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Huh??!!

NWB

NWB

Apr 30, 2008
3,052
493
Kirkland, WA
www.rareelephant.com
#1
Last night I was channel surfing a bit and came across some concert channel and saw Charlie Daniels Band listed. I wasn't very interested at first since I'm not much into country, but thought I'd just take a quick listen for S&Gs.

Watching a big guy with huge hat, belt buckle, beard, and Les Paul. That was Charlie Daniels alright.

Hearing….jazz fusion??? Ole' Charlie was tearing it up like Pat Metheny or Jeff Beck!

Then came a bass solo. Guy playing a Lakland 5-94 through an Aguilar rig.

And then a drum solo.

I had absolutely no clue that Charlie Daniels of Devil Went Down to Georgia fame could play guitar like that. Jazz fusion. Who woulda' thunk it?

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Later on he did pull out a mandolin for some country. Country that I actually liked.
 
#5
Been a loooong time since I've seen the CDB play live. If you think they are jazzy now you should have seen them with Tom Crane on guitar and Taz on keyboards.

Don't know what their current lineup is, but I'm sure they are top shelf.

Oh and BTW, Charlie Hayward, the bass player for the CDB since 1975, is from Tuscaloosa Alabama.

Oh and I almost forgot. Back when I was going to see them a lot, the CDDB was most assuredly NOT country, but we are talking about a time in the south when long haired whites were almost as deeply despised as blacks.
 
#11
nashvillebill said:
Charlie Daniels first hit was Uneasy Rider back in the early 70's in which he talks about being long-haired and toking on a number so he definitely did not fit the Country stereotype.
Click to expand...

Funny you would mention that. When I was listening to CDB, MTB, Outlaws, Skynyrd, just about everything on the Capricorn label, Jimmy Buffett, NRPS, PPL, FBB, and every other long haired country band around, I got nothing but agita from my redneck friends about wasting my time on "all that hippie chit". Now all these years later, not only are most of them embraced by the country crowd, most are considered early examples of country music.

I guess the folks who think that way have never heard of Apartment Number 9, Hello Vietnam, Ode to Billy Jo, Sea of Heartbreak, End of the World, and on and on and on. The stuff that was actually country when the nonconforming country bands were being blow off by the country music fans as worthless hippie music.

When you get right down to it, the only real difference between most artists/bands on both sides of that divide back then was hair length and choice of clothes. Both sides were up to their eyes in drugs. booze, and partying, but the country players had those cool Nudie suits, velvet flood pants and styled hair, while the other guys wore ragged jeans and had long hair with not a hint of styling or hairspray in sight. I'll never forget that picture of Bill Monroe with his band when a teenaged Marty Stuart was his guitar player and had that HUGE head of permed and teased up hair, looking like an afro so big it stuck out further than the brim of the cowboy hats Bill made him wear. A lot of hardcore Monroe fans refused to listen to him while Marty was in the band just because he had that big hair.

And today history is altered to make it look like the outcasts were always embraced by the country crowd. The older I get the more I come to realize just how fluid a thing history really is.
 
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