Charlie Daniels

Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1936, and died in Tennessee in 2020, Charlie Daniels spanned more than six decades of American music at the border of southern rock, country rock, bluegrass, gospel and western swing. A multi-instrumentalist, singer and fiddler, he began in bluegrass groups before moving through rock'n'roll, then settled in Nashville where he worked as a session musician, notably with Bob Dylan on Nashville Skyline in 1969, but also for Leonard Cohen and Ringo Starr. Charlie Daniels released his first solo album, Charlie Daniels, in 1970, and then formed the Charlie Daniels Band in 1972, a group that developed a southern sound blending rock riffs, country flourishes, blues and long instrumental passages centered on the fiddle. The 1970s established Charlie Daniels on the American rock and country stages with albums such as Fire on the Mountain (1974), Saddle Tramp (1976) and Million Mile Reflections (1979), propelled by The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Subsequently, his repertoire moved more toward country and gospel, as on The Door (1994) or Songs from the Longleaf Pines (2005), without abandoning his bluegrass roots. A member of the Grand Ole Opry from 2008, Charlie Daniels remained active into the 2010s with Night Hawk in 2016.