Posted on 10/14/2005 4:41:59 AM PDT by chambley1
Charlie Daniels believes in prayer in school. He's been nominated in the Musician of the Year category for the Christian Country Music Association and he still plays "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" in his concerts.
So the leader of the Charlie Daniels Band was a little surprised to hear the C.D. Hylton High School band director Dennis Brown pulled the 1979 song from its playlist.
"We play it every night. It's our signature song," Daniels said in a telephone interview Thursday.
"We wouldn't dare go off stage without playing that song. People would feel cheated," the 68-year-old Daniels said.
"The Devil Went Down to Georgia" won a Grammy for best country vocal in 1979.
This year, the Hylton marching band is performing a Georgia-themed halftime show to celebrate its upcoming trip to perform at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta in December.
The song was in the band's lineup of Georgia-themed music until a single letter to the editor appeared in the Potomac News & Manassas Journal Messenger. Robert McLean opined that "A high school band director would be fired for playing 'Amazing Grace' but no one bats an eye for the playing of a song about the devil ..."
The letter to the editor generated more letters to the editor and online responses.
Daniels reacted to the reactions to his song.
"My song has nothing to do with Satanism whatsoever," Daniels said before he was to play a concert for the soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. "The song's hard to misinterpret if you listen to it."
"There's no dark side to that song," the southern-rocking, bluegrass-picking, gospel-singing Daniels said.
The lyrics of the song describe the devil's attempt to steal the soul of a fiddle playing Georgia boy by challenging him to a fiddling duel. The devil lost.
The song was written as a "put-down" of the devil, Daniels said.
As far as Daniels knows, the song has never before been scratched from a band's repertoire.
Had the Hylton marching band retained the song, it would have been in good company.
"We've done halftimes at Tennessee football games with the whole marching band," Daniels said.
Daniels said he believes in hymns at school.
"If I had my way people would still be praying in school and we could sing 'Amazing Grace' or anything we wanted to," the forthcoming and congenial Daniels said.
"I think it's wrong not to be able to do that and I think it's a misinterpretation of the Constitution to take that away from children," he said.
He said he was proud the band played his song and said his heart went with the band because they couldn't play a song they'd worked to learn.
"If they took the time and the hours and everything to rehearse the song then I think it's a shame they have to pull it because of one letter," Daniels said.
Daniels stopped short of calling Brown's action censorship and was philosophical about the reaction to the song being scratched.
"I think it's a little overreacting myself," Daniels said.
"If I listened to criticisms of me and my music and my career and my songs, I'd still be down in North Carolina cropping tobacco," Daniels said.
"Smart" is knowing things. "Wise" is knowing what they mean. Hence my distinction.
Dan
I'm not a fan of country music but I've always admired the musicianship of the song. I love a good fiddle-riff, probably why I prefer bluegrass to country. And I've got a lot of respect for Daniels--the statements I quoted are typical of him. Good, common sense.
Yeah, some of those "country boys" can fool ya'. Just because they don't quote Augustine or C.S. Lewis doesn't necessarily mean they haven't read and understood it.
Removing this song from the band's playlist because it has a reference to the devil makes as much sense as censoring the Bible because it mentions the devil. It's the context that's important! Whoever wrote that letter to the editor needs valium.
Yeah, I think it's a fun song musically too. I like good fiddling. (Old Sons of the Pioneers had some of the funnest, jazziest fiddling.) My comments were just on its idea, IF (as I said) one were to take it seriously.
Dan
LOL . . . The devil is a Frenchman?
Nice touch.
I'm not sure I said he could play it... but that was a primary motivating factor in his decision to take strings.
What was truly hilarious was the time he printed the sheet music off the Internet and brought it to school so his Birkenstock wearing lefty-wacko music teacher could teach him how to play it.
I haven't been so proud of him since he did a book report on "The Savage Nation" back in the 3rd grade.
Years ago, I played the records backward...it repeatedly says, "Chesney is the Antichrist."
How did we get from a letter to the editor making a rhetorical point presumably in favor of Amazing Grace (et al) to prohibiting DWD2G?
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