Grammy-winning country music star, Charlie Daniels, discusses his faith and his 60-year career.
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Oh, he's sold
millions of albums.
One of the most popular--
just got inaugurated into the
Country Music Hall of Fame.
And it's such a pleasure to
have a dear friend back with us
on the 700 Club.
Charlie Daniels.
CHARLIE DANIELS: Pat.
God bless you, man.
God bless you, sir.
Good to be with you today.
Thank you very much.
Well, I'm so glad to see you.
Been a while.
PAT ROBERTSON: It has.
Now, listen, you started,
though-- you didn't know
anything about music, did you?
No, sir, I didn't.
I don't-- I still, to this
day, don't read music.
I never had lessons.
PAT ROBERTSON: Come on!
Yeah, no.
I had a friend--
it was funny--
I had a friend that I
had no idea had a guitar.
I don't know where he got it
from, or how long he had it.
PAT ROBERTSON: Yeah?
I went up to his house
one day, and he was playing.
He knew about 2 and
1/2 chords, literally--
PAT ROBERTSON: Yeah.
--and I got him
to teach me those.
And then we kind of
started from there.
And I've been at it ever since.
But I still never took time
to learn how to read music.
Well, did you--
I mean, how did you
pattern yourself?
Was it the Grand Ole Opry,
or something like that?
Yeah, basically, the
people in the Grand Ole Opry.
And I got into bluegrass
for a good little while,
Bill Monroe and Flatt and
Scruggs, and those people.
I went through different phases.
But you know, when I was
a kid, Pat, radio stations
were not formatted
for one kind of music.
They played all kinds of music.
They'd start off in the
morning with country.
Then they'd play something
for the ladies that were home.
And then the kids
come home, they'd
play whatever the popular
music of the day was.
And I was exposed to
so many different kinds
of music coming up.
And I loved it all.
So when I sat down and started
doing my music, I started--
I just mixed it all together.
So that's kind of
what my style is,
is a little bit of everything.
Call it eclectic, whatever.
Well, you started
writing music--
when did you start writing?
You've written a lot of songs.
I basically-- I started
writing pretty early on, but I
wrote some just really bad,
trite-type stuff, you know,
until I got with a guy by
the name of Bob Johnston.
PAT ROBERTSON: Yeah.
And I started
writing with him.
And if anybody has
ever mentored me,
he was the guy that
brought me to Nashville,
and spent a lot of
time with me about,
you know, writing and
not settling for less
than what you were capable of.
We spent hours and hours
together writing songs.
And so I got seriously involved
in really writing about 1962.
What's the secret
of having a hit
song, a really popular song?
I can't say.
If I did, I'd do
it all the time.
[LAUGHTER] But the
secret remains unfound.
All you can do is the very
best you can, you know.
You just have to go for it.
If you've got something
you feel good about,
you just-- you can't
make the people buy it.
You can't make the
radio stations play it.
But you just put it
out there and hope.
You know, and that's basically--
What was the big breakthrough
you had with writing?
The big break for
me, right, was in 1962.
Bob and myself wrote a
song called "It Hurts Me"
that Elvis Presley
recorded in 1963.
PAT ROBERTSON: Yeah.
That was my first
intro into anything
to do with national hits,
and that sort of thing.
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, it's a big
deal, if Elvis took your song!
Oh, it was a huge
deal, you know.
It was a single.
It came out as a single.
It was on the flip
side of a movie song he
had called "Kissing Cousins."
But it made no
difference in those days
with Elvis, because they'd
play one side for a while
and they'd flip it over
onto the other side.
So it has been--
it was my entree into the lots
of, you know, different-- oh,
you wrote an Elvis Presley song!
Yeah, man!
[LAUGHTER]
Of course, some
of the others--
you had a couple other
really, really big hits.
We had a song called "The
Devil Went Down to Georgia"
in 1979 that has been our
signature song, you could say,
for all this time.
Every time we play, we have
to play that song because it's
what people expect us to do.
But we've had others, too.
We've done somewhere around
20 million albums, I guess,
altogether.
20 million is a lot of
people buying a lot of records.
I've been at it
a long time, Pat.
[LAUGHTER]
What's it like
traveling around the bus?
The early days, you
had a broken down van,
and you were all smelly
together in that bus.
Yeah, yeah.
PAT ROBERTSON: It was hard.
Well, it was.
Well, I first started
traveling in a car, you know.
And as we got more
instruments and everything,
we had to add the trailer.
And then we got a van.
And, you know, you got
six people and, you know,
we had two vans for a while,
one for the instruments
and one for us.
But then one day, we got
an old scenic cruiser bus.
When I say old,
I mean, something
that Greyhound had already
put five million miles on it,
or whoever got a hold of it.
And it broke down
every 1,200 miles.
But we loved it.
It had bunks in it.
It had been outfitted
for a band to play in.
And we could hold the
instruments down in the bay.
And that was my first
introduction to a bus.
And I've been
traveling in a bus.
Of course, we've upgraded
a few times since then.
Sure, sure.
I've traveled a
bus ever since then.
My wife and myself travel
on a bus now, together.
It's home for us.
You do, the two of you?
We're able to
be together, yeah.
1983, my son started college.
She's been traveling with me
on a bus outfitted for us.
She's been driving
me ever since.
By the way, I was married
53 years yesterday.
PAT ROBERTSON:
Congratulations, Charlie!
CHARLIE DANIELS: Thank you.
PAT ROBERTSON: 53-- and your
wife has put up with all that?
CHARLIE DANIELS:
She's put up with it.
And now, you're saying it
facetiously, but it's true.
[LAUGHTER]
What a sweet lady.
CHARLIE DANIELS: Yeah.
You know, you have been
known for your faith, though,
your belief in God.
"The Devil Went
Down to Georgia",
that was sort of
Christian-based.
How long have you
known the Lord?
You know, I wrote a chapter
in my book about my faith.
And it was the hardest
chapter for me to write,
because I really
did a lot of soul
searching, and looking at what I
really, honestly, believed in--
what my basic core beliefs
were, and how I came to them.
I was awfully confused about
salvation for a long time.
I went to a lot of
different churches.
I went to-- and one
of the basic things
that I stress is I heard so much
about the condemnation of God,
and so little about the love.
And I think a lot of real
well-meaning pastors think
a lot of times, because they
are way ahead of the curve
themselves, and they think that
people know all about salvation
and how it applies to them
personally when they walk
through the door--
and a lot of people don't.
I didn't.
I believe that.
All my life, I heard,
Jesus died for your sins.
I believed it, but
I didn't know why.
I didn't know why
it was necessary.
So I decided, several
years ago, I'm
going to sit down and
read the Bible for myself.
I'm going to take my
opinion that I come up with,
and people like
yourself whose opinion
I respect and listen to.
And I'm going to walk
that lonesome valley,
as the song goes, and
work out my own salvation.
It's just been a kind--
I never had a Damascus
road experience.
It's just been a kind of
a recognizing the truth,
you know.
And things keep--
I'm a work in progress.
I mean, things
keep dawning on me.
But, like, when I sit
down and read, you know,
if you confess with your
mouth the Lord Jesus,
and you believe in your
heart that God raised him
from the dead, you
will be saved--
PAT ROBERTSON: Yeah, yeah.
--and-- that, and John 3:16.
And I just constantly say
those things to myself.
And I believe that Jesus
Christ was the only begotten
Son of God, that he
came to earth, that he
was nailed to a
cross for my sins,
that he left here, he ascended--
PAT ROBERTSON: He's coming back.
--and he's going to
descend one of these days.
He's going come
back to pick us up--
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, that's--
--take us to a better place.
That's about as
thorough as you could get.
And you wrote
something in your book,
don't count the empty seats.
Talk about that.
Well, everybody wants
to know about that title.
When you're a young musician,
and you're just starting out,
you play anywhere, for
anything, to anybody,
if you're serious about it.
And I was serious about it.
And you're going to have
a lot of empty seats,
because nobody
knows who you are.
You know, you'll be
playing somewhere,
and a few people will come
see you just out of curiosity.
And if you go in and say, gosh,
I got a half house tonight,
I'm just going to take
it easy, you know--
that's the wrong attitude.
That is a disastrous attitude.
You play-- you're not
concerned with the empty seats.
You're concerned with the
seats that have people in them.
And if you please them, if you
do a good enough show for them,
the next time you come
back, they'll come back.
They'll bring somebody
else with them, and so on.
It kind of reaches an
exponential factor.
And the first thing you
know, you're drawing crowds.
You've built a following.
And that's what
that's all about.
Don't never look
at the empty seats,
I always look at the full seats.
Entertain them.
PAT ROBERTSON: I like that.
What's next for you?
You've got into
the Hall of Fame.
You've sold 20 million albums.
That's a lot of work!
What are you doing next?
I'm still doing
the same thing.
PAT ROBERTSON: Same thing?
I never knew I
could write, Pat,
up until the last few years.
It's a talent God gave me that
I didn't really know about.
I mean, I knew I could put
words together for a song.
One day, one of the
guys at work with me
said, you write story songs.
Why don't you write stories?
And I got to thinking, I
think I'll give that a shot.
So I walked-- I was
on the road one day.
I walked into a motel room and
started writing short stories.
And it just kind of
went on from then.
And I wrote this, on this
book here, for 20 years.
But I could never find
a place to stop it.
I was in my 70's
before I was ever
invited to join the
Grand Ole Opry, you know.
But interesting things
kept happening to me,
kept happening.
So I kept writing, and writing.
But when I found out I was going
to be inducted into the Country
Music Hall of Fame,
I thought, what
a great place to pause this.
What a great place
to, you know, stop.
So I went to the ceremony that
night, was inducted, went home.
The next morning, I
sat down and wrote
my impressions of the induction,
and what it meant to me,
and everything.
I kind of back-wrote
to where I was.
And there it was.
PAT ROBERTSON: Here's a book.
Finally finished.
Yeah.
"Never Look at the Empty
Seat," Charlie Daniels.
What a towering figure
in country music,
and a towering Christian who we
appreciate and love, Charlie,
you are the greatest.
God bless you, buddy.
God bless you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.