NASHVILLE • American singer, songwriter and bandleader Charlie Daniels (photo), who was a force in country and rock music for decades, bringing a brash, down-home persona and blazing fiddle work to hits like The Devil Went Down To Georgia, died on Monday in Nashville. He was 83.

His publicist announced the death, saying the cause was a haemorrhagic stroke.

Daniels made his first mark as a session musician in the late 1960s and early 1970s, playing the guitar, bass, fiddle and banjo on Nashville recordings by musicians Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Leonard Cohen.

But his greatest acclaim came as the leader of the Charlie Daniels Band, a country-rock ensemble that hosted the Volunteer Jam, the freewheeling Southern music festival established in 1974 that featured Roy Acuff, Stevie Ray Vaughn, James Brown and the Marshall Tucker Band.

Modelled after the Allman Brothers, another regular act at the Jam, Daniels' band used dual lead guitarists and dual drummers in the service of an expansive improvisational sound that included elements of country, blues, bluegrass, rock and Western swing.

Formed in 1971, the Charlie Daniels Band earned a reputation early on for recording material of an outspoken counter-cultural bent, much of it written by Daniels.

His plucky attitude reached new heights in The Devil Went Down To Georgia, a No. 1 country single and Top 10 pop hit from 1979.

The recording appeared on the multi-platinum-selling album Million Mile Reflections and won the band a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal.

Daniels' numerous honours included the Pioneer Award by the Academy of Country Music in 1998 and the BMI Icon Award at the 53rd annual Country Music Awards in 2005.

He joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry in 2008, the same year he celebrated his 50th anniversary in the music business. In 2016, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

NYTIMES