The Hidden Meaning Of Charlie Daniels' 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia'

All of that seems to have been in the back of Charlie Daniels's mind when he was working on his album Million Mile Reflections. He told Songfacts that the band was about done when they realized they didn't have a fiddle selection among the tracks. They took a break from the studio to remedy the situation.

"I just had this idea: 'The Devil went down to Georgia,'" Daniels said. "The idea may have come from an old poem that Stephen Vincent Benét wrote many, many years ago. He didn't use that line, but I just started, and the band started playing, and first thing you know we had it down."

The Morning Call reports that Daniels also read The Devil and Daniel Webster in his youth, after it was assigned by his literary mentor, Miss Ethel Odom, noting that "he continued to "honor her legacy by promoting literacy and consuming books."

As Rolling Stone quotes his 2017 autobiography, Daniels was more vague about his spin on the archetypal tale: "I don't know where the phrase 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' came from or why it entered my mind that day in the rehearsal studio. I don't even know where the song idea came from... But when it started coming, it came in a gush." Whatever the inspiration, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" gave him his only #1 hit, says The Cheatsheet.