Charlie Daniels Looks Back on His 2016 Country Music Hall of Fame Invite With Sweet Video [WATCH]
In 2019, Charlie Daniels shared footage of the moment when he learned that he had been selected as a Country Music Hall of Fame member. The Nashville session musician turned country-rock pioneer's happy tears will floor anyone with at least a passing interest in the singer and fiddler's career.
It's hard to pick out exactly what is being said due to poor audio quality, but it sounds as though Daniels and his family thought they were attending a photo shoot. Instead, it was a setup to surprise Daniels, a 2016 Hall of Fame inductee alongside producer and music executive Fred Foster and neo-traditionalist icon Randy Travis, in the presence of loved ones.
Back in 2016, surrounding his induction ceremony, Daniels explained how shocked and honored he was in that moment. "I literally fell against my wife," he recounted. "My first thought was, 'Did she really say what I thought she said? Am I mistaking what she's saying? Did she tell me that, or am I just imagining she said that?' And then when it really turned out that it actually happened, and I confirmed it, I don't really know what my thoughts were. It was kind of surreal, to be honest -- like going to the North Pole and seeing Santa Claus, that kind of feeling."
Daniels was truly speechless after the big news, and never fully regained his composure across the minute-plus video. This palpable emotion came from a country music lifer whose lengthy and varied career included session work with Bob Dylan, an appearance at a Vietnam war protest in Washington, DC with Earl Scruggs, a role in the spread of Southern rock, a spot on the influential Urban Cowboy soundtrack and an unofficial 21st century role as one of the genre's proudest patriots.
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