Charlie Daniels ‘Speechless’ After News of Hall of Fame Induction

"What do you say? How do you articulate something that you had no way of ever imagining or knowing would happen," Daniels asks. 

Written by Chuck Dauphin
Charlie Daniels ‘Speechless’ After News of Hall of Fame Induction
Photo courtesy Webster Public Relations

It was earlier this year when Charlie Daniels’ longtime manager, David Corlew, pulled one on his boss. However, the legendary performer will likely never mind the fact that Corlew got one over on him. “We were at BMI doing a memorial for Bob Johnston, the man who brought me to Nashville. David had told me that the CMA needed a picture of me, and we were only a few blocks away, so he wanted to go. I didn’t even have my hat, but I said ok. So, we get down there, and they have this scenario set up where the photographer is there to take the picture. Then, (CMA Chief Executive Officer) Sarah Trahern comes down, and says ‘I know you think you’re here to take a picture, but actually you’re being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame!” Needless to say, Daniels was in a state of shock. “I literally did this (falls backward), and my wife was right there beside me. I almost fell into her.”

The feeling was one that Daniels still has trouble latching onto – almost six months later. “It was one of those ‘Did she say what I thought she said? moments, or was I just imagining. Maybe she said something else. That was the first thing I thought. After I realized that she had said it, I was speechless. What do you say? How do you articulate something that you had no way of ever imagining or knowing would happen?”

While building a successful career takes a great deal of talent, determination, and fate, Daniels says the Hall is an entirely different animal. “You literally have no control over that. If you want to have hit records, keep doing good songs, and you’ve got a shot of doing that. Even with the Grand Ole Opry, there are people that you can lobby, but with the Hall, there’s not really any of that. The voting membership is kept private and kept secret, and it rotates. There’s really nobody you can talk to or lobby to. There’s nothing you can do except hope that one of these days, a bunch of people will go into a room and someone will say ‘We ought to have Charlie Daniels in the Hall of Fame,’ and enough people will put their hand in the air to make it happen. That’s the only way to do it. You don’t get there any other way. There’s no hook, crook, or nothing. For so many people, they do get in after they pass away. I am so blessed to have it happen to me while I’m still breathing.”

That morning in March, Daniels recalls looking around at the plaques on the walls of the Hall’s rotunda, and one kept peeking at him – a name that had been a part of his life for years. “Roy Acuff meant so much to me. Back before I was ever playing music – when I was a child – everybody listened to the Grand Ole Opry in the neighborhood. They could tell you what Minnie Pearl said or what song Roy Acuff sang, or Ernest Tubb, the whole nine yards. Everybody listened to it. We didn’t listen to it as late because the Opry didn’t go off until 1am in North Carolina, with it being an hour later. Back then, there weren’t as many stations around, and WSM-AM 650 came in like a local station. We’d laugh at Minnie Pearl and Rod Brasfield, and whoever had a new song, but Roy Acuff personified the Grand Ole Opry to me, to my grandparents, my parents, and just about everybody else.”

The artist behind the hits “In America” and “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” recalls his first time seeing “The King of Country Music” on stage. “I came to the Opry for the first time in 1954 with a bunch of kids that I went to school with. Seeing him was like Alice In Wonderland. You come into the Ryman, sit down, and you see all these people on stage, and they are all legendary to you – but especially Roy Acuff. That was my man!” he says proudly.

That teenager had no idea that one day, he would get to become friends with his hero. “Then, as I got to going out to the Opry, he used to invite me into his dressing room. I’d sit and talk with him, and he’d have a little bottle of Canadian Club into a glass, and put a little bit of cranberry juice into it. I’d’ just drink mine straight. He said ‘You’re going to take that raw? That’s not good for you. It will flush your heart,” he’d say,” Daniels recalls with a laugh, adding that he tried to pry as much information out of Acuff as he could about his career. “I knew so much about what he did back then – like his old movies, and things like that. I just sat at his feet every chance that I would get.:

Daniels and Acuff shared a stage together several times, but he recalls one evening stands out particularly well. “I remember one night, we were having the Volunteer Jam out at Starwood, and it was a Saturday. I looked over at the side of the stage, and there’s Roy Acuff. To show you what kind of guy he was, he came over between shows at the Opry. He knew I would get such a big charge out of it. The crowd loved him, even though it was a whole different crowd than what he had at the Opry. We did ‘Night Train To Memphis,’ and a few other songs that night. I’ll always remember that. He’s been part of my musical psyche for as long as I can remember.”

Needless to say, Daniels considers it a double honor to share membership in both the Opry and the Hall of Fame with the leader of the Smoky Mountain Boys. “Since he personified the Grand Ole Opry for as long as I remember, why would he not personify the Hall of Fame, as well? If you asked me about the one name that I associated with Country Music, it would be Roy Acuff to me.”

In recalling his friendship with Acuff, he says that definitely paved the way in his being accepted by the Opry crowd in the 70s and 80s – Daniels became a member in 200-, but to him, he was just enjoying a friendship with someone who influenced him more than either man knew. “I never really thought about that. It was very obvious to him, because I could sit and talk about the music he recorded and everything he did. He could tell I was really interested. I really wanted to talk to him, and every chance I got, I would go and sit in that dressing room, sitting there talking to him about this and that, and so many other things. It was like ambrosia to me, kind of like musical lifeblood to me. To be sitting with one of my heroes who I had looked up to for that long, it was like meeting Santa Claus.”

And, what if Daniels’ plaque – which will be enshrined at the Hall following the annual Medallion Ceremony this fall – happened to land near that of Acuff? You probably know that answer. “Let’s just say that I’d be content with that,” he says, smiling. “They can cover half of my plaque up with his, and that would be fine with me. I’d be alright.”