"Diggin' Barefoot Jerry and the CDB"

Category: News/Obituary

Country music has lost its third Hall of Famer this year with the death of Charlie Daniels.

Daniels died this morning (July 6) after suffering a stroke, according to his publicist.

Charles Edward Daniels, the proud Tennessean, was actually born in North Carolina on October 28, 1936.  Growing up in the Tar Heel State he learned music of all forms: the country music blaring from WSM in Nashville, the down-home picking of bluegrass, as well as the R&B and fledgling rock and roll.  Becoming proficient on the guitar and fiddle, Daniels absorbed it all.

He began his career as a session man, playing bass and guitar on Bob Dylan's groundbreaking Nashville Skyline album in 1969.  He also went to work as a producer, heading the album Elephant Mountain for the folk-rock group the Youngbloods.

After a couple of albums on his own, his third release, Honey in the Rock, yielded his first hit, the "talking blues" novelty song "Uneasy Rider."  The tune was about a counter-culture hero who has a run-in with the stereotypical southern "rednecks" (his own term in the lyrics), who want to fight the protagonist because of his long hair and the "peace sign, the mag wheels, and four on the floor" car he's driving.  Certainly in danger of being banned in today's culture, the song was hilarious (with its ending of deciding to get to Los Angeles from Jackson, Mississippi via Omaha).  

Understandably, the song, while a pop top ten song, didn't do all that well in the conservative country music realm (where songs like "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me" were still getting airplay).  In fact, two subsequent Daniels singles, "Texas" and "Wichita Jail," both did much better on the country charts than "Uneasy Rider."

However, in 1979, there was no stopping Daniels, thanks to another "talking blues" song about a fiddle contest between Satan and a southern boy named Johnny.  "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" was a chart-topper in country music, and only kept out of the #1 position in pop by the 1979 song of the year, "My Sharona" by the Knack.

Among Daniels' lasting contributions to the American musical landscape was the Volunteer Jam, which he began in 1974 for a group of southern rock and country-rock acts to get together and party through music.  This year's Volunteer Jam, scheduled to be held on September 15 (COVID-19 permitting), will be a "Musical Salute" to the man who made us laugh (such as his Geico commercial, where he took a French restaurant's violinist's instrument away to play "Hoedown" to show the man "that's how you do it, son"), think (his musings on his website's "Soap Box" feature), and sing along for seven decades.

So many genres can claim him that it's no wonder much of the musical world is in mourning over the loss of this giant.  He loved his country roots and his southern rock roots.  In "The South's Gonna Do It Again" he honored both, naming practically every southern rock band in existence at the time (some, such as Grinderswitch [from Macon, not named for Minnie Pearl's hometown] had their biggest success by being mentioned in the song, while others like Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top made the Rock Hall of fame) while playing some terrific fiddle.  He closed the song by telling everyone:

All the good people down in Tennessee
Are diggin' Barefoot Jerry and the CDB.

Charlie Daniels was 83.