The Fiddle Player Lived Down the Road. The Park Keeps His Name.
Thousands of people pass through the gates at 1075 Charlie Daniels Parkway every week — parents steering toddlers toward the tricycle track at Squirrel's Run, teenagers dropping into the skate park, pickleball players staking out one of the two courts before somebody else does. Most of them say the name without thinking about it. It is simply what the park is called.
But the name is not decoration, and it is not borrowed from a distant celebrity. Mt. Juliet named its flagship park for a man who lived a few minutes away, on a Wilson County farm, for most of his adult life.
Twin Pines Farm, Wilson County
Charlie Daniels was born on October 28, 1936, in Wilmington, North Carolina — a coastal town, not a Tennessee one. He came to Nashville in 1967 to work as a session musician, which in that era meant playing on other people's records and hoping somebody noticed.
Somebody did. But the part that matters to Mt. Juliet is what he did with the success: he bought land out here, at a place he called Twin Pines Farm, in the rural stretch of Wilson County, and he stayed. Not a compound behind gates in Belle Meade. A farm in the county, close enough that the town could reasonably think of him as a neighbor.
That is the quiet distinction behind the sign. Plenty of towns name things after famous people. Mt. Juliet named its park after a man who got his mail nearby.
What he actually did
In 1974 he launched the Volunteer Jam, an annual multi-artist marathon that became legendary partly for its sheer refusal to end — some editions ran past ten hours. It was a Tennessee institution built on the idea that you invite everyone you admire and let the night go where it goes.
Then in 1979 came the fiddle tune that outran everything else he ever recorded. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group and took the Country Music Association's Single of the Year in the same twelve months. It is the rare novelty-shaped song that never wore out — four decades on, a fiddle player in any bar in Middle Tennessee can start those opening bars and watch a room turn around.
The institutional honors came later, and came in the order that tends to mean the most to Nashville musicians. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 2008. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.
He died on July 6, 2020, at 83.
The name outlived him, which is the point
His name is attached to more than a park. Middle Tennessee State University's Charlie and Hazel Daniels Veterans and Military Family Center carries it too — a reflection of decades of work on behalf of service members that he did without much publicity.
But the park is the version most Mt. Juliet families touch. It holds the 9,000-square-foot fenced Planet Playground, four tennis courts, two sand volleyball courts, a full-court basketball setup, a gaga ball pit, Ava's Splash Pad, a multi-purpose field, a skate park, an amphitheater, and five pavilions plus a gazebo you can rent. A one-mile walking track loops the grounds and connects out to the Cedar Creek Greenway. Gates open at 8 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday.
It is a good park on its own terms. It is a better one if you know that the amphitheater sitting in the middle of it is named for a man who spent his life making sure the music went on longer than anyone scheduled.
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