In The Devil Went Down to Georgia, the devil challenges Johnny to a fiddlin’ contest. The Devil plays first, and we hear him as an instrumental–technically very astute, but perhaps lacking a certain artistic elan. He’s the devil, after all.
Then Johnny plays, and Charlie Daniels narrates over the music to tell us what he’s playing:
However, as I am not a devotee of country or bluegrass music, none of the above means anything to me. The “house of the rising sun” is perhaps a reference to the song made famous by the Animals, although that song doesn’t sound anything like the exuberant fiddling being played in the background.
Are these real songs, or snippets of lyrics from real songs? What the heck is Johnny playing?
Fire on the mountain, run boys run
Devil’s in the house of the rising sun Chicken in the bread pan, picking out dough Granny does your dog bite, no child no
The bolded bits are all titles of traditional Appalachian songs, though the fiddle playing we hear in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” doesn’t actually match any of them, IIRC.
Am I the only one who thought the devil actually won?
Starts with a nice guitar riff / shuffle and then a bass line doubling over with the keyboard --and this by a band of demons mind you who are generally not considered to be the most musically talented in the spirit world…
The thing we have to remember about this song is that Charlie Daniels never actually wrote any lyrics for it. Like “Sweet Home Alabama” was to Lynyrd Skynyrd, this was a throwaway song, never really meant to be a hit. Daniels has said in several interviews that they made it up as they went along, so it’s not surprising that the song’s lyrics raised at least 39 questions about it.
I thought Judge Mills Lane disqualified the Devil when the band of demons jumped in. Clearly with the demon backing group, the Devil had a patently unfair advantage. So Johnny didn’t actually even have to play well, he simply had to play and got the walkover victory.
Bluegrass/jazz fiddler Vassar Clements claimed most of the music was stolen from his “Lonesome Fiddler Blues,” which Vassar wrote in the 1940s. So, if the claim is valid, Johnny played Lonesome Fiddler Blues.
Listen again, my friend. I think you’ll find that the Devil was quite clearly playing disco. Automatic disqualification.
And to give a semi-serious answer to the OP, the lyrics in Johnny’s chorus are call-outs to ‘classic’ country fiddle tunes, wheras the Devil was clearly playing that sinful boojie-woojie music. Hence, Johnny wins.
Isn’t it the case that Johnny played all those songs the narrator mentioned? If so, I suppose those are really good, and that is the reason that Johnny wins.
I’m willing to accept that they couldn’t fit the entire competition into a four-minute pop tune, so we only hear excerpts of each player playing. In the “real” competition, Johnny would play, or at least sample, each of the songs mentioned.
For the record, based on the excerpts, I’ve always felt that Johnny won, but I have a tin ear for this kind of stuff.
Thanks for the links, folks. One more question–in the “Bluegrass Messenger”, it says that Granny does your dog bite “also is a floating title”. What does this mean?
