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.