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Up close.

I'm Frank Murphy.

Charlie Daniels began drawing for the daily Tar Heel Campus newspaper at USC in 1955.

He was hired as the editorial cartoonist for the Knoxville Journal in 1958 and by the Knoxville News Sentinel in 1992.

Many readers turn to his cartoon before reading the rest of the paper.

He has received the Tennessee Governor's Arts Award and is in the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame.

Tonight, we welcome Charlie Daniel to Up Close.

Charlie.

Daniel, Welcome to Up close.

Great to be here.

I'm delighted to have you.

You know, you were the long time editorial cartoonist, not only for The News Sentinel, but for the Journal before that.

And that's been your most of your career, right?

As you were in college in the Marines and you did other things.

But yeah, I first first published a cartoon in 1955 for the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina and then came to the Journal in ‘58.

So that's a pretty quick turnaround.

Oh, yeah.

And you also spent time, of course, in the Marines.

And it was before I started, I developed my sense of humor in the Marines so that.

Well, because that is a fascinating thing about you, because you could be described as an artist, as a journalist, because you've been inducted into the Journalism Hall of Fame and into these Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame.

So you're a journalist, you're a writer, but it all comes from humor.

I would call you a humorist before I would call you, you know, a journalist.

No offense to journalism, but.

No, I call myself an humorist.

Yeah, and hopefully I am.

Oh.

No, you're hilarious.

Yeah.

So.

Well, tell us about the process that you mastered so wonderfully of creating editorial cartoons that are able to, you know, skewer sometimes more pointedly than others.

Sometimes it's just to make us laugh.

where where ideas come from and yeah, who knows?

You don't know, you know, the light bulb thing.

Well, let's.

Go back to that.

That first time in Knoxville.

You get here and you don't know what you're going to draw about, You have no idea.

No.

I've been doing a lot of college cartoons at University of North Carolina.

Even more specific to the university.

So I did some national stuff, but not much.

Yeah.

And so I got here and said, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?

And I turned on the television and there's can't walk and find, you know, thank you.

Cas Walker was certainly a yeah, I mean, he's cartoon like and his personality isn't he.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

And he was he was politically he was a millstone around not old neck you know entertainment wise.

You know he he was the king and he, he did a lot of entertaining with great stuff.

You know.

He had all famous people and yeah.

You got a show.

But like, when when the first time Knoxville and Knox County voted on combining the government major in.

Nashville and metro governor.

Yeah and so both papers were fine you know and Cas Walker was against it though as they would say again it yeah and and so I turn on the television and there's Cas Walker saying all this baloney about how bad Metro government was going to be.

And so I drew this car-, you know, he had all these grocery stores all over the place.

So I did the cartoon of of Cas Walker holding up the slab of baloney on his TV show.

You know, and its labled anit-metro propaganda.

Yeah.

And he's saying, say, neighbors, we're having a special on baloney this week.

And he.

Love it or.

Hate it.

And well, the rest of the story in the metro government is soundly defeated.

Okay.

Cars gets his way every time.

Yeah.

And so and then the next week in the middle of his grocery store and that's my cartoon.

And he went for special on baloney and all those so.

From Arkansas.

Supermarkets.

So.

Well, I mean he was a politician.

He too.

And I guess if you were to fast forward, you know, the rest of your long career, can you imagine any other politician being able to take that criticism and and flaunt it as a, you know, where it is a badge of honor?

Yeah.

Some are more thin skinned than others.

I mean, Lamar Alexander did a nice tribute to you when you received the Tennessee Governor's Award, and he said that when you poked fun at him, you were fair about it.

You know, you did fairly.

He felt.

And I think that's the that plays out right, because you would get complaint letters and compliments on the same cartoon.

Yeah.

Well well, I try not to be mean or nasty with the humor.

You know, that's like a Samuel Erwin in his book, The Humor of a Country, All.

You had that wonderful definition.

And he said humor is one to God.

The most marvelous.

Yes, humor give for mild laughter and gaiety.

Humor reveals the roses and hides the thorn.

Well, I think that's a wonderful definition of what humorous standing.

Yeah.

So and the pressures on you though, to come up with how many cartoons a week?

I did six a week.

Six a week.

Yeah.

So every day you start out with the blank sheet of paper and your face, you know, it's all a god gift really.

Because I, I just thought that way.

And the first time I picked it up a pencil I started doodling.

And the first time I saw the funny papers I started copying.

Yeah.

So that was my art training work was copying Little Abner and Crazy Cat.

I heard that you still haven't completed that correspondence course on how to be in art.

Never did I never did know me to tell that.

I loved it.

Oh, yeah, it Art Art Instruction Inc. from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And they would advertise in magazines.

And matchboxes and the paper.

Yeah.

And they had the lady on there and said draw me.

Yes.

And I'm in high school.

So I draw and mail it off to our institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and two weeks later I come home from school and there is this guy in our living room from Art Institute instruction talking to my mother and he had this correspondence course and and my mother said, Save this man says you're really talented and he wants us to buy this correspondence course.

My gosh.

And if I buy, do you solemnly swear that you will work on it and do it?

And I said, Oh, yeah, you know, scouts honor, and so she buys it, and I get the first lesson in drawing circles and triangles and rectangles.

And I.

So now the heck with this, heck with.

That.

And then take the first left hand.

And your mom never let that.

Oh, no, she left 105 and then.

I'll tell you something about that art instruction book.

That was 1956.

And and Charles Schulz just got out of the Army and went to work for them in Minneapolis, and his job was checking the mail and stuff.

Oh, so he would have been looking at you're trying the circles Yeah, had I sent them in.

Charles Schulz and said, Boy, this guy's great.

Look at those drawings.

And if you look at his look at Charlie Brown, what is he's a circle is Oh, yeah, that's easy.

That's what you can do with circles.

You know dumb me.

Well, I also heard you say in one of these awards ceremonies where you're being honored, maybe when they were taking your collection to UT, you spoke about how the editorial cartoonist like yourself is able to get to the truth, but maybe by telling a lie to get to the truth, I'm trying to paraphrase it.

Oh, yeah.

What that it was we stretched both faith and fact.

We misquote, we twist quote, we make up quotes and we lie.

But we do all these thing to reveal truth.

So, yeah.

And that's you can do that with humor.

I mean, that's why taking Cas Walker's words and turning them into a slab of baloney in his hand.

Yeah, we understand the we get the meaning a lot faster than if maybe you'd written a thousand word editorial.

Yeah, we exaggerate everything, you know.

Yeah.

And that that part of humor, too, is, you know, I. I spoke to a Rotary Club.

Whenever I think to a writer, they have that four way test.

And the first one is the truth.

And I always tell them upfront that right off the bat I couldn't be a Rotarian.

Well, you're honest about lying.

Yeah, that's true.

But that's what that's just that's the beauty of it is the idea comes to you and you see something like any similar, I guess, to stand up comedians or any sort of if you're doing Saturday Night Live, you're doing the Weekend Update, you see something that you can exaggerate and make a point, and that's why the cartoonist, the caricaturist, does that.

When you're drawing a person, how do we know?

I mean, are they classic cases as to Estes Kefauver.

How do we know that it's supposed to be that person?

I mean, you have to give them a name tag or with Jimmy Carter, you can exaggerate the teeth or some other character.

You can hopefully, hopefully you don't have to label them.

You know, Estes Kefauver And he was vice presidential candidate?

Or who was he?

He was he was a senator from Tennessee and the vice president he was a candidate with --- Yeah yeah.

And picked and he had that coonskin cap.

Oh really.

the first time I drew him, he sent me a picture he didn't like.

He didn't like the character.

So he.

He sent me this.

Great.

I got it framed in my den along with a lot of I, you know, He said you haven't seen me in the way of beauty for sometimes.

So is an actual fact.

There it is.

The wall of on your desk.

Oh, yeah.

Picture.

Yeah.

Oh, this famous senator and then vice presidential candidate.

But yeah.

So you're.

Yeah.

Does that feel weird when you realize that you're being read by some of the most powerful people in the state, in the city, in the country?

I mean, you get this.

You may not think about it because you're just churning out the cartoons on a daily basis and the reaction is delayed.

The mail doesn't come in for a couple of days unless your editor blows a stack.

Yeah, I have a I have a scrapbook full of letters that you get from people you think you stuck it to like it, too, and they like an ask for the original and you know so.

Well, there you go then.

Well, that's the way to handle it.

Oh, you know, Ray Blanton didn't know how to handle, you know, because I do some pretty nasty Ray Blanton cartoons.

But he he didn't write me for original funnies.

But, you know, you were accused by both sides of being partial to the other side.

And so you do you think of yourself as just being neutral or not worrying about I mean, you're not trying to to preach.

You're just saying saying what's true.

You know, who whoever's in power, you know, whoever's into power, making the rules or making the decision that what you draw about, you know, it's I'm nothing more than a editor or writer who who can't spell, you know?

And so, you know, one picture is worth a thousand words or so.

And so you say something.

Are you looking at a headline that that may have so and so does such and such and either that great or that?

Yeah, yucky.

And you make a comment on it and you seldom say anything nice about anybody you mostly ridicule can pick out another part of my speech that that that the Peanuts cartoon where Lucy is on the floor with a crayon and she is saying to Charlie Brown I decided to go into political cartooning I'm going to ridicule everything And Charlie Brown says, I understand Lucy, but the use of ridicule you hope to point out our faults in government and thus improve our way of life.

And Lucy says, No, I just want to read it.

You know?

But you, I guess, had that.

Well, we do it with Charlie Browns idea in mind.

And that's what I'm thinking.

Yeah.

I saw some.

I was looking through the archives and saw some cartoons.

You did about everything from snail darters to the Lady Vols.

And I certainly want to get into that.

I specifically wore this tie, so I'd remember to ask you about the Lady Vols, but also you did a lot of sports cartoons.

Was that in addition to the six week?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

The great Ben Byrd who was the sports writer with the Journal, you know, and I came in 58 and in the fall of 59, he came to me because they put out what they call the football final and they had a lineup and he wanted me to draw a cartoon across the top of it.

Yeah, that's for the fans to bring into the stands.

Yeah.

And that's when I though in 1959 I started doing these football cartoons for UTs games and.

So many of those and I've done them.

Yeah, everything.

Got turned in.

And then when I went to the Sentinal, we, would put them in rack cards that we, you know, stuck into the, the rack where you sell the paper and they handed them out at UT and they were on cardboard about that size.

In that situation, you're generally not ridiculing your praising the home team.

Oh no youre just-- You're a homer at that point.

Oh, very much so.

You know what happens at the Vols ever play USC would you be torn?

They played them and I was torn Yeah.

Because you had great cartoons about you know everything from obviously Peyton Manning's years, the national championship and then also the bad years too.

You know, you have to find a silver lining in those in those years where the Vols were not as great.

Yeah.

Youre am optimistic if youre a Vols fan, you know, That's the thing.

Yeah.

your number of cartoons, like, everyone expects you to pull anyone up in specific memory because they've got to be but thousands tens of thousands I mean what's the rough number.

I gave UT 20,000.

20,000?

Yeah.

Well, you know, I did it for 60 years.

Yeah.

6 a week, and so.

What?

Could you ever, like, take a day off?

Did you have to, like, draw to the day before if you wanted to take Friday off.

When I first, when I first started the first four or five years that the journal.

Yeah.

When I would take a vacation.

They expected you to.

No I did.

I wanted to do it.

I didn't want anybody else in that spot.

they will use authenticate and say we bought this for $0.50 and we're paying this guy this master drawer.

So.

Oh, it's the same in radio.

You're afraid to take a vacation because.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was cheaper.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I did want to bring up not only Vols football, but Lady Vols basketball, because our mutual friend Dr. Sharon Lord is so pleased with you for keeping the conversation going.

When she was working on the more recent campaign to save the Lady Vols name that was something that she was very passionate about.

And she said, because you kept drawing about it, it helped her, you know, keep it in front of people.

What was your inspiration there?

I mean, I know she specifically came to the well.

It was a dumb idea in the first place, you know.

There you go.

Yeah.

And so and it was so many people, you know, so pro Lady Vol name, you have.

This heritage program and they drop the the name lady from it for whatever reason.

Yeah.

And so, and the winning is you know thought Yeah.

That was, if that was it, that was a softball thing, you know.

So it was easy to pick a side in that.

Oh yeah.

That was a give me.

Yeah.

You also did so many brilliant cartoons about Pat Summitt over the years and about the Lady Vols being successful.

You know, recall one where it was some kids being said, nobody's perfect.

And then, of course, there's Pat Summitt.

Oh, yeah.

Has this great record that must never.

No ridicule.

No.

When Pat was involved.

Now, do you would you go to the games?

How how much involved would you get in the community where you might rub elbows with some of these newsmakers or sports figures?

When I was with the Journal, Ben Byrd used to get me into the press box.

So I went to all the youth football games, and then when they were in Stokely, he he gave me take two tickets to go to Stokely.

I saw all the games in Stokely doing Ernie and Bernie and all those.

Yeah, but when they moved to the new place and I moved to the News Sentinal, I quit going, Oh.

Is there a certain safety?

I mean, in radio, you know, there's a certain safety in being in your own studio all by yourself.

And you sometimes get user deejays who get emboldened to say outrageous things.

Is there a certain safety in being in behind your drawing board where you're a step removed from About that?

We were talking about the emails I got, but I bought one that I did the cartoon of of the guy in his den with this big moose head up on the wall and the moose had a shot to pieces, big holes in it, you know, And the guy sitting there telling your friend, I backed him with my AK 47.

And so the editor gets this email.

Oh, and he says, okay, okay.

All right, already we get it.

You're political cartoonist is anti-gun, we might remind the gentlemen that unlike political cartoons, a gun can actually perform a useful purpose.

And so they turned that over to the FBI.

They kind of that kind of threatening, you know.

Well, you got a letter one time from none other than the J. Edgar Hoover.

I got four letter from J. Edgar Hoover.

Oh, wow.

But then they again, that's the way you handle cartoonists.

Yeah.

You know, whether its pro or con or whatever, you write them and ask them for the original and that's what.

Is that something that you're able to do because I mean that means fewer that it can be donated to UT later because you've sent the original off to the subject.

I gave a lot of originals away.

Yeah, I really did.

And then, and then somewhere, somewhere along the line, a fellow cartoonist jumped on me, said, You're giving them away?

You sell them!

You know.

And so then whenever somebody would have, I'd say, okay, make a donation to Volunteer Ministry Center.

Yeah.

Which I'm very involved in.

You did a coloring book for them.

Yeah.

I gathered up about 100 UT football cartoons and, and un-colored them and, and them made up a coloring book and it's called the Big Orange Coloring Book and its $20 and all the proceeds went to a Volunteer Ministry Center.

Oh, that's funny.

I meant to bring you one, and.

Oh, I'll come visit.

Visit you and Patsy.

We can show you how beautiful.

You are to come, because I have I call my in the lion's den.

Yeah, I call it the Daniel den.

Lions in the Daniel den because over the years I've collected cartoons about lions from other cartoonists.

So I have all these stuffed lions that people gave me.

So my den, it's full of drawing about lions-- It's that clever twist of the phrase your mind thinks like a comedian where you take Daniel in the lion's den and flip it to lions in the Daniel den.

I mean, that's that's a that's a part of the secret right there.

Yeah.

When you hear a sentence or read a sentence and you see the double meaning of the words, that's, you know.

And had my name been Murphy, it wouldn't have worked.

Oh, there's a law about that.

Lions in the Murphy den, no no.

Tell us about these great awards you've been honored.

Now granted, that you're in your mid nineties and but you've been honored lately by so many great organizations.

I mean, you and I were together at the Friends of Literacy for their East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame.

And you're inducted into that.

There's the Tennessee Journalists Hall of Fame.

There's a really huge deal, I think is the Tennessee Governor's Award for the Arts.

How how does that make you feel and how are they even.

Oh, humble, I guess, is the word.

And yeah, because I never really expected anything like that.

You know, my whole purpose in life was to see my cartoon in the paper.

Yeah.

And that was.

That was.

That was enough.

That was enough.

It really was.

Were you one of those guys who would open the paper to your page first?

My wife did.

My wife would rush in and get the paper, turn to the editorial page, look at the cartoon and say, I don't get it.

You know, I'm.

Im sorry Patsy.

but some of the editors didn't get it, too.

I'm thinking over the years they would even I heard one of the editors talk about how even though he had put the paper together, put the paper to bed, I think is what they call it.

He would still look at your cartoon first to make sure you hadn't changed it before the next morning.

That was that.

They always looked at it because of the spelling, too.

Oh yeah.

Cause- I did.

Who way back then when?

When Castro first was you know, took over Cuba.

Yeah.

And and that when when they were they were setting the captions in print.

You know, I would, I would write it out and they would read it in print.

Yeah.

And so I had this guy asking Castro on New Year's Day.

Are you making any New Year's Revolutions?

Yes.

And, well, the editor, the night editor looked at it and said, Good God, Daniel misspelled resolutions.

Oh, and they changed it.

No, he ruined the joke.

Yeah.

And so they had the guy asking Castro.

Are you making any New Year's resolutions?

That's not fun.

It's got to be revolutions.

Oh, yeah.

So they your.

Well, that's they started writing in.

Those then I to do.

They stopped having a typesetter do the job and you would just draw it right into the cartoon in a in a speech bubble.

Well I started doing the bubbles.

Yeah.

Was it hard to stop?

Was it hard to to retire after 60 years that I mean, you don't seem like you're ready to slow down.

You still seem very active and you know, your mind is still wanting to crack these jokes.

I didn't I didn't I didn't realize how much pressure and stress it was until I retired and and woke up at birthday day and no deadline.

Yeah, no deadline.

So you would draw every day as opposed to, like I mentioned before, trying to knock out three at a time.

And then I'd take a couple of days off because the news changes.

Well, you know, when I first started, yeah, Smith had me and so the first week, you know, I would draw the finished cartoon and take it in and show it to him.

And then I took one and he said, I can't run that.

And so you realize you gave him too much time to think about it.

And so from then on, I would do I would do three or four different ideas on rough paper and take them in.

Oh, okay.

And so he said, I like that.

I like that.

Because I was thinking, another trick is you wait till the last possible second to submit your.

Well, I did on that first one.

And so they, they pulled a syndicate out that day so I didn't want to go through that again.

Many more of those and next thing you know, we really don't need you.

Well, Knoxville needed you, East Tennessee needed you.

And we're so delighted that you've been honored in all these halls of fame and every other thing.

And we've got your whole archives at UT that are available.

20,000 cartoons.

well, Charlie, take care.

I appreciate you very much.

And I know that you're still out there raising money for your the causes that you that you support and you and Patsy, you're doing great.

So anything else you want to say before we go?

No, thank you, Frank.

I appreciate you asking me to come early.

Yeah.

Oh, what a joy.

Yeah.

Charlie.

Daniel, I'm greatly honored.

The cartoonist for the News Sentinel.

And before that, the Journal.

Thank you for being on up close.

My name is Frank Murphy.

We'll talk to you again next time.