Saving the “Devil” - Soapbox Jr.

Something very significant happened this week, a piece of CDB musical history has been carefully, lovingly and painstakingly preserved.

It involves the most recognizable of all CDB songs, the song that despite its inauspicious beginnings made a simple story created out of necessity into one of the most recognizable songs of the 20^th Century and still going strong into the 21^st. 

Of course, I’m talking about “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” but more specifically I’m talking about the very first live performance of the song which occurred on January 13, 1979 at Volunteer Jam V at the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, TN.

Now before someone jumps in and says, “You can find the video for the first performance right now on YouTube,” which is 100% correct, but the video and audio quality are pretty evenly matched. They’re both lousy.

Let me back up a little bit.

A few years before Dad left us, I had settled into my roles in the CDB operation. I was in charge of social media, website, website store and – for lack of a better term – thinking outside the box for new ways to market and promote Dad and the band.

Because I spent several years working in music publishing on Music Row, I wasn’t as familiar with everything that existed in our archives at the CDB office.

I remember when Dad’s label, Blue Hat Records, released a digital-only Volunteer Jam V EP and I was excited to hear this CDB set again. I remember so much of that Jam like it was yesterday. It was memorable on several levels. 

It was the first Jam to feature the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, after the 1977 plane crash, and the spirit of Ronnie Van Zant was alive and well at Municipal Auditorium. In addition to the Skynyrd survivors merging with members of the CDB to perform a unique Taz DiGregorio vocal arrangement on “Call Me The Breeze” they also performed the anthem “Free Bird” as an instrumental. Where an empty microphone stood, a white spotlight was shining on where Ronnie should have been standing and singing. 

After the two songs, Artimus Pyle stepped to the microphone and acklowledged who the fans were cheering for, Steve, Cassie, Dean and – of course – Ronnie.

Henry Paul’s new band – ironically called The Henry Paul Band – debuted a Skynyrd-themed rockin’ tune called “Grey Ghost,” with the line “Free Bird falling from the sky brings a bitter end to another Southern Man.”

Dad’s set also featured a song that was a tribute to Ronnie, although the first two verses don’t give that away, but I knew the song well, but I wasn’t prepared for what happened. 

I was 13 years old and dressed like Dad when I was on the road, hat, boots, you name it. I was Dad’s “Mini Me” long before Dr. Evil created his own in the Austin Powers movies.

Dad began singing the quasi-title song from the new album, ‘Million Mile Reflections’ called simply, “Reflections.” Country artists Gene Watson had released an album called ‘Reflections’ in 1978, and I think there was concern about two albums with the same title causing confusion at the record stores, so “Million Mile” was added, and coincided when Dad figured he had put his millionth mile on the road.

The first verse was about Elvis Presley who Dad felt personified the 1950s, Janis Joplin was chosen to represent the turbulent 1960s, and the final verse was the most personal, it was about Ronnie Van Zant, the Skynyrd crash and the true story that Dad and the band learned of rumors of the Skynyrd crash right before taking the stage in St. Louis. 

As Dad sang the third verse, his emotions got the better of him, and he was attempting to hold back tears through “and Ronnie my buddy, above all the rest, I miss you the most and I loved you the best. And now that you’re gone, I thank God I was blessed just to know you,” but the pain was obvious to the 10,000 souls in attendance.

For me, It was especially hard to listen to. When you are thirteen years old and your father – who is super strong and superhuman in your eyes – is struggling to get through a song because of the pain of missing his dear friend. I ended up getting choked up myself with my own tears for my Dad. 

I guess I really was his Mini Me after all.

Now pivoting back to the original statement about preserving CDB history.

When that Volunteer Jam V digital EP was released, I noticed a glaring absence. Of the seven tracks released, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” was NOT one of them.

That’s the other major noteworthy event from this Jam, the song that was recorded just a month before in December of 1978 was first unveiled to the fans at VolJam V.

But where was it?

I didn’t find out until years later, in fact, it was 2025.

A couple of years before Dad went home, I found a bunch of digital audio tapes – DATs – with Volunteer Jams recorded on them, including the one Jam I missed, the first one at War Memorial in 1974.

I had a great idea, let’s release Jam I for the world – and myself – to finally hear, aside from the two tracks that wound up on ‘Fire on the Mountain.’ I was not involved in the record label operations at the time, and nothing happened until it was released in 2022, two years after Dad was gone.

But we have most of the Jams on DAT, and I thought that we needed to try to look at putting some more of these together, but there is a lot that goes into something like this.

Fast forward to this year, and I have been having conversations with a company about what we have from the Jams and they were showing interest in crafting a CDB best of the VolJams collection and I had just gotten access to all of our tapes in a professional storage facility and finally managed to find tracks I had been looking for.

I found “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” from January 13, 1979, which was not on the DAT, so it was never transferred from the reel to reel tape that it was on. A couple of emails to Patrick who had been our engineer at the time confirmed that TDWDTG had never been transferred from the two-track reel because the reel was so old and old tape doesn’t do well.

The one remedy for this is baking the tape and then hoping and praying you can get a decent transfer before it becomes completely impossible to work with and trashing it is the only option.

I am happy to say that this week, after multiple starts and stops to clean the playback heads because the shedding tape buildup affects the sound of the recording, it was so bad that the producer who we are working with on this said they had to basically do the song transfer in thirty-second increments before they had to stop and clean the heads and go through the process again and again…

Lather, rinse, repeat…

So, we at least have the best-possible sounding track of the song that propelled Dad and the band into places he could have never dreamed, movies, TV shows, worldwide recognition, all because of this song.

And let me add, even at its best quality, the first performance has a lot of warts on its own. I think Dad struggled with some of the phrasing because there’s so many words and they flow pretty quickly. Dad flubbed a couple of words here and there, but despite its flaws, the Jam crowd reacted to the song in a big way, overwhelmingly positive.

There’s still more to do on this album. We’d love to find the original 24-track masters and remix the song completely, but we haven’t been able to find them yet.

But at the very least, we can improve upon the quality from the video which appears to have been lifted from VHS. The good news is that with AI, we can improve the video quality to the point that it can measure up to the new improved audio.

This is just one of many wonderful items we will bring to you, the fans in 2026.

Hang on, it’s gonna be a fun ride!

What do you think?

Let’s all make the day count!

Pray for our troops, our police, the Peace of Jerusalem and our nation.

God Bless America!

#SonyReleaseHonkyTonkAve

#BenghaziAintGoingAway #End22<

- Charlie Daniels, Jr.

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