McDaniel played lead guitar with the group, which played ‘swing’ music like Chattanooga Choo Choo and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The band featured Grady Morris as vocalist, Bobby Smith on piano, Leslie Hanson, vibraharp, Dick Nunnally, trumpet, Charlie Robertson, saxophone and Jamie Robertson on drums. The group also played for square dances when the drummer would be the caller.

"We played at an American Legion convention in Commerce once," remembered McDaniel. "They wanted us to be in a parade, but we couldn’t march. So they put us on the back of a flatbed truck and we’d hit ruts and holes and bounce around. The drums would go up in the air and everybody would lose the timing."

McDaniel was acquainted with Commerce’s Bill Anderson and has played at the City Lights Festival. "We helped him make a demo once to send to Nashville," he said.

The Mello-Aires also played at WIMO when the local radio station first aired.

"We thought it was the grandest something to ever come to Winder," he said.

After the break-up of the Mello-Aires, McDaniel played with Sons of the South and then The Georgia Playboys with Daryl Morris as the leader playing guitar, fiddle and trumpet, his twin brother Donald Morris also on guitar, Crawford Johnson on bass and a UGA student, Johnny Webb, on drums.

The group was a Saturday night regular at the Athens VFW and was active until 1960 when McDaniel married and took time off from the band circuit.

"I still played with some folks at gospel singings and nursing homes," he said, "but wasn’t with any particular band."

In the late ‘80s he hooked up with Phil Tanner and the Skillet Lickers and began playing bluegrass festivals and various other venues by invitation. McDaniel played harp and mandolin in the band, which performed at the Governor’s mansion twice at Zell Miller’s invitation.

The original Skillet Lickers, formed by Tanner’s grandfather, Gid Tanner, was one of the most innovative and influential string bands of the 1920s and 1930s. Gid was an old- time fiddler and one of the earliest stars of what would come to be known as country music.

At the Georgia Fiddler’s Convention, which originated at the Georgia Mountain Fair in Hiawassee, McDaniel entered the harmonica competition on several occasions and won twice with tunes like Kentucky Waltz and Soldier’s Joy.

"I was the first Georgian to place in the contest," he said.

McDaniel’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame came as a surprise.

"Someone has to sponsor you," he said, "and I think Randall Wages and Carlton Burton had something to do with it."

The Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame was founded in 1982 by Phyllis A. Cole and John L. Carson for "the purpose of preserving Georgia’s rich music heritage and history, to promote Georgia’s exciting music talent and to honor persons and organizations for their outstanding contributions and achievements in the music industry on the national, state and local levels."

McDaniel and his wife, Mary Ann, were driven by Randall Wages to the ceremony which was held in the Holiday Inn Atrium in Atlanta.

"There were hundreds of musicians," said McDaniel, "with people picking in different places all over. We got there at 2 and I went on stage to receive my plaque at 7:30. It was very nice."

McDaniel knows many of the inductees including "Smokey" Joe Miller of Bethlehem.

Although he can’t ‘pick’ anymore because of arthritis, he can still blow a harp.

"I’ve been around, but didn’t amount to much," he said. "I just enjoyed the fellowship of the musicians and all the old songs. We always had good bands with decent people – no troublemakers."

He and his wife have a daughter, Julie Ann Brigham of Winder and three grandchildren, Alex, who is in her second year of college; Maxwell, a ninth grader at Apalachee and Caleb, a sixth grade home-schooled student.