King of Dixie
Charlie Daniels is promoting a new book called Never Look At The Empty Seats. It is a memoir that covers his career spanning nearly 60 years. It is crammed with great yarns about the music business. It also contains some fiery political rhetoric – more about that later.
When I call him for our interview, Daniels is sitting on his tour bus somewhere in Nevada. He begins by explaining why he chose the book’s title: “It’s a nod to a positive attitude, play where you can for whoever you can. You don’t pay attention to the empty seats; you pay attention to the ones that are full.”
Born in North Carolina, Daniels enjoyed an idyllic childhood: “I remember those days fondly. I came from a very close knit family. I had a very good childhood.”
Music was in his blood from an early age. It ignited a desire to be the front man, to be in the spotlight: “I’ve been a band leader most of my life, I started leading bands back in the 50s and found out that’s what I wanted to do with my life. It’s such a matter of course for me, it’s something I take in my stride. It’s hard, it takes a lot of work, takes a lot of devotion, dedication, sacrifices, but if you want it bad enough, it’s worth it.”
In the late 60s and early 70s, Daniels found himself in demand as a session player, notably on Bob Dylan’s LP Nashville Skyline. “Dylan liked what I did, and I was very much into what he was doing.”, he remembers.
He went on to record on other sessions, among them Ringo Starr and Marty Robbins. Charlie also hit the road playing in a band fronted by Leonard Cohen.
There is a chapter charting the painstaking steps that led to him to sign a record deal. It is an intriguing glimpse into the music world at that time, how artists struck their deal with a record company. In this case, a toss-up between CBS and MCA. You can feel the nerve-tingling tension flying off the pages as Daniels recounts in painstaking detail the process that led to him signing with CBS.
I also loved the segments in the book about the camaraderie Daniels and his band enjoyed with other Southern outfits, such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker Band. Daniels reserves rich praise for Skynyrd: “As good a rock and roll band as was on the planet. Nobody, nowhere plays rock and roll better than Lynyrd Skynyrd. They are an authentic American rock and roll band. They are as good as anyone I know.”
His memories of the night he heard Skynyrd’s plane had gone down in a Mississippi swamp are touching. Recalling his close relationship Ronnie Van Zant, I detected a solemn tone in his voice. Reverential, almost.
The loss of Ronnie hit him hard: “I hit it off with Ronnie Van Zant from the first time I met him in 1974. We spent a lot of hours together in hotel rooms and buses and became good friends in the process. Ronnie used to call me the King of Dixie, a title I certainly didn’t deserve, but I was honoured that he would think of me in that way.”
“He was lot of fun, we always had fun together, we enjoyed each other’s company and it was a very sad day when he left this earth. A cloud of depression settled over me and would linger until I took steps to do something about it.”
In 1979 the Charlie Daniels Band released the LP Million Mile Reflections. It included a platinum-selling single, Devil Went Down To Georgia that propelled the band up the charts and made them famous. I asked Daniels if that LP changed their lives: “Very definitely, kicked in a whole new gear, that’s for sure. We sold more records, we did bigger halls, we carried more vehicles, more road crew, better sound system. It was that step up that you do when you start playing bigger halls. It was an exciting time.”
Daniels does not like the band’s music being pigeon-holed: “I am constantly asked what type of music CDB plays, and I always say American music. We play country, bluegrass, gospel, rock, blues and jazz – the genres of music America gave the world. It’s just our style. We don’t follow or fads. We just follow our hearts and musical instincts. It’s worked out pretty well so far.”
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Well, most of it. Chapter 50 was awfully hard work. A quite remarkable display of fire and brimstone bombast from Daniels. The context is the 9/11 terrorist atrocity and it’s immediate aftermath. A dark time for America, tensions were running high. Daniels grabs his blunderbuss and blasts the “politically correct bunch”, and lax immigration enforcement policies that “allow foreigners to overstay their visas and even disappear into society.”
That aside, the book is a fascinating account of Daniels and his life, a performer that has enjoyed a varied and hugely successful career. Thanks for the interview, Charlie!
Buy ‘Never Look At The Empty Seats’
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