1954 musical composition by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith
"Dueling Banjos"
Single by Eric Weissberg
from the album Dueling Banjos
B-side
"End of a Dream"
Released
December 1972
Recorded
1972
Genre
Bluegrass[1]
Length
2:10
Label
Warner Bros.
Songwriter(s)
Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, Don Reno, arranged by Eric Weissberg, Steve Mandell
Producer(s)
Joe Boyd
Eric Weissberg singles chronology
"Dueling Banjos" (1972)
"Reuben's Train" (1973)
"Dueling Banjos" is a bluegrass composition by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith. The song was composed in 1954[2] by Smith as a banjo instrumental he called "Feudin' Banjos"; it contained riffs from Smith, recorded in 1955 playing a four-string plectrum banjo and accompanied by five-string bluegrass banjo player Don Reno. The composition's first wide-scale airing was on a 1963 television episode of The Andy Griffith Show called "Briscoe Declares for Aunt Bee", in which it is played by visiting musical family the Darlings (portrayed by The Dillards, a bluegrass group), along with Griffith himself.
The song was made famous by the 1972 film Deliverance, which also led to a successful lawsuit by the song's composer, as it was used in the film without Smith's permission. The film version was arranged and recorded by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell, but only credited to Weissberg on a single subsequently issued in December 1972. It went to second place for four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973, behind Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly with His Song"; it topped the adult contemporary chart for two weeks.[3] It reached No. 1 for one week on both the Cashbox and Record World charts. It reached No. 5 on Hot Country Singles. It was nominated for the 30th Golden Globe Awards as Best Original Song.[4] The success of the single led to an album of the same name released in January 1973.
This instrumental makes use of the quoting of the first 12 notes of "Yankee Doodle".
^"Dueling Banjos - Eric Weissberg". AllMusic. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
^Arthur Smith, video where the composer tells the story of the song's genesis, which he states is 1954 (posted to YouTube 21 August 2011)
^Joel Whitburn (1996). Weissberg stole the song and failed to credit Arthur Smith, who sued and won to receive credit and royalties for the music that he had written in 1954 and recorded in 1955. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 6th Edition (Billboard Publications)
^"Dueling Banjos". Golden Globe Award. Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Archived from the original on 12 August 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
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