Charlie Daniels came to prominence during the early 1970s, at a time when country music was caught up in Vietnam patriotism and anti-hippie sentiment. Rock was the music of the counterculture, which saw the South through newsreels of civil rights battles and movies like Easy Rider. A white southern band had to choose one or the other, and many followed the lead of the likes of the Allman Brothers to create the sound known as Southern Rock. The Charlie Daniels Band began as Southern Rockers with an anti-redneck anthem, "Uneasy Rider" (1973), a song about a longhaired guy going into a bar full of good old boys. One of the few musicians to fit into both rock and country genres, Daniels' manipulated his image and music brilliantly in an attempt to capture his place in twentieth-century popular culture.

Charlie Daniels

Most of the Southern Rockers...