1979 with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” a rousing story song about a fiddle contest with Lucifer. Among Daniels’s accomplishments was the launch of his annual Volunteer Jam concerts in 1974. These multi-artist extravaganzas, sometimes stretching past ten hours in length, became must-see musical spectacles for thousands. During the jams, legends of country music such as Roy Acuff, Alabama, Bill Monroe, Ray Price, and Tammy Wynette shared bills with acts as diverse as James Brown, Don Henley, Billy Joel, B.B. King, Little Richard, Steppenwolf, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. A Volunteer Jam Tour including the Charlie Daniels Band, the Marshall Tucker Band, and the Outlaws crisscrossed the United States in 2007. Subsequently, tours kept the tradition alive.

Interview by Michael Limnios / Transcription by Alex Papalexiou

Special Thanks: Charlie Daniels, Paula Szeigis & Amanda French Clark 

What do you miss most nowadays about the past, the feeling, culture and music of past?

If I had to put my finger on any one thing, it would be all the bands that we worked with through the years that we don't get a chance to work with as much as we did back in the early days, like the Marshall Tucker band, Lynyrd Skynyrd band, the Allman Brothers band. A lot of people have actually passed away in some of those bands and I miss those people very much.

And what are your hopes and fears for the future of music and people?

Well, the only part of music I can do anything about is what we do. I got all kinds of ideas for different kinds of music, but I will never live long enough to do all of the ideas that I have - I just have to take them one at a time and work on it.

What are the lines that connect the legacy of Blues with Southern Rock, Country and continue to Jazz music and beyond?

Well, I think there's a common grid that blues runs through. Blues is a roots music for so much stuff, blues is a roots music for jazz, it's indigenous in half of the southeastern part of the U.S. (that’s where blues started, and in my formative years, growing up, of course I heard all different kinds of blues), but it is the common grid that runs through most American music, most of the music that is made in the U.S. A lot of it started with blues - it affected country music, e.g. Jimmy Rogers (he did a lot of blues), rock 'n roll started out as blues, there's blues in gospel, there's blues in all kinds of music. Most American music had a blues root one way or the other.

"I would actually teach people. We have a very bad situation going on in America right now, people in our schools aren’t actually being taught anything. For example, our history is not being taught - I’m sure that, with such a rich history in Europe, you teach it to people proudly. Unfortunately, in my nation there are people who want to revise our history, for politically correct reasons. I would do away with that, I would have our history taught better (no matter what it is), I would make sure that people actually learn rather than go to school and not being able to read – I would put an end to that. I would make sure that people actually got an education, it’s a sorely needed thing." (Photo: Charlie Daniels & BB King)

What do you learn about yourself from America's roots music and culture?

I just think it's my heritage. It's something I've been hearing all my life, and that I've participated in playing for most of the time that I’ve been playing music – I think anybody in any kind of music in the U.S. now, regardless of what kind of music they play, they always play some blues. It’s always blues involves any style of music you play, whether it’s country, bluegrass or whatever it is, there’s always gonna be some blues there. It’s indigenous to what we are and what we do, so it’s a part of me.

What were the reasons that made the 1960s, your generation, to be the center of psychedelic, folk, rock, blues, roots research and experiments?

It was a time of a kind of musical freedom. For the first time people started doing things that were not necessarily what had been practiced before, making long records where the norm had been three minutes and a few seconds. They cut music and if it took five or ten minutes to do the idea, they went ahead and did it – a very experimental time, a time when people were able to forget the tin-pan-alley thing. I'll tell you it had a lot to do with Bob Dylan. When Bob Dylan came along, he changed things a lot: he just started doing what he wanted to do, as opposed to what the record company wanted him to do. People liked it, so it worked out. So a lot of people said “I want to experience that same freedom, I wanna be able to express myself in the same way Bob Dylan did”, so it was an experimental time and people were able to try new and different ideas. It was a time of freedom and there was the support to do it cause radio stations would play it.

Bob Dylan and of course your songbook is very “strong”. What is the impact of music on political and socio-cultural implications?

I think that, to some extent, there’s always been some social stuff in music, certainly talking about the play of people and that sort of thing, but also I remember back during the WW2 there were a lot of pro-war songs, songs that were encouraging to the American troops. This stuff has always been there – to me though, although I’ve written some type of music people could name social conscience and even call it political, I don’t. The main thing to me with music is to entertain people; so rather than trying to be the social conscience of a nation or whatever, the main goal of music should be to entertain people.

"It’s just a name that some press person came up with, I don’t really think it meant anything. You know, record companies and the media need something to describe things with, like a title or something. They love titles you know, so when Willie Nelson and other guys started coming out, they needed a title for it - somebody said ‘they look a bit like outlaws’, so they named it ‘outlaw music’ and all that. I don’t really see it that way." (Photo: Charlie Daniels & Jaguars, early days c.1960s)

What is the best advice ever given to you and what advice would you like to give to new generations?

If you’re going into the entertainment business, make sure that’s what you want to do – that you are so involved in it that you can devote a major part of your life to it, because that’s what it takes. Be sure that’s what you wanna do, that you’re willing to make the sacrifices - being away from your family for long periods of time and all the hard work that is put into it to be able to be a professional musician. If you’re not willing to do that, then you’re better off just playing as an amateur and not try to become a professional. It’s not all funny games, you know.

You are also known for your work in several social projects about veterans, like the Journey Home Project. What’s the relationship between music and activism?

I don’t look at it as activism, rather as a need that we see that must be taken care of and we try to do that. I have been a patriot all my life, I have seen the U.S. go to war with the Germans and the Japanese in WW2, I’ve seen the other things we’ve been involved in, and always the people who paid the biggest price for any war we’ve ever been in have been the veterans and their families. Unfortunately, the needs of our veterans are not being met by our government now: education, more practical things (even things like having enough furniture in your house). Those needs should be amended and that needs to be done by the private sector, so we have tried to raise money, to raise awareness etc. We owe our veterans an un-payable debt of gratitude and to be able to help them in some way is a big deal for me. I wouldn’t call it social conscience, just a thing that we need to do.

Let’s take a trip with a time machine – where and why would you really want to go for a whole day…?

I would probably go back to the one big Delta blues period, with people like Son House, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson and all of those guys that brought it forth and they were the ones we heard about. I would probably spend the day with them jamming some Delta blues.

"Well, I think there's a common grid that blues runs through. Blues is a roots music for so much stuff, blues is a roots music for jazz, it's indigenous in half of the southeastern part of the U.S. (that’s where blues started, and in my formative years, growing up, of course I heard all different kinds of blues), but it is the common grid that runs through most American music, most of the music that is made in the U.S. A lot of it started with blues - it affected country music, e.g. Jimmy Rogers (he did a lot of blues), rock 'n roll started out as blues, there's blues in gospel, there's blues in all kinds of music. Most American music had a blues root one way or the other." (Photo: Charlie Daniels & Bob Dylan)

Which people/collaborations you’ve met have been the most important experience for you?

I have a lot of heroes. As far as the blues thing is concerned, BB King, Dickey Betts, Stevie Ray Vaughan… Bob Dylan was a big influence on me, Elvis Presley (who I’ve never met), lots of people that I have met in my 57 years and that I’ve admired, that had in one way or another maybe not a direct effect on my career, but that would maybe just inspire me, like Bob Dylan. I knew I could never write like Bob Dylan did, but I wanted to experience that same kind of freedom that he did. I wanted to do something that it had never been done before, something that would make a record company say ‘you can’t do that’ – well, why can’t I do that? That’s what we’re doing, that’s the thing, that was the freedom, that was the thing with the Dylan situation: go do what you do the way that you do it and don’t feel that you have to be dictated to by somebody else, do it your way cause if that’s what you feel, that’s what you should do. That’s how he inspired me, I could never write like he does or sing like he does, but the idea that here’s a man that came in and went against the grain, that actually went in and did something that had never been done before – he did seven-minute songs when everybody else was doing three-minute songs, he talked about subjects in abstract ways that a lot of townspeople didn’t know what he was talking about (I’m not sure that he did, I don’t know) and you have to admire that attitude.

What has made you laugh lately and what touched (emotionally) you from the America today?

I hadn’t really thought about that… I guess remembering things that happened a long time ago, bringing up road stories, situations that happened in concerts or on the road, now that would make me laugh.

If you could change one thing in the musical world and it would become a reality, what would that be?

People to understand each other and not be at each other’s throat all the time, that we can find common ground, that we don’t have to be constantly at war with each other, that we don’t have to be concerned with how somebody else lives, that everyone’s different – I’d love to see that. Let’s give each other some room.

"If I had to put my finger on any one thing, it would be all the bands that we worked with through the years that we don't get a chance to work with as much as we did back in the early days, like the Marshall Tucker band, Lynyrd Skynyrd band, the Allman Brothers band. A lot of people have actually passed away in some of those bands and I miss those people very much." (Photo: Charlie Daniels with Solomon Burke, Gregg Allman and Henry Paul, 1986.)

Why did you think that the Southern music and culture continues to generate such a devoted following?

The southern east part of the U.S. has always been the cradle of American music. For example, blues started in the south, in the Mississippi Delta. And of course jazz started in the south, in New Orleans, and went up the river north to places like Kansas City, from where it expanded even more. The early musical innovators, people like Louis Armstrong and the blues guys, all came from the southern east. To me, southern music is a very wide thing that involves many different kinds of music, pretty much everything that has ever come out of America.

Which is the moment that you change your life most?

Without question, that’s the moment when I gave my life to Jesus Christ. But if you’re asking about a musical moment, it’s when I decided to be myself. You know, when you start playing music, you impersonate others, you copy other people because you have to, there’s no other way to do it unless you’re Mozart. After trying to feature all the singers that I’d heard and admired, I decided that I was going to go to the recording studio for the next record and I was going to be myself – I was going to open my mouth and what came out would be Charlie Daniels. That album was ‘Fire On The Mountain’, in 1974, and it was the first album that I was really happy about, happy about my vocals and all the stuff that I was saying, just being me and not all the people I admired.

Too many Volunteer Jams, which memory makes you smile?

There’s a bunch of them (laughs). I remember one Saturday night Roy Acuff showed up, totally un-announced, and walked to the side of the stage and stood there – it was in between his shows in the Grand Ball Opera and he came for no other reason than to be nice, to surprise me and make me feel good – that’s really the man that he was. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.

Many people regard Charlie Daniels as a kind of an ‘outlaw country poet’ or perhaps even a counter-culture artist. What is that all about?

It’s just a name that some press person came up with, I don’t really think it meant anything. You know, record companies and the media need something to describe things with, like a title or something. They love titles you know, so when Willie Nelson and other guys started coming out, they needed a title for it - somebody said ‘they look a bit like outlaws’, so they named it ‘outlaw music’ and all that. I don’t really see it that way.

"If you’re going into the entertainment business, make sure that’s what you want to do – that you are so involved in it that you can devote a major part of your life to it, because that’s what it takes. Be sure that’s what you wanna do, that you’re willing to make the sacrifices - being away from your family for long periods of time and all the hard work that is put into it to be able to be a professional musician. If you’re not willing to do that, then you’re better off just playing as an amateur and not try to become a professional. It’s not all funny games, you know." (Photo: Charlie Daniels Band)

Which incident of American history you‘d like to be captured and illustrated in a painting with you?

You’re basically asking me how I want to be remembered – and I’ve been asked that question before. Well, I think people are no bigger in death than they are in life, so they should be remembered for what they are. I would like people to remember me for what they could see me – for example, some people would say I’m a fiddle player. Some people would say I’m a guitar and fiddle player, some others would say I’m an entertainer. Some would say I’m a writer, I’ve had 4 books published – I am different things to different people, whatever I am to them suits me.

The Charlie Daniels band is a crossroad, the band plays a bit of everything: jazz, blues, country, bluegrass… it’s a mix of cultures, like a gumbo…

That’s true, we do. When I was coming up, there weren’t all that many radio stations around and they had to play something for everybody, so when I got ready to do original music, that stuck with me. I’d been exposed to so many different kinds of music that, when the time came, I did all of them. And that’s kind of what we really are: a bit of everything.

What would be your first decisions as minister of education and culture?

I would actually teach people. We have a very bad situation going on in America right now, people in our schools aren’t actually being taught anything. For example, our history is not being taught - I’m sure that, with such a rich history in Europe, you teach it to people proudly. Unfortunately, in my nation there are people who want to revise our history, for politically correct reasons. I would do away with that, I would have our history taught better (no matter what it is), I would make sure that people actually learn rather than go to school and not being able to read – I would put an end to that. I would make sure that people actually got an education, it’s a sorely needed thing.

(Photo: Charlie Daniels & James Brown)