The Herald-Palladium, 8/12/2010

Making some noise

Charlie Daniels brings ferocious fiddling to BCYF

By JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO
H-P Features Writer

BERRIEN SPRINGS — Charlie Daniels says there’s a reason why no one else plays the fiddle quite like he does.

“Some of the things I do on the fiddle, it’s not really music; it’s just noise,” Daniels says by telephone during a tour stop in Jackson, N.J. “I just play. Some people who are bound by the traditional parameters of music would simply not do that. They would think it was horrible. It’s not what they do, but it is what I do. And that’s what my fans want to hear.”

Armed with a new album – the 50th of his storied musical career – the 73-year-old Daniels continues to make “noise” with a brand of fiery fiddling that has earned him a Grammy Award, multi-platinum album sales and induction into Nashville’s famed Grand Ole Opry. His latest recording, “Land That I Love,” which was released on Tuesday, is a compilation of 15 patriotic tunes that includes new versions of “Iraq Blues” and “(What This World Needs Is) A Few More Rednecks.”

“I didn’t realize we had done so many patriotic songs,” says Daniels, who performs with his band Wednesday as the headliner for the Berrien County Youth Fair. “They’re songs I have written throughout my career and I updated a couple of them.‘(What This World Needs Is) A Few More Rednecks’ was so old it has Mikhail Gorbachev’s name in it. People now might not even know who he was. So I changed it around and talked about (Osama) bin Laden and the gun issue, things that would be of interest to people nowadays.”

Daniels says “Iraq Blues,” a tribute to those who have served there, was updated after recent trips to perform for the troops.

“It’s a three-verse song,” he says, “so I just wrote a new verse every time I went back.”

The other tunes on the CD were chosen from Daniels’ vast catalog, including “In America,” written about the Iranian hostage crisis, and “American Farmer,” written during the early days of Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid movement. There’s also “My Beautiful America,” “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s a Flag,” “Still In Saigon,” “The Last Fallen Hero” and “Summer of ’68.” “Red Skelton’s Pledge of Allegiance,” where the late comedian explains each word of the oath, is a bonus.

“I think it’s a good time for a patriotic album with everything the country has been going through with the economy and two wars and all our other challenges,” Daniels says. “I think it shows that America has been through big troubles before and we’ve always been able to pull out of it.”

Daniels says he will play many of those songs during Wednesday’s set alongside such hits as “Long Haired Country Boy” “The South’s Gonna Do It” and the iconic “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” his biggest pop single, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on Hot Country Singles charts in 1979. The song tells the story of a boy named Johnny who is challenged by the devil in a battle of fiddle-playing: If Johnny wins, he claims a golden fiddle. If he loses, he must forfeit his soul. The song features Daniels’ famous instrumental bridges of Johnny and Satan’s fiddle battle.

“It’s a novelty tune, and it’s adventurous, and we step outside the bounds of traditional musicianship on it,” Daniels says of his most famous song. “But who really knows what makes a song do that? If you knew why, you’d try to do it every time, but you really don’t. You just gotta take your best shot at it and once in a while you get blessed with something that transcends a generation.”

Daniels, who was born in 1936 in Wilmington, N.C., was raised on a mix of Pentecostal gospel, local bluegrass bands, and the rhythm and blues and country music emanating from Nashville radio stations WLAC (1510-AM) and WSM (650-AM).

“I had a friend who knew a couple chords on guitar,” Daniels says. “I went over to his house one day, and I said, ‘Man, you have to show me that.’ He started teaching me, and we started learning how to play. One day someone showed up with a fiddle and I said, ‘Let me get a hold of that,’ and there we went.”

After graduating from high school in 1955, Daniels formed a band and hit the road. In 1959, the latest incarnation of that band stopped in Texas to record “Jaguar,” an instrumental produced by Bob Johnston that was picked up for national distribution by Epic. It was also the beginning of a long partnership with Johnston.

The two wrote “It Hurts Me,” which became the B side of the 1964 Elvis Presley hit “Kissin Cousins.” And in 1967, Johnston, who joined CBS Records, asked Daniels to come to Nashville to work as a session player.

Among Daniels most notable sessions were for the Bob Dylan albums “Nashville Skyline,” “New Morning” and “Self Portrait.” At the same time, Daniels produced the Youngbloods’ albums “Elephant Mountain” and “Ride the Wind,” but by the time the band went on tour he was ready to return to performing himself.

“I went to Nashville to try to play sessions and to write and produce records, but I’m not suited for that,” Daniels says. “I’m an entertainer and when I had a chance to get a recording contract, I went back to what I loved the most.”

It was his 1972 album “Honey in the Rock” that propelled Daniels onto the country music charts for the first time. The album, which includes the song “Uneasy Rider,” reached No. 9 on the Billboard Country Singles chart. By 1974, Daniels had formed The Charlie Daniels Band, releasing “Fire on the Mountain,” which includes the hits “The South’s Gonna Do It Again,” and “Long Haired Country Boy.” Following stints with Capitol and Kama Sutra, Epic Records signed him to its roster in New York in 1976, and in the summer of 1979 Daniels delivered “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which became a platinum single, topped both country and pop charts, won a Grammy Award, became a cornerstone of the “Urban Cowboy” movie soundtrack and propelled Daniel’s “Million Mile Reflections” album to triple platinum.

Daniels has continued to churn out an album nearly every year since. He’s scored a Top 10 hit in 1988 with the single “Boogie Woogie Fiddle Country Blues”; his 1990 album “Simple Man,” ignited by the title track, reached No. 2 on the country charts; his first Christian album, 1994’s “The Door” included the single “Sunday Morning,” which reached No. 1 on the Positive Country chart; and in 2008 he received an invitation to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

“That was a dream come true,” he says. “I can’t even put into words what that means to me.”

Of course, more recently Daniels can be seen almost daily in his commercial for the insurance company Geico, where he lights up the fiddle at an upscale restaurant, telling the shocked violinist, “That’s how you do it, son.”

“I was in my studio in Tennessee and I had the advertisers on the phone,” Daniels says. “I just kept trying stuff and I said, ‘Is this what you want?” They’d say, ‘No.’ And I just kept going. Finally I just started sawing up and down the fiddle, and they said ‘Yep. That’s what we want.’ I’m still amazed at the amount of times it’s on TV.”

While Daniels still says such ferocious fiddle playing may not be music, he will admit that he’s accomplished quite a lot by making that “noise.”

“Anything that I’ve done in music is because of my desire,” he says. “I’m not a natural musician. There are guys that play with me who are natural musicians, but it comes easier to them than it does for me. I’ve had to really work hard to accomplish anything on my instrument. But I guess I still feel pretty blessed.”

jbonfiglio@TheH-P.com