On this day · 6 years ago · 2020
6 Years Ago Today: Charlie Daniels, Session Guitarist Turned Southern-Rock Icon, Died at 83
Before The Devil Went Down to Georgia made him a household name, Charlie Daniels was a Nashville session guitarist good enough that Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, and Leonard Cohen all wanted him in the room. He died July 6, 2020, at 83.
By Chet, Country desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Charlie Daniels, the southern-rock and country icon best known for The Devil Went Down to Georgia, died July 6, 2020, at age 83, in Hermitage, Tennessee, following a stroke. Daniels played fiddle, guitar, banjo, and mandolin, and worked as a Nashville session guitarist for Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, and Leonard Cohen before forming the Charlie Daniels Band in 1972. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.
The session guitarist behind three legendary singer-songwriters' records
Long before he was a bandleader, Charlie Daniels was a working Nashville session musician, and guitar, not fiddle, was often the instrument he brought to the room. Per Wikipedia's account of his career, songwriter and producer Bob Johnston encouraged Daniels to move to Nashville for session work, which led to guitar credits on Bob Dylan's 1969 album Nashville Skyline, Ringo Starr's 1970 album Beaucoups of Blues, and Leonard Cohen's 1971 album Songs of Love and Hate, along with Cohen's 1971 tour. Dylan and Daniels reportedly pushed each other creatively: Dylan said that "when Charlie was around, something good would usually come out of the sessions," while Daniels called the work with Dylan "loose, free and, most of all, fun."
The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and a No. 3 hit
Per Wikipedia's account of his career, Daniels formed the Charlie Daniels Band in 1972, and by 1979 the group released Million Mile Reflections, which reached No. 5 on the album chart and was eventually certified triple-platinum. Its single, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 that September and won Daniels the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance. The same account notes the song had a political afterlife too: President Jimmy Carter used an earlier Daniels track, "The South's Gonna Do It Again," as his campaign theme, and the Charlie Daniels Band performed at Carter's 1977 inauguration after his win in that same 1976 race.
Southern rock's twin-guitar, twin-drummer blueprint
The Charlie Daniels Band's sound fused rock, country, blues, and jazz, and per Wikipedia's citation of AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the band built its arrangements around the Allman Brothers Band's template of two lead guitarists and two drummers working in tandem, a structure that became one of Southern rock's defining traits. Per the same Wikipedia account, Daniels kept working in that mold for decades, forming a new project called Beau Weevils late in his career with guitarist Billy Crain, drummer James Stroud, and bassist Charlie Hayward, releasing the album Songs in the Key of E in 2018.
Died July 6, 2020, following a stroke
Charlie Daniels died on July 6, 2020, at age 83, in Hermitage, Tennessee, following a stroke, according to ClassicBands.com's day-by-day account of rock history. He'd been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2008, the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016, and he continued to tour and record into his eighties. His self-titled 1970 debut album is still cited by critics as a foundational Southern rock record, one that showed how country music could keep its roots and still rock hard.
Chasing that Southern-rock rhythm crunch today
Daniels' own guitar string gauge isn't documented well enough from his Nashville session years to cite as fact. But if it's that classic Southern-rock rhythm crunch you're chasing on a Telecaster or a dreadnought today, a standard nickel-wound electric set remains the reliable modern starting point.
Regular Slinky RPS-2241 Nickel Wound (.010–.046)
Why this one: A general nickel-wound starting point for that Southern-rock rhythm-guitar crunch, not a historical claim about Daniels' own undocumented session gear.
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