Nov. 25, 1120: The White Ship drowns, taking with it William Adelin, King Henry I’s only son/heir.
Nov. 25, 1491: The Treaty of Granada is signed.
Nov. 25, 1562: Spanish playwright Lope de Vega is born.
Nov. 25, 1748: Isaac Watts, English hymn writer, dies.
Nov. 25, 1947: The first Hollywood blacklist is established due to paranoia concerning certain screenwriters’ political leanings.
Nov. 25, 1952: Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” begins its London run at the New Ambassadors Theatre.
Nov. 25, 1970: Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima commits seppuku after a failed coup attempt against the Japanese government.
Nov. 25, 1974: Nick Drake, English singer/songwriter, dies.
Nov. 25, 1975: The Charlie Daniels Band releases Nightrider.
In geology, there is a phenomenon called a dike, which is an intrusion of rock between layers of strata, like a vertical cut. This image can be applied to time. If we think of every decade as a layer of rock, then a vertical cut between layers would represent an overlap or a cross reference, moving through layers of time away from or toward the present. In this way, Charlie Daniels is a dike.
In 1979, The Charlie Daniels Band released “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” and ever since, the song has shot up through the decades. It was a top-five hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. You’ve heard it on the radio, you’ve seen its premise parodied on numerous television shows—including a great spot on “Futurama,” although it remains to be seen whether or not the Robot Devil could out-fiddle Daniels. This song was the basis of a punchline for a Geico commercial, starring Daniels himself. It was even parodied by Alvin and The Chipmunks.
Of course, if you don’t know “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” here’s the gist of it: The Devil goes down to Georgia to steal souls and gets his tail handed to him by a Georgian fiddler. It’s a reversal of the usual deal, wherein the Devil trades with a musician for glorious musical powers, in exchange for the musician’s soul.
The pertinent question, here, is who, or what, was Daniels before he became pop culture patter? Well, before “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” came out, he was just the frontman of his eponymous band, which made a name for itself as a jam-heavy country rock outfit.
The exact genre is a bit muddled. Daniels hails from Leland, N.C., in the southeastern U.S. and he cut his teeth (as a musician) as a Nashville session man. He played with Bob Dylan, including a guitar spot on “Lay Lady Lay,” and many others before going on to do his own music. I can’t pinpoint what exactly the music is, but on Nightrider, it’s like a tight knot of country, rock, blues and bluegrass—along with subgenres like southern rock and so on.
For a man who is mostly known as a fiddler—these days—Nightrider is light on the sort of fiddling that made “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” such a pop cultural mainstay. It crops up on opener “Texas” and closer “Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day,” but otherwise steps aside in deference to rollicking piano and syncopated curlicues of bluesy guitar. There is an odd sense of anonymity around the playing on Nightrider; it’s skillful and engaging the way most music wrought from session players is, but outside of Daniels (who plays fiddle, guitar, mandolin and banjo on the album) there’s no sense of who does what. Even Daniels, when he’s not singing or fiddling, becomes indistinct, between rave-ups like “Evil,” “Franklin Limestone” and “Funky Junky.”
This does Nightrider a great service, in a way. Although jam-heavy, Nightrider is drawn pretty tautly together, with Daniels and Co. running through each song with joy and aplomb, sublimating their collective skills into a great burst of country rock.
Other albums released this day: Ecstasy by My Bloody Valentine (1987), The Heart of a Woman by Johnny Mathis (1974), This Is Not a Test! by Missy Elliot (2003).
Think Charlie Daniels could outfiddle the Robot Devil? Tell Sean at sreichard@wisc.edu.
