{"id":52810,"date":"2020-07-09T20:05:04","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T02:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/charlie-daniels-i-would-like-to-be-remembered-as-an-entertainer\/"},"modified":"2020-07-10T02:05:04","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T02:05:04","slug":"charlie-daniels-i-would-like-to-be-remembered-as-an-entertainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/charlie-daniels-i-would-like-to-be-remembered-as-an-entertainer\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Daniels: \u2018I would like to be remembered as an entertainer\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=73c69f6c-29c3-43bc-b95a-7ca436fe6dd9&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" alt=\"Charlie Daniels plays during the 80th Birthday Volunteer Jam in at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn. The County Music Hall of Famer died Monday at age 83.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Charlie Daniels plays during the 80th Birthday Volunteer Jam in at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn. The County Music Hall of Famer died Monday at age 83.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>One of the best things about being Arts &amp; Entertainment editor is the people I get to interview, whether it\u2019s authors, filmmakers, artists or musicians, there\u2019s something really cool about chatting with people about what they\u2019re passionate about.<\/p>\n<p>So when I heard that country music legend Charlie Daniels died Monday at age 83 from a hemorrhagic stroke, the news hit hard \u2013 I\u2019d had the opportunity to interview Daniels a handful of times over the last few years, and he was one of my favorites to chat with \u2013 and I had just spoken with him May 20.<\/p>\n<p>I first interviewed Daniels in 2016, a few days after he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I still was pretty fresh to this whole A&amp;E editor thing, so it was intimidating to see his name pop up on my phone when he called.<\/p>\n<p>He couldn\u2019t have been nicer.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d known about Daniels from the time my parents took my brothers and me to see him at a fiddle festival back home in Connecticut in the late 1970s-early \u201980s. We also loved Daniels\u2019 hit, \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia,\u201d as kids because of the bad word at the end.<\/p>\n<p>So it was really something to have him on the other end of the phone talking about how honored he was to have been chosen for the hall of fame and how he was still reeling from the whole thing.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video wp-block-embed-youtube naviga-video-embed\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QisXHJOwFO8\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cYou never know when your name\u2019s going to be brought up or not. So you just don\u2019t know; it\u2019s completely unexpected when it happens,\u201d he said, adding that the way he found out about the honor was unusual. \u201cI actually didn\u2019t get a call. I was lured down to the Country Music Association offices under false pretenses. I thought I was supposed to go down there and take a publicity picture. And when I got down there, Sarah Trahern, president of CMA, walked up to me very casually and conversationally said, \u2018I know you think you\u2019re here to take a picture, but you\u2019re actually here to be told you\u2019re going to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.\u2019 And my first inclination was, \u2018Did she really say that or did I just imagine she said it?\u2019 And when I realized she did say it, it was a very emotional moment for me, and it\u2019s been emotional ever since. We finally got it done (Oct. 16), and I\u2019m still pretty much zinging from it, you know. It\u2019s still just an incredible thing to have happen to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Daniels was also named Country Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year in 1979; The Charlie Daniels Band won CMA Instrumental Group of the Year awards in 1979 and 1980, marking a total of four CMA Awards throughout his career. Daniels became a Grand Ole Opry cast member in 2008 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are few artists that touched so many different generations in our business than Charlie Daniels did,\u201d Trahern, CMA chief executive officer, said in a news release put out Monday by the CMA. \u201cOur community has lost an innovator and advocate of country music. Both Charlie and Hazel had become dear friends of mine over the last several years, and I was privileged to be able to celebrate Charlie\u2019s induction into the Opry as well as tell him that he was going to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I will always remember the look of sudden shock and delight on his face as he realized he would be in the Hall of Fame Rotunda for the ages.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Along with having record sales in excess of 13.5 million albums in his career, Daniels was also known for his charity work. According to the CMA release, he helped fund cancer and muscular dystrophy research; and helped physically and mentally challenged people, children, farmers and the armed forces. His charity Christmas concert benefiting children became a Nashville holiday institution. In recognition of his \u201cunique and indelible influence on generations of music makers,\u201d Daniels was honored as a BMI Icon in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>The last time I spoke to Daniels was May 20, soon after Cy Scarborough, founder of the Bar D Chuckwagon, died. The two were close friends who initially bonded not over music, but over a shared love for snowmobiling. (Daniels and his wife, Hazel, are part-time area residents.) After talking about Scarborough for a little while, Daniels and I chatted for a few minutes about lack of rain here and the threat of wildfire, and how he was holding up during the pandemic. The Danielses had been quarantined at their house in Tennessee for the past 10 weeks: \u201cWe\u2019re taking it serious,\u201d he said. \u201cVery strange, very strange times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The last show he and the band played was March 14 in Hunstville, Alabama, and they were supposed to be in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the next night, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, places started shutting down and concert dates started falling like dominoes. He said he and the band hoped to get back to performing at the end of this month or maybe August and finish out the year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re moving a lot of dates into next year,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those times where you\u2019ve got to roll with the punches. I\u2019m 83 years old, I\u2019ve seen a lot of things come and go, I\u2019ve never seen anything like this. But one of the things that, from my estimation, is that what\u2019s happening is so new that nobody knows what to do and we had nothing for it; nothing whatsoever. We had nothing to inhibit it, we had nothing to stop it, and the only thing to do was just take everybody off the street until we could figure out something to do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI enjoyed talking to you. God bless.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And when I heard the news of Daniels\u2019 passing, I thought a lot about something he said a few years back when I interviewed him about his memoir, \u201cNever Look at the Empty Seats.\u201d He was coming into Durango for a book-signing,  and I\u2019d asked him about what he thought his legacy would be.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think a person deserves to be remembered for anything more or less than the way they were. We tend to forgive people an awful lot after they pass away,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cSo whatever people perceive me to be: Some people will tell you I\u2019m a fiddle player; some people will tell you I\u2019m an entertainer; some people will tell you I\u2019m a guitar player; some people will tell you I\u2019m a songwriter or an author. I\u2019ve had a multifaceted career \u2013 so I could be remembered in different ways by different people. But if I had to boil it down to one word as far as my career was concerned, I would like to be remembered (as) an entertainer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:katie@durangoherald.com\">katie@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Country Music Hall of Famer, part-time area resident died Monday at age 83<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2482,938,1167,28,559,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-52810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-celebrity","tag-country-music","tag-exclude-homepage-video","tag-headlines","tag-music","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52810"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=52810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}