Why I Still Think The Devil Won the Fiddle Fight In "The Devil Went Down To Georgia"

The Charlie Daniels Band's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" is a classic in popular country song storytelling. Since its 1979 release, the song hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is listed by the RIAA as the top selling single of all time with a U.S. state's name in the title (?). But what I'm disputing is not the success of the song, but the outcome, which I feel is total bullshit.

The terms of the fiddle contest between the Devil and this "Johnny" character are well documented in the first verse:

Johnny you rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard.
'Cos hells broke loose in Georgia and the devil deals it hard.
And if you win you get this shiny fiddle made of gold.
But if you lose, the devil gets your soul.

So they get started and the Devil gets first turn. But what he failed to do here before playing is set the terms of the JUDGING of the contest- just those two are going to judge who plays better? Why not get a third party to officiate the proceedings? Hellllooooo? The Devil could have gone even further and have paid off a judge. Even if that dumb hick Johnny played terribly, he always had a guaranteed 50% vote. So the Devil is doomed to never prevail already.

But then there's the actual quality of the fiddle playing themselves. When the Devil rosined up his bow, frickin "FAHR" flew from his fingertips! That's showmanship! That shit has since then inspired KISS, Gwar and The Jonas Brothers! And not only that, the Devil brings in accompaniment:

And he pulled the bow across his strings and it made an evil hiss.
Then a band of demons joined in and it sounded something like this.

And the song the Devil plays is all minor keys. Over a haunted house bassline and rhythm guitar, he does a very Eddie Van Halen virtuoso solo, complete with plucking and screeching from the bow. Truly genre-pushing stuff. It's the kind of hard rock awesomeness that gave birth to heavy metal. Fucking Black Sabbath. Peter Travers from Rolling Stone hailed the Devil's playing as "capturing the teenage angst of suburban youth and symbolizing the breakout from the stranglehold of disco music and the salvation from the self-congratulatory babbling of progressive rock."


As for "Johnny's" performance, I'd rather not talk about. It's expected bluegrass fiddling, and not even that proficient; it's the kind of workmanlike humdrum major key fiddling you'd expect at a county fair in the North or a school-sponsored hoe down. Listen to superior musicians like Kenny Baker, Bobby Hicks, or even Sara Watkins from the contemporary band Nickel Creek to get a sense of what real traditional fiddling should sound like. Johnny's is fucking amateur hour.

So call me a Satanist if you want, but I'm basing my opinion purely on musical merit. Also, the Civil War and the NCAA Tournament teach us that hillbillies always lose.