* 28.10.1936 Wilmington, North Carolina

Charlie Daniels was one of the principal inventors of the Southern rock sound popularized by The Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers. Daniels assembled his first band, The Rockets (later known as The Jaguars), in the late 1950's. Around the same time he got seriously involved in  songwriting: his composition 'It Hurts Me', was a  hit for Elvis Presley in 1963.

Daniels moved to Nashville in the early 1960's and became a sought-after session player, working with artists as diverse as Bob Dylan  (he played guitar on Dylan's classic 1969 Nashville Skyline album). Leonard Cohen, Pete Seeger and Flatt & Scruggs. By the late 1960's Daniels was also producing, including the critically acclaimed Youngbloods album  Elephant Mountain.

In 1970 Daniels assembled The Charlie Daniels Band, which included guitarist Tom 'Bigfoot' Crain, keyboardist Joel 'Taz' DiGregorio, bassist Charlie Hayward and drummers Fred Edwards and Don Murray (who was replaced by Charlie Marshall in 1978). Though the band cut one album on Capitol Records in 1971, it featured mostly Daniels performing solo with studio musicians.

A year later the band began recording on Buddah Records' Kama Sutra label; the album Te John, Grease and Wolfman, wasn't a major commercial success but sold well enough for Buddah to send the band into the studio again. The next two albums, Honey in the Rock and Way Down Younder, produced the hit singles 'No Place To Go' and 'The South's Gonna Do It Again', which became the band's signature song.

The band switched to Epic Records in 1976 and cut two chartbusting albums in as many years: Saddle Tramp and High Lonesome. Around the same time Daniels was instrumental in establishing Nashville's Tennessee Volunteer Jam, an annual festival celebrating Southern rock.

While the Jam did much to revive interest in Southern rock, it was Daniels' next Epic album, Million Mile Reflections, that really brought the sound to the

musical forefront.

                With phenomenally succesful fiddle tune, 'The Devil went down to Geogia', Daniels rose to the top of both pop and country charts and finally gained acceptance as a full-flefged country . The album went platinum, and Daniels received two  Country Music Association awards, for Single of the  Year and Musician of the Year.

Daniels continued his winning streak the  following year with another wildly successful album  'Full Moon'.

He also performed on the platinum-selling soundtrack of the 1980's film, Urban Cowboy, alongwith other crossover favorites like Kenny Rogers and Linda Rondtadt.

The Charlie Daniels Band appeared on the charts again in the late 80's with the album Homesick  Heroes and Simple Man, both of which stirred up controversy as Daniels introduced his current social and political philosophies to his music (just as he'd done in a markedly different vein on liberal-sounding 70's and early 80's hits like 'Uneasy Rider' and 'Long Haired Country Boy'): this time around, he appeared to embrace such concepts as vigilantism, lynching and gay-bashing, a far cry from the earlier anti-Vietnam, drug-friendly spirit evident in those ealier songs.

In 1994, Daniels released a gospel album.