When you hear those first few notes—that sharp, inquisitive "plink" of a guitar followed by the rolling response of a banjo—you know exactly what’s coming. It’s a cinematic reflex. For over fifty years, banjo music from the movie deliverance has served as a cultural shorthand for "get out of the woods, and get out now." It’s kinda fascinating how one song, a three-minute instrumental called "Dueling Banjos," managed to overshadow a gritty, Oscar-nominated survival drama and reshape the public's perception of an entire instrument.
But here’s the thing: most of what people believe about that scene is a total myth.
The kid wasn't actually playing. The song wasn't written for the movie. Even the "duel" itself wasn't really a duel between two banjos. If you’ve ever felt a chill down your spine when someone mentions the Chattooga River, you’ve been influenced by one of the most effective uses of folk music in film history. Yet, the story behind the music is arguably more dramatic than the fictional trip taken by Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew.
The Ghost Player Behind the Screen
In the film, we see Billy Redden, a local teenager from Georgia, sitting on a porch. He looks stoic, almost ethereal, as he trades riffs with Ronny Cox’s character. It looks real. It feels raw. Honestly, it’s one of the most convincing musical "fakes" in cinema.
Billy Redden couldn't play a lick of banjo.
Director John Boorman needed a specific look—that haunting, "mountain" aesthetic—but he also needed world-class virtuosity. To pull it off, a local musician named Mike Addis hid behind Redden. Addis reached his arms through Redden’s shirt sleeves to fret the chords, while Redden kept his own arms hidden. It was a low-tech puppet show that worked perfectly. While Redden provided the face of the performance, the actual sound of the banjo music from the movie deliverance came from Eric Weissberg and Marshall Brickman.
Weissberg was a session musician of the highest order. He wasn't some backwoods amateur found on a porch; he was a Juilliard-trained musician who had been a member of The Tarriers. Along with Brickman (who later became a famous screenwriter for Woody Allen), they had recorded the track years earlier, in 1963, for an album titled New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass.
The $200,000 Lawsuit You Never Heard About
Hollywood has a long history of "borrowing" without asking, and Deliverance followed that trend to a legal fault. The filmmakers credited the song as "Dueling Banjos," but they didn't properly credit the man who actually wrote it.
His name was Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith.
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Back in 1955, Smith composed a tune called "Feudin' Banjos." He recorded it with bluegrass legend Don Reno. When the movie came out in 1972 and the song became a massive hit—spending weeks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100—Smith noticed it sounded suspiciously like his work. Because it was his work. He sued Warner Bros. and won a significant settlement, including back royalties and proper credit.
It’s a bit ironic. A movie about city slickers coming into the mountains to take what they want ended up legally penalized for doing the exact same thing with a musician's intellectual property.
Why It Sounds "Wrong" (And Why That’s Right)
Bluegrass purists often have a love-hate relationship with this track. In the context of 1972, the banjo was seeing a revival thanks to Earl Scruggs, but "Dueling Banjos" stripped away the complex, driving rhythm of a full bluegrass band. It’s sparse.
- The song starts with a call-and-response.
- The tempo accelerates to a breakneck pace.
- It uses a "three-finger" Scruggs style picking.
- It lacks the fiddle and mandolin layers typical of the genre.
This minimalism is why it works for the movie. It starts friendly. It ends with a frantic, almost aggressive energy that mirrors the movie's descent into chaos. Basically, the music tells you the plot before the plot even happens.
The Banjo’s Image Problem
Let’s be real: before Deliverance, the banjo was an instrument of folk festivals and TV variety shows like Hee Haw. After the movie, it became the soundtrack to "The Other."
The film used the banjo to signal a lack of civilization. It’s a trope that stuck. For decades after, if a horror movie took place in the South, the directors would inevitably lean on a twangy string arrangement to build tension. This hasn't exactly thrilled professional banjo players. Musicians like Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn have spent their careers trying to reclaim the instrument from the "Deliverance" stereotype, showing its roots in African culture and its capacity for complex jazz and classical arrangements.
The banjo isn't scary. It’s a drum with strings. But the power of Boorman’s film was so immense that it practically rebranded a 19th-century instrument as a warning siren for the 20th century.
Real Technical Breakdown: Scruggs Style vs. Clawhammer
If you're trying to learn the banjo music from the movie deliverance, you have to understand the mechanics. Most people assume all banjo playing is the same. It’s not even close.
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The version in the movie is played in Scruggs Style. This involves wearing plastic and metal picks on your thumb, index, and middle fingers. You play "rolls"—repetitive patterns that allow for incredibly high speeds. In the "duel" section, the banjo player is mimicking the guitar’s flat-picked melody and then exploding into a flurry of sixteenth notes.
Compare this to "Clawhammer" or "Frailing," which is the older, traditional mountain style. In clawhammer, you strike the strings with the back of your fingernail in a downward motion. It’s rhythmic and percussive. If the movie had used clawhammer, it would have felt more ancient, more grounded. By using the fast-paced Scruggs style, the music felt more modern and, subsequently, more anxious.
Finding the Original Locations Today
People still go looking for the "Deliverance" bridge. They go to the Chattooga River, which borders Georgia and South Carolina. You can actually visit the Tallulah Gorge State Park area where much of the filming took place.
But don't expect to hear banjos.
The "Surrey" town in the movie was actually the town of Mount Tallulah, and the cemetery move shown in the film was a real event—the flooding of the valley to create Lake Jocassee. The music was a eulogy for a landscape that was literally being drowned by "progress." When you listen to the track with that context, the frantic speed of the banjo feels less like a threat and more like a desperate heartbeat.
How to Play "Dueling Banjos" Without Being a Cliche
If you’re a musician, playing this song at a gig is a double-edged sword. You’ll get the biggest applause of the night, but you’ll also have to deal with people making "pig" noises or shouting movie quotes. It’s the "Freebird" of the banjo world.
To do it right, you need to master the G-major scale and the specific "G-C-G-D7" chord progression that defines the opening. The trick is the timing. Most amateurs rush the "call" part. The beauty is in the silence between the notes. You have to let the guitar speak first.
- Start slow. Way slower than you think.
- Keep your wrist arched; don't let it lay flat on the bridge.
- Use a thumb lead for the opening notes.
- When the "Yankee Doodle" lick comes in toward the end, don't over-pick it.
The Lasting Legacy of the Deliverance Soundtrack
The album Dueling Banjos: From the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Deliverance was a massive commercial success, but it’s essentially an Eric Weissberg album with a movie tie-in. It reached Number 1 on the Billboard 200. Think about that. A bluegrass instrumental album was the most popular record in America in 1973, beating out rock and pop icons.
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That hasn't happened since.
We probably won't see another instrumental banjo track dominate the charts like that again. The cultural conditions were just right—a mix of New Hollywood grit and a burgeoning interest in "back to the land" folk movements.
Ultimately, the banjo music from the movie deliverance is a masterclass in how sound can define a setting. It’s a piece of music that escaped the screen and started living in our collective subconscious. Whether that’s a good thing for the reputation of the banjo is debatable, but there’s no denying the sheer technical brilliance of those three minutes of film.
Actionable Insights for Banjo Enthusiasts
If you want to move beyond the movie's stereotype and actually understand the music, start here:
1. Listen to the Source: Find Arthur Smith’s "Feudin' Banjos" on YouTube or Spotify. Compare it to the Weissberg version. You’ll hear a more relaxed, "swing" feel in the original that the movie version traded for tension.
2. Learn the Names: Don't just call it "The Deliverance Song." Credit Eric Weissberg and Marshall Brickman. If you’re feeling extra nerdy, look up Don Reno, the man who helped Smith create the original arrangement.
3. Explore the "Anti-Deliverance" Sound: Listen to Bela Fleck’s Drive or Abigail Washburn’s City of Gold. This will cleanse your palate and show you that the banjo can be sophisticated, melodic, and even upbeat without the baggage of 1970s survival horror.
4. Practice the "Rolls": If you’re a student of the instrument, don't just learn the "Dueling Banjos" melody. Learn the forward-backward roll. That is the engine that makes the song move. Without a solid roll, the song just sounds like a series of disconnected plinks.