" The Deliverance Song "

( C ) 2005

By Jason Z. Dehart

Every time I take my banjo from its case around somebody in my extended family I hear the same old request: "Play the ‘Deliverance’ song!" My usual reaction? "Aaarrrggh!" What the fuss is about, of course, is "Dueling Banjos." You know, where a guitar and banjo play follow-the-leader. Whoever can keep up without getting flustered and confused wins the duel (Why it’s given that name I’ll never understand, because most versions I’ve heard are "duels" between two different instruments). The instrumental piece is prominently featured in the dark 1973 survival flick "Deliverance," in which some business buddies from Atlanta go away for a weekend of canoeing only to discover Ned Beatty can squeal like a female pig. Mass backwoods nuttiness and mayhem ensues. Early in the movie, arrogant city-slicker Ronny Cox challenges backwoods albino hillbilly teen Billy Redden to "Dueling Banjos." A few minutes later Cox walks away in defeat but gives the creepy youth credit for playing a "mean banjo" (Interestingly enough, I read that the two actors never actually played their respective instruments. They were coached in how to go through the motions of playing but the actual soundtrack was recorded by two studio musicians). Since the movie came out in the early 1970s, most people have associated the song with evil, sadistic, inhuman and downright mean characters. Oddly (and strangely) enough, this doesn’t stop the song from being a pretty popular piece today, thanks no doubt to the movie and to subsequent recordings. By the way, it’s a good thing the movie was made back in the Less Enlightened Times. Today it never would have made it to the silver screen because the Creepy Deformed Retarded Albino Bumpkin Protection League would raise all kinds of hell over Redden’s portrayal. (However, thanks to leftist/liberal movie critics who love such crap, nobody in their highly-evolved, enlightened mind would dare criticize the movie’s sodomy scenes because, of course, they are highly stylized works of performance art metaphorically paralleling the White Man’s rape of Nature.) Oh, I’m sorry. Was I being insensisitive? Again? At any rate. Despite its dubious celluoid characterization, I think "Dueling Banjos" is the most recognizable song in bluegrass and folk music. I remember plunking out its first few notes on my uncle’s old skinbox when I was way too young to know about the movie that made it famous. However, I don’t particularly care much for it anymore. For starters, I never learned how to play bluegrass banjo adequately enough to do justice to the tune. Secondly, it’s just about the biggest cliche` in all of folk music. It’s so popular that it’s second nature for folks to associate the banjo instrument with that particular song, and that song ONLY. That, I think, is what makes it so damned annoying. A banjo player can play "Leather Britches" or "Cripple Creek," but that’s not what the folks want to hear, now is it? What the public really wants to hear is "Dueling Banjos." And the poor guy on the five-string automatically becomes-- for a short period of time -- a menacing, albino idiot. Aaarrrgh! So do me a favor: Don’t ask. Don’t even think it. I beg of you. Please! Have mercy on dis tahred ol’ body. I have a hard enough time convincing people I’m not a freak as it is. Don’t make my life more difficult. Oops. I think I hear my wife calling. Time to dye my hair white and put in my Bubba Teeth. You know what song she wants to hear.

Jason

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