The Devil Went Down to Georgia
1979 single by Charlie Daniels
"The Devil Went Down to Georgia" is a song written and recorded by American music group Charlie Daniels Band and released on their 1979 album Million Mile Reflections.
The song is written in the key of D minor. The song's verses are closer to being spoken rather than sung (i.e., recitation), and tell the story of a young man named Johnny, in a variant on the classic deal with the Devil. The performances of the Devil and Johnny are played as instrumental bridges. The song was the band's biggest hit, reaching number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, prevented from further chart movement by "After the Love Has Gone" by Earth, Wind & Fire and "My Sharona" by the Knack.
A sequel to the song titled "The Devil Comes Back to Georgia" was recorded by Mark O'Connor in 1993 on his album Heroes. Johnny Cash was the lead singer and narrator, Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt sang as Johnny and the Devil, respectively, Charlie Daniels played the Devil's fiddle solo and O'Connor played Johnny's fiddle solo.
In 2026, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for its "cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation's recorded sound heritage".
Background and recording
Daniels was inspired to write the song when he realized that the album he and his band was recording was lacking a song that featured fiddle. He wrote the song on the spot at the Woodland Sound Studios where the band was recording.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is 1979 single by Charlie Daniels. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Devil, Went and Down, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2361955. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1993 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.