While Charlie Daniels might challenge the notion, musicologists say he helped define a new genre of music that became known as Southern Rock. Contemporaries with Willie Nelson, Elvis and Lynyrd Skynyrd, Daniels is a rollicking mixture of country, rock and blues— a sound that has become an icon of American culture.

SMN: Did you realize you were creating a new genre of music called Southern Rock at the time?

Daniels: “I’ve never looked at Southern Rock as being a genre of music. I think it is more of a personal thing where bands that came from the same environments and raising maybe had a similar sound. There were several of us at the time — The Allman Brothers, which was more of a jam band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, which was pure rock, and Marshall Tucker, which was more blues. And we played some of all of it.”

SMN: Would you say your signature sound is rock with a country twang or country with a rock-and-roll feel?

Daniels: “I have some of all kinds of American music in my music — rock, rhythm and blues, gospel. We even have a classical song in the set. We do all kinds of music. I don’t put any parameters on what we can play and we can’t.

I refuse to be put in a bag. If you start thinking when you’re writing and say ‘I have to write a country song,’ you will step over three good ideas that would have made a great piece. If I feel like writing a jazz song, I do.”

SMN: After writing songs for over 40 years, how do you still come up with ideas?

Daniels: “I live the life of a professional musician 24 hours a day, so I do a lot of my writing horizontal with the lights out. I lay in bed in the mornings before I get up and nights before I go to sleep and write.”

SMN: Do you ever forget something you came up with the night before?

Daniels: “Sure I forget. I had that happen yesterday. I wrote something in my sleep and I forgot it, but then it came back to me again later. My mind is receptive to ideas and I just get a melody going. I also spend a lot of time sitting with a guitar running over ideas so I am always in a mode to write when I get ideas or a little bit of tune.

Like the song “This Ain’t No Rag,” which I wrote after 9/11. Little things like that just pop into your head. It ‘s like building a house, you start with this foundation and just go from there.”