This year’s Wing Ding big name concert entertainment is the Charlie Daniels Band. For the few who are not familiar with his music, Charlie Daniels provides a unique mix of high-energy rock, country, bluegrass, blues and gospel music that is as outspoken in its lyrics as it is toe-tapping in its tempos.
Appropriate for Wing Ding’s return to the American South, Charlie Daniels is a bona fide Southern Country Boy. Born in 1936 in Wilmington, North Carolina, he was raised on a musical diet that included Pentecostal gospel, local bluegrass bands, rhythm & blues and country music.
He graduated from high school in 1955 and followed in the rock and roll footsteps of Elvis Presley. Skilled on guitar, fiddle and mandolin, Daniels formed a rock ‘n’ roll band and hit the road.
He paid his dues in clubs and honkey tonks for a decade, eventually gaining a glimmer of recognition by co-writing a song “It Hurts Me” that became the B side of a 1964 Presley hit.
In 1969, Daniels moved to middle Tennessee to find work as a session guitarist in Nashville. Among his more notable sessions were the Bob Dylan albums of 1969-70, Nashville Skyline, New Morning, and Self Portrait. His breakthrough record was the hit hippie song, “Uneasy Rider.” His rebel anthems “Long Haired Country Boy” and “The South’s Gonna Do It” propelled his 1975 collection Fire On the Mountain to double platinum status.
Signing a $3 million contract with Epic Records in 1976 Daniels rewarded the company’s faith by delivering “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” in 1979, a platinum single that topped both country and pop charts, won a Grammy Award, earned three Country Music Association trophies, became a cornerstone of the Urban Cowboy movie soundtrack and propelled Daniel’s Million Mile Reflections album to triple platinum sales levels.
Maintaining a hectic road band status, the Charlie Daniels Band (CDB) often toured more than 250 days a year coast to coast, logging more than a million miles on the road.
By 1981, the Charlie Daniels Band had twice been voted the Academy of Country Music’s Touring Band of the Year. After three more platinum albums — Full Moon (1980), Simple Man (1989) and A Decade of Hits (1983) that went Triple Platinum, he made his mark in another genre, earning a Dove Award from the Gospel Music Association in 1994 for The Door, and a 1995 Grammy Award for Amazing Grace: A Country Salute to Gospel, a compilation album including his own “Kneel at the Cross.”
Daniels’ annual “Volunteer Jam” concerts have served as examples for many of today’s annual day-long music marathons. The list of artists who have appeared in one of Daniels’ 16 “Volunteer Jam” concerts reads like a who’s who in rock and country music: Roy Acuff, Don Henley, Tanya Tucker, Amy Grant, Leon Russell, Billy Ray Cyrus, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, James Brown, Duane Eddy, Pat Boone, The Outlaws, Dwight Yoakam, Steppenwolf, Bill Monroe, Exile, The Judds, Orleans, Willie Nelson, Carl Perkins, Vince Gill, George Thorogood, Emmylou Harris, Alabama, the Allman Brothers, Link Wray, Ted Nugent, Bill Joel, the Marshall Tucker Band, Solomon Burke, Little Richard, B. B. King, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Charlie Daniels doesn’t fit many stereotypes musically. Says he, “When it gets right down to the nitty gritty, I’ve just tried to be who I am. I’ve never followed trends or fads. I couldn’t even if I tried. I can’t be them; I can’t be anybody but me.” Never one to mince words, Daniels frequently peppers his lyrics with national and regional pride. With an unerring instinct for the universal ties that bind people together and an equal abhorrence for the intolerance and fear that do the opposite, Charlie Daniels has kept the specifics of his cultural heritage as the soul of the CDB music that has impacted the lives of everyday people everywhere.
“It’s purely American music with something for everyone,” he said. “At least that’s what I’ve hoped for in my 40-plus years in music.”

July 5th • 8pm • at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville GWRRA Members - $22.50 • General public - $29.50 Call Ticketmaster - 864-233-2525 or buy online at www.ticketmaster.com