Never Look at the Empty Seats
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PRAISE FOR NEVER LOOK AT THE EMPTY SEATS
A tale of hard work, musical discovery, and faith, Charlie Daniels’s journey has been one of a kind. Equal parts rebel-rouser and apostle, it’s no small coincidence he launched his career by beating the Devil with a fiddle in hand. I love this man, the things he stands for, and his music. What a story.
—BRAD PAISLEY, Grammy Award-Winning Singer and Songwriter
Charlie Daniels has entertained people around the world for decades, including America’s troops in war-torn countries. But what impressed me most over the years is that he brought his legendary band to perform at evangelistic crusades, attracting audiences that would never have heard me or my father, Dr. Billy Graham, proclaim the saving Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we looked out from the platform we didn’t concentrate on the sea of people; we looked into the faces of individuals who longed to know God. I was reminded of this when I heard that Charlie had written this memoir, Never Look at the Empty Seats. Thank you Charlie Daniels for caring about those who fill the seats! You are a giant of a man.
—FRANKLIN GRAHAM, President and CEO, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Samaritan’s Purse
Charlie Daniels’s personal stories are lessons in self-reliance, accountability, and responsibility, and they are as relevant today as they were when Charlie was learning them. These are inspiring words from a great patriot and a great friend.
—GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS, Former Commander, United States Central Command, Author of New York Times Bestseller American Soldier
Charlie takes you inside stories of his amazing family, his discovery of music, and his fight to make it in a profession that most just don’t! He shares the why, who, and how of really hard times that taught him life lessons, and those wonderful events and people that he is proud of and celebrates in his book. Read it for yourself . . . this amazing man has a story for us all.
—PHILLIP FULMER, 2012 College Football Hall of Fame
Finally, Charlie Daniels, the Tar Heel, singer-songwriter, tells all! If you love our Lord, our country, and great American music, you will love every word in this book—and learn why US Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, really matter to my friend Charlie!
—LTCOL OLIVER NORTH, USMC (RET.), Host of War Stories on Fox News Channel
Charlie Daniels is a true American icon. He’s a patriot who loves God and country and a Country Music Hall of Famer. I am blessed to call him my friend. Trust me, there will never be another Charlie Daniels!
—DARRELL WALTRIP, NASCAR Hall of Famer
Country is the heart and soul of Charlie Daniels—the music, the land, the people, and the uniquely American freedoms that make our country the greatest in the world.
—WAYNE LAPIERRE, Executive Vice President, National Rifle Association
Charlie is so up-front and friendly, we all assume we know everything there is to know about him. Not so. There is so much about Charlie’s life in this book that it would and could make a great movie, or even better, a long-running series . . . very informative and interesting. We all love Charlie, me more than most. Enjoy the book. I did.
—DOLLY PARTON, Grammy Award-Winning Singer, Songwriter, and Actress
My friend Charlie Daniels is not only a country music legend and icon, he’s also a Great American, and a lover of all that matters—God, faith, family, country, and our military. If you want to live life to the fullest, read this book, as it is a road map to everything great.
—SEAN HANNITY, Host of Hannity and Author of New York Times Bestseller Deliver Us from Evil
I particularly enjoyed Charlie’s chapter on Louis L’Amour. Clearly, Louis and Charlie are kindred spirts.
—TOM SELLECK, Actor and Film Producer
© 2017 Charlie Daniels
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Epub Edition September 2017 ISBN 9780718074760
ISBN 978-0-7180-7476-0 (eBook)
ISBN 978-0-7180-7496-8 (HC)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909961
Printed in the United States of America
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To my friend, mentor, and teacher, Bob Johnston, whose influence on my life and my career cannot be overestimated.
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1: First Things First
Chapter 2: School Days and the Real World
Chapter 3: That’s a Big Ol’ World Out There
Chapter 4: Three Chords that Changed My Life
Chapter 5: Finishing Up and Starting Over
Chapter 6: Another Move, and This One Hurt
Chapter 7: Paying Dues on the Installment Plan
Chapter 8: Sometimes Fate Just Walks Right through the Door
Chapter 9: Blast from the Past
Chapter 10: Midnight Madness and Wild Oats
Chapter 11: Burned Fingers and Burned Bridges
Chapter 12: New Beginnings or Last Stand
Chapter 13: Just a Stop Along the Way
Chapter 14: Tonight I Met the Girl of My Dreams, for Real
Chapter 15: The Show Not Only Must but Will Go On
Chapter 16: Happiness Comes in Swaddling Clothes
Chapter 17: Oh the Joys of Living the Honkytonk Life
Chapter 18: Music City, Here I Come
Chapter 19: Opportunity Knock, Knock, Knocking on My Front Door
Chapter 20: The View from the Other Side of the Control Room Window
Chapter 21: Bird on a Wire
Chapter 22: Youngblood and New Ground
Chapter 23: What Goes Around Comes Around
Chapter 24: Gearing Up for the Long Run
Chapter 25: A Long Road and a Little Wheel
Chapter 26: Red Hot Chicken and the Advent of the Volunteer Jam
Chapter 27: Always Works Out for the Best
Chapter 28: Demise of the Uneasy R
ider: New Rides
Chapter 29: Decisions, Decisions
Chapter 30: It Was October in St. Louis Town When We Heard that the Free Bird Had Fell to the Ground
Chapter 31: A Million Miles, A New Face, and the Devil Went Down to Georgia
Chapter 32: Urban Cowboy
Chapter 33: Big Show, Big Crowds, Big Crew
Chapter 34: Broken Arms and Grammys
Chapter 35: Just a Hill with Some Tall Trees Where a Creek Comes Bubbling By
Chapter 36: You Never Did Think that It Ever Would Happen Again
Chapter 37: Talk to Me Fiddle, Tell Me About the Time When You Came Across the Sea
Chapter 38: Cardboard Critics
Chapter 39: High Lonesome, Our Little Piece of Tennessee
Chapter 40: Heart of My Heart, Rock of My Soul, You Changed My Life When You Took Control
Chapter 41: Many, Many Years Ago God Came to Abraham, He Said I’ve Chosen You to Carry Out My Plan
Chapter 42: Falling Down and Getting Up and Digging Out
Chapter 43: Homesick Heroes
Chapter 44: Next of Kin and Simple Men
Chapter 45: The Door
Chapter 46: Saying Goodbye to Momma
Chapter 47: Changes Going and Coming
Chapter 48: I Ain’t Nothing but a Simple Man, They Call Me a Redneck, I Reckon that I Am
Chapter 49: There’s a New Train Coming, Get On Board or Just Keep Walking
Chapter 50: The Cowards Came by Morning and Attacked Without a Warning, Leaving Flames and Death and Chaos in Our Streets
Chapter 51: A Friend Who Affected My Life
Chapter 52: Close Call in the Rockies
Chapter 53: Ain’t It Good to Be Alive and Be in Tennessee
Chapter 54: This Is a Righteous Cause, So Without Doubt or Pause I Will Do What My Country Asks of Me
Chapter 55: A Heart’s Desire Answered on the Stage of the Ryman Auditorium
Chapter 56: Ain’t No Fool Like an Old Fool
Chapter 57: And the Lonesome Boy from Dixie Made It Home
Chapter 58: The Way I See It
Chapter 59: Another Blip on the Screen
Chapter 60: There Are Some Things in This World You Just Can’t Explain
Chapter 61: I’ll Always Remember that Song
Chapter 62: We’ve Traveled Our Highways and Toasted Our Times in Rotgut Whiskey and Fine French Wines, Old Friend We’ve Been a Mile or Two Together
Chapter 63: Icing on a Very Special Cake
Acknowledgments
Notes
Photos
PREFACE
The proposition of making a living as a professional musician can be confusing and challenging. To take it a step further and join the few who have ascended the slippery slope of the big time is a daunting task, to say the least.
After so many years in the business, I guess it’s only natural for young men and women who want to chase the dream to ask an old-timer like me questions about the decades I’ve devoted and the miles I’ve traveled in my half-century-plus roller coaster ride as a professional musician.
The two most frequently asked questions are, “How do you make it in the music business?” and “How do you have a long career like yours?”
I am writing this book with two primary thoughts in mind. First of all, I’d like to answer these and other questions. Most of all, I have a story to tell. It is a story about trial and error, hard work, hard times, and the myriad of encouraging little things that give you hope and a reason to go on when it seems it’s uphill all the way.
I want to tell you about the people who have been a part of my life and the miles I’ve traveled. But most of all, I want to tell you about the music, the creation and performance, and the undying love that I have for it and my God-given gift that makes it possible.
I’d also like to give you an inside view of what the life of a professional musician is like and a look at the business from my view and attitude.
The truth about the music business is that there is no yellow brick road to get you there. There is no academic degree that guarantees the success you seek. There is no safety net to catch you when you fall.
There’s only you, your talent, your determination, your belief in yourself, and, most important of all, your attitude.
While, as I said, there is no yellow brick road, there are some time-proven absolutes, many that I’ve learned the hard way over the years. I’ll pass them on to you, laced with a goodly portion of knowledge earned by beating my head against various walls over the years.
I have had many unique experiences in my eight-plus decades. I’ve ridden on everything from an Eskimo dog sled to the Concorde and Air Force One. I’ve performed in every state in our union and in some twenty-one foreign countries, in war zones, on an aircraft carrier at sea, and on remote forward operating bases where only a few lonely soldiers make up one of the most cherished audiences of all.
I’ve stood at the 38th parallel that separates South and North Korea, knocked a few chips out of the Berlin Wall, and worked cattle with the cowboys in Texas and the buckaroos in Nevada. I’ve seen the polar ice cap, seen the Negev in Israel, been baptized in the Jordan River, and marveled at the beauty of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
I’ve seen whales in the Pacific and watched the mustang herds run wild and free across the endless expanses of the high desert country.
This account is not written in exact chronological order. I tend to jump around a bit in my narrative, relating memories and lessons learned as I recall them and not always in sequence, reliving times and events as they come to me, one memory prompting another, one instance remembered triggering a vivid recollection of something that could well have happened years on down or back up the road.
It’s a little different route, I know, but we still end up at the same place.
One of life’s most important lessons I’ve learned, as it relates to the path I’ve chosen, is like the old song says, “accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative.”1
Walk onstage with a positive attitude. Your troubles are your own and are not included in the ticket price.
Some nights you have more to give than others, but put it all out there every show.
You’re concerned with the people who showed up, not the ones who didn’t. So always give them a show, and never look at the empty seats!
CHAPTER 1
FIRST THINGS FIRST
The first things I remember are frosty Carolina mornings with a cheery fire crackling in my momma’s big, black woodstove.
There’s no particular reason why you should remember October 28, 1936, unless you happen to be one of the handful of history buffs who know it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty standing in the harbor in New York.
The mood of the time was laid back and lethargic, the waning era of the Great Depression, and the last year of FDR’s New Deal. Polio was a dreaded childhood disease. The Dodgers were in Brooklyn, the Empire State Building was the tallest in the world, and streetcars still rumbled down the streets of small-town America.
Cokes cost a nickel, hot dogs were a dime, and hemlines were well below the knee. Radio was king, and Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson were big stars.
It was seventy-one years after the end of the Civil War, twenty-three years since the Wright brothers made their short but historic flight up the coast at Kitty Hawk, and one year before Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated attempt to fly around the world. But 1936 itself was a bland and ordinary year, absent of earth-shaking happenings and grandiose events.
One thing for sure is that the most inauspicious occurrence on October 28, 1936, took place at approximately 2:00 a.m. at James Walker Memorial Hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina, when eighteen-year-old LaRue Daniel and nineteen-year-old William Carlton Daniel had their first and only child—me.
The bureaucratic foul-ups started on the first day of my life when somebody put an “s” on the family name of Daniel on my birth certificate. I became the
first and only Daniels in my family.
They named me Charles Edward and took me home as hairless as a billiard ball and probably hungry, a state of affairs that has existed ever since, except that I did manage to grow a modicum of hair over time.
My very first memories are of snowflakes as big as goose feathers, a moon the color of new-made country butter, and a night sky like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” I remember cold mornings with a cheery fire crackling in Momma’s big, black woodstove and waking up with the smell of breakfast cooking and how the early morning sunshine would make frost diamonds on the winter-brown broom grass in the field next to the house.
We had electricity but no plumbing. Our water source was a hand pump on the back porch. We cooked and heated with wood and took baths in the same galvanized washtub Momma used to do the laundry.
Did you ever take a bath in a galvanized washtub on a cold night? The side next to the fire is roasting, and the side away from the fire is close to hypothermia. You’re red on one side and blue on the other.
Our sanitary facility was the kind you had to walk to. And yes, it’s true, folks; the back issues of the Sears and Roebuck catalog really did spend their dotage in the little house behind the big house, growing thinner by the day, titillating the imaginations of little boys who sat there ogling the scantily clad models in the lingerie section.
It was a time when hardly anybody locked a door. We always had a handout for the occasional itinerant, or “tramp” as we called them, and most men’s word was better than any contract a lawyer could draw up.
There were no atheists in my world. We believed that everything that existed was created by an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful God. We believed in heaven and hell, the virgin birth, and Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross. We believed He rose from the dead and would one day return to claim His rightful place as King of kings and Lord of lords.
That’s just how it was and how it still is with me.
I was about the forty-leventh grandchild born on my daddy’s side of the family. But I was the very first on my mother’s side, a fact that carried a considerable bit of weight until the advent of several more grand-siblings, who siphoned off a goodly portion of my exclusive adult adoration.