In 1969, fresh out of the U.S. Army, Byron Berline stood on a Southern California sidewalk recording fiddle for the Rolling Stones' Country Honk when a passing car blared its horn, and Mick Jagger decided to keep it on the track. This episode follows the Caldwell, Kansas native who started fiddle at age five, recorded Pickin' and Fiddlin' with the Dillards in 1965, won the National Old Time Fiddlers Contest in Weiser, Idaho that year and again in 1967 and 1970, and turned down Bill Monroe's offer at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival so he could finish his physical education degree at the University of Oklahoma before joining the Blue Grass Boys in March 1967.

We trace his co-writing of the standard Gold Rush with Monroe, his 1967 draft into the Army, and his move into the Los Angeles country rock scene with Dillard and Clark, the Flying Burrit ...