Charlie Daniels is partly Western and partly Southern. His signature “bullrider” hat and
belt buckle, his lifestyle on the Twin Pines Ranch (a boyhood dream come true), his
love of horses, cowboy lore and the heroes of championship rodeo, Western movies,
and Louis L’Amour novels, identify him as a Westerner. The son of a lumberjack and a
Southerner by birth, his music - rock, country, bluegrass, blues, gospel - is
quintessentially Southern. In fact, even his bent for all things Western is Southern,
because his attire, his lifestyle and his interests are historically emblematic of Southern
working class solidarity with the “lone cowboy” individualism of the American West.

It hasn’t been so much a style of music, but more the values consistently reflected in
several styles that has connected Charlie Daniels with millions of fans. For decades, he
has steadfastly refused to label his music as anything other than “CDB music,” music
that is now sung around the fire at 4-H Club and scout camps, helped elect an American
President, and been popularized on a variety of radio formats.

Like so many great American success stories, The Charlie Daniels saga begins in rural
obscurity. Born in 1936 in Wilmington, North Carolina, he was raised on a musical diet
that included Pentecostal gospel, local bluegrass bands, and the rhythm & blues and
country music emanating respectively from Nashville’s 50,000-watt megabroadcasters
WLAC and WSM.

He graduated from high school in 1955 and soon enlisted in the rock ‘n’ roll revolution
ignited by Mississippian Elvis Aaron Presley. Already skilled on guitar, fiddle and
mandolin, Daniels formed a rock ‘n’ roll band and hit the road.
While enroute to California in 1959 the group paused in Texas to record “Jaguar,” an
instrumental produced by the Bob Johnston, which was picked up for national
distribution by Epic. It was also the beginning for a long association with Johnston. The
two wrote “ It Hurts Me,” which became the B side of a 1964 Presley hit. In 1969, at the
urging of Johnston, Daniels moved to middle Tennessee to find work as a session
guitarist in Nashville.

Among his more notable sessions were the Bob Dylan albums of 1969-70 Nashville
Skyline, New Morning, and Self Portrait. Daniels produced the Youngbloods albums of
1969-70 Elephant Mountain and Ride the Wind, toured Europe with Leonard Cohen and performed on records with artists as different as Al Kooper and Marty Robbins.

Daniels broke through as a record maker, himself, with 1973’s Honey In the Rock and
its hit hippie song “Uneasy Rider.” His rebel anthems “Long Haired Country Boy” and
“The South’s Gonna Do It” propelled his 1975 collection Fire On the Mountain to Double Platinum status.