Dueling Banjos  

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"Dueling Banjos" is an instrumental composition by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith. The song was composed in 1955 by Smith as a banjo instrumental he called "Feudin' Banjos", which contained riffs from "Yankee Doodle". Smith recorded it 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 "Brisco Declares for Aunt Bee", in which it is played by visiting musical family the Darlings (played by The Dillards, a bluegrass group).

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 his permission. The film version, arranged and recorded by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell and subsequently issued as a single, went to #2 for four weeks on the Hot 100 in 1973, all four weeks behind Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song", and topped the adult contemporary chart for two weeks the same year. The song also reached No. 5 on the Hot Country Singles chart at the same time it was on the Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary Singles charts.

A cover of the song by Steve Ouimette (using electric guitars, bass, and drums) was released as downloadable content for the video game Guitar Hero World Tour. The Toy Dolls also covered the song on their album Absurd-Ditties.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Dueling Banjos" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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