Taken by itself, the story you read above wouldn't be enough to fill a film.
The boys sink as the sound of Lucius' laugh fills the swamp. However the path that the boys took into the swamp has turned to quicksand. The boys beat Lucius to death, throw him in the swamp, take the money, and run. The Cable boys arrive at Clay's shack, finding Lucius revelling in his money. The song's story revolves around the Cable boys, a group of juvenile delinquents who descend into Wooley Swamp to murder Lucius Clay, an old man who hates everything but his money, which he stuffs in mason jars and buries, only to dig it up in the middle of the night and roll around in it. "The Legend Of Wooley Swamp," however, provides us with a structure for a feature-length film plot, even if it would need a little filling out. I ultimately came down in "Legend"'s favor, however, because, while "Uneasy Rider" is one of the funniest songs ever recorded, it doesn't have enough story to sustain a film. Ultimately, my debate came down between two songs: "Uneasy Rider" and our song in question. I knew that I had to include one Charlie Daniels song on this list, but it was murder choosing which one. I've been a fan of Daniels and his band ever since I first heard "The Devil Went Down To Georgia," and since then, every other song I've heard by the group has only increased my love. The Legend Of Wooley Swamp - The Charlie Daniels Band Our second song is another ghost story, but it's grittier than "Laurie." It's arguable that nobody in recent years has produced more wonderful story songs than The Charlie Daniels Band. Along with “The Legend of Wooley Swamp,” he’ll be performing his latest song, an adrenaline-pumping theme he wrote for the event called “It Don’t Get No Better Than That.9. His 2015 tour will wrap up next month in California, but not before the country legend rides into Las Vegas for performances at the National Finals Rodeo December 11th and 12th. Daytime is one thing, but when you go at night it’s just a whole different world.”Ĭharlie Daniels Band: Live at Billy Bob’s Texas is available now. “I’m familiar with them and spent quite a bit of time in them - hunting and logging and that sort of stuff - and especially at night, they take on a whole other look. “I come from the coast of North Carolina, and we’re loaded down with swamps,” he says. Daniels says the whole thing is fiction, of course - there are no alligators in North Carolina and he’s not sure where the name of the old man, Lucius Clay, came from - but the terror of a swamp at night is all too real.
A group of local no-goods decide to kill and rob the hermit, but get swallowed by quicksand as they try to escape. In true campfire fashion, Daniels describes a creepy old man who hoards money all over the swamp, taking it out to admire only when the moon is right. It just seemed like the kind of place a story like that could happen.” We ‘coon hunted, so we hunted there at night and it was all overgrown with briars and brambles and all kinds of stuff. “I happened to think about this old swamp down in North Carolina - called the Wooley Swamp - I used to hunt in when I was a boy that was a real spooky place.
“I started casting around looking for an old mountain legend or an old Indian legend or something, and I never could find anything I felt could fit in the bounds of the song,” Daniels explains. He wanted to follow in the cinematic vein of masterpieces like his own “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and Marshall Tucker Band’s “Fire on the Mountain,” which had come out only a few years earlier. And it all started when the icon decided to write a ghost story. “It was that way then, and it’s that way now,” he says.īut killer band aside, it’s the song’s spooky plot and Daniels’ intense delivery that have kept fans of “Wooley Swamp” on the edge of their seat for so long.