Country music and southern rock icon Charlie Daniels died on July 6, 2020 in Hermitage, Tennessee due to a stroke. He was 83 years old.
A Country Music Hall of Fame and Grand Ole Opry member, Daniels produced inspiring gospel albums, genre-defining Southern rock, and hearty country music. He was born on October 28, 1936 in Wilmington, North Carolina and grew up listening to gospel, bluegrass, R&B, and country music. Once he graduated high school, Daniels took his skills on guitar, banjo, fiddle, and mandolin on the road.
In Nashville, Daniels worked as a session musician for producer Bob Johnston, including playing guitar and electric bass on Bob Dylan albums. He recorded his self-titled first solo album in 1971 and two years later had his first hit with “Uneasy Rider” on his third album, Honey in the Rock.
While recording his own music, Daniels played fiddle on several Marshall Tucker Band albums, organized the Volunteer Jam concerts in Nashville, and played fiddle for Hank Williams Jr.’s album Hank Williams, Jr. and Friends. In 1975, Daniels had a Top 30 hit as the leader for the Charlie Daniels Band with “The South’s Gonna Do It Again” followed by “Long Haired Country Boy.”
He won a Grammy in ’79 for the fast-paced “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which also reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 list. That song got a crossover appeal boost when it was featured in the soundtrack for Urban Cowboy a year later. It has since been in other films, was included in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, and still receives regular radio airplay.
Daniels had pop hits in the early ‘80s with “In America,” “The Legend of Wooley Swamp,” and “Still in Saigon.” Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s he released several albums on the country charts along with gospel records.
Throughout the 2000s, he composed and performed the score for the movie Across the Line, voiced himself on King of the Hill and was a vocal performer on Veggietales, appeared in Gretchen Wilson’s music video for “All Jacked Up,” and has been featured in the opening sequence of Monday Night Football.
He continued touring late in his life and was named to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016. Daniels released a new album in 2018 with the band Beau Weevils and released a book of inspirational quotes and stories called Let’s All Make the Day Count: The Everyday Wisdom of Charlie Daniels.