Charlie Daniels — who will be celebrating his 83rd birthday on Oct. 28 — is in his sixth decade of music. The singer/fiddler/guitarist’s career took off in the late ’60s/early ’70s. A session musician, Daniels played on albums by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Marshall Tucker Band, among many others; he released his first solo album in 1971.
Daniels had a string of Country hits in the ’70s and his Rock edge resulted in some crossover action on radio and the charts. That action came to a head in 1979 when the Charlie Daniels Band’s iconic “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” — and its tale of a satanic fiddle battle — became a gigantic hit, topping the Country singles chart and, with its Rock edge, gaining extra traction from Pop and Rock radio. The song reached No. 3 on the overall Billboard singles chart and got a boost again when it was featured in the 1980 hit film Urban Cowboy.
Daniels had a few more modest Pop crossover hits in the ’80s and later made waves on the Christian music charts with his forays into Gospel. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016. Daniels does a lot of charity work for veteran’s organizations and is an outspoken conservative pundit, penning occasional op-eds about things like gun rights (he calls recent calls for gun control “political desperation by also-rans trying to get a little more face time on TV to bolster their faltering campaigns”), the Mueller Report and more on the “Soap Box” section of his website.
This year, Daniels is celebrating the 40th anniversary of “Devil” — described on his site as “most impactful fiddle-centric song to ever be released.”
“People ask me if I imagined ‘The Devil Went Down To Georgia’ would be the success it has been,” Daniels says on his website. “My answer is I had no idea that 40 years after the fact we would still be talking about it almost as if it was a new release.”
The Charlie Daniels Band plays Saturday, Oct. 12 at Hollywood Casino Lawrenceburg. Doors open at 7 p.m. and advance tickets (which are going fast) are available through ticketmaster.com.
