Charlie Daniels has worn many different hats in the music industry.  He started off having his own band that played all through the south in the 1960s.  Charlie Daniels was born and raised in North Carolina.  He grew up listening to Gospel music in church, Bluegrass music in the local towns and Rhythm and Blues on the radio.  He learned to play guitar at the age of 15, and quickly learned banjo, fiddle and mandolin.

Charlie Daniels started out as one of the original outlaw country artists, along with Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings.  He toured the south playing anywhere that would let him.  He took the advice of a friend and became a studio musician in Nashville in the mid-1960s.  There, he met a lot of musicians and played on a lot of top selling albums.  By 1971, he was releasing his own albums, credited to The Charlie Daniels Band.  All the while, he continued his studio session work and live tours with other artists.

Charlie Daniels lived a long life.  He enjoyed a lot of tributes to him from other artists in his later years.  In 1974, he started the Volunteer Jam concert series.  It was a Country and Rock festival held every year for over 20 years.  Throughout his life, he suffered from a severely broken arm, prostate cancer and a pacemaker and always came back as strong as ever.  Charlie Daniels died in July of 2020 at the age of 83.

This is Charlie Daniels’ first Christmas CD.  He would go on to release three more in his lifetime.  There is only one traditional, familiar Christmas song on here, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire).  All the other songs are original Christmas songs.  Most of the arrangements are simple, Country-flavored Christmas songs with a solemn or festive message.  Unfortunately, there are only ten songs on here.

The cover of the CD shows a picture of Charlie Daniels bringing home this year’s Christmas tree that he has apparently just cut down himself.  The picture is presented in an oval with a black border, all set against a yellow background adorned with green festive decorations on the sides.  Charlie Daniels’ name appears at the top, above the photo, and the CD title, Christmas Time Down South appears below.  Both are in red lettering.

The back of the CD features a smaller picture of Charlie Daniels from the same photo session.  Most of the back of the CD is taken up with a numerical track listing.  The songs are listed in sentence form rather than a list.  Each song is separated by a decorative holly leaf.  All is presented on the same yellow background as found on the cover, including the festive border details.

The CD cover comes out and opens along a single fold out, but the inside, both sides, are completely blank.  What a waste of space.  (Very common on Sony Music Special Products.)  This would have been a great opportunity to have a brief biography of Charlie Daniels, or a narrative about the songs, since most are unique to this Christmas release.

The back of the CD cover is the same exact thing we find on the back of the CD.  So, no new information there either.  Bummer.

The CD begins with the title track, Christmas Time Down South, which describes all the traditions, sights and smells of the Christmas season in the south.  This is a great Christmas song.  The music is raucous, with an acoustic guitar providing the main melody.  Charlie Daniels delivers a strong sentiment with choral accompaniment.

The 2nd song is titled Hallelujah, but it’s not the more famous one from Handel’s Messiah.  It is another sentimental song that describes the night of Jesus’ birth.  The instrumentation is similar to the first song featuring acoustic and electric guitars with an electric piano and an accompanying chorus.  Since there was no  artist information on the CD, the chorus will unfortunately have to go unknown.

The 3rd song, Little Folks, presents the same sentimentality as we’ve heard, but the song describes life with children and the curiosities they encounter.  This sentimentality is transferred into the joys of children during the Christmas season.  The arrangement is much more passive than what is heard in the first two songs.

The 4^th song, Carolina I Hear You Calling, is a personal reflection of Charlie Daniels’ Christmas memories growing up in North Carolina.  The tempo is upbeat, and the presence of the banjo and mandolin gives the song a little Bluegrass flavor without losing its Country roots.

My Christmas Love Song To You is the 5^th song.  It is a solemn ballad featuring an electric piano matched to an electric guitar.  It starts out soft and remains so throughout the song.  Once again, the song is a personal reflection of Christmas memories from Charlie Daniels, but this time they seem to be directed at one person.  Charlie Daniels handles the vocals with very little help from the chorus, but this time, at times during the song, the chorus seems to be that of a children’s chorus.

The 6^th song, Mississippi Christmas Eve, opens with a fast tempo guitar solo and maintains the fast rhythm throughout the song.  The production value here is large.  Everyone is present here; the Country guitar picking, the mandolin paired with it and the fiddle in the background adding texture.  This song is more like Charlie Daniels’ Country hits than heard earlier on this CD.  His vocals are deliberate, and his Country flavor is presented well.

Jesus Is The Light Of The World is the most sacred song on here.  The song employs traditional Country instruments playing a Sacred melody that describes Jesus and his life as the light of the world.  The song begins with the search of a place to stay by Joseph and Mary, it then describes the birth of Jesus and follows Jesus through his life.

The 8^th song, Cowboy’s Christmas Gift, has a Western feel to it aided by wooden blocks and a fiddle.  It’s Charlie Daniels’ personal Christmas wish to a friend, obviously a cowboy.  In the song, Charlie Daniels says that he is too poor to send his friend anything for Christmas except this personal note of Christmas wishes.

The 9^th song is another personal reflection song.  Carolina (I Remember You) at first appears to be about a woman, but throughout the song, the sentiments expressed could be about a woman or the state of North Carolina.  It is a slow arrangement featuring traditional Bluegrass instruments playing a Country song.  It is also the first song where a full string orchestra can be heard.

The last song on the CD is the only cover of an existing Christmas song.  The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire), seems a little out of place after listening to really good, original Christmas songs.  But nonetheless, Charlie Daniels sings this Christmas classic very well.  The arrangement is traditional and slow paced and uses all the instruments that are present on all the other songs.  Once more, the wonderful chorus is there to add a delicate softness to this arrangement.

This Christmas CD shows a lot of the different sides of Charlie Daniels.  With some songs sounding like his Pop and Country hits, and some songs expressing a Gospel flavor, while others are more Bluegrass or Western, Charlie Daniels seems to cater his vocals to fit the narrative of the song.  Sometimes he sounds like the Charlie Daniels we are all familiar with, and at other times, he doesn’t.

If you are a Country music fan and you don’t already have this Christmas CD, you need to seek it out.  This CD adds a lot of integrity to an existing collection because most of the songs are unique to this album; they’re well played, well sung and well produced.  There’s no Frosty, Santa or Rudolph here.  They’ve been replaced with Jesus, Mary and many fond memories.

I was actually pleasantly pleased with this CD.  I expected a more Southern Rock styled Christmas CD.  That is not what this is.  It’s not to say that it’s NOT Southern Rock, it’s just that the lyrics are soulful and Sacred, and the arrangements are the same.  What this is, is a terrific Country Christmas music CD.

The only downside to this is, one; there are only ten songs, so it’s only 35 minutes long.  The other is the lack of any usable information; no writer or musician credits.

I give this CD :

****