25, 1979, while also crossing over to land at No. 1 hit on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart on Aug. Johnny taunts the Devil one final time after defeating him in the song, saying, "Devil, just come on back if you ever wanna try again / I done told you once, you son of a b-h, I'm the best there's ever been!" When the song was released to radio as the lead single from Million Mile Reflections in 1979, the radio edit replaced that with "son of a gun," and the resulting single went on to score the Charlie Daniels Band a No. I didn't have that in the song, but I should have." You can't beat the Devil without the Lord. And of course, Johnny's saying something. There's no melody to it, there's no nothing. "If you listen to that, there's just a bunch of noise. "The Devil's just blowing smoke," Daniels explained. He chose an atonal approach for the Devil's music, while employing a much more melodic slant to Johnny's ultimately winning style. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" centers around Daniels' unique spoken-word delivery, as well as two very different musical interludes in which Daniels performs extended fiddle passages in very different styles to represent Satan and Johnny's playing.
He didn't use that line, but I started playing, and the band started playing, and first thing you know we had it down." "Well, I think I might know where it came from, it may have come from an old poem called 'The Mountain Whippoorwill' that Stephen Vincent Benet wrote many, many years ago, that I had in high school. "I don't know where it came from, but it just did," Daniels reflected.
In Daniels' telling, Satan challenges a brash young fiddle player named Johnny to a fiddling contest, promising him, "I'll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, 'cause I think I'm better than you." The uptempo song gives a country twist on an old theme of Satan standing at the crossroads to tune a musician's guitar and give them a musical gift in return for their soul.
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