Mike Auldridge helped found the Seldom Scene and revolutionized how the Dobro is played, yet he did it while working full time as a commercial graphic artist. This deep dive traces his life from his birth in Washington, D.C., in 1938 and his youth in Kensington, Maryland, where a postwar migration from the rural South turned the capital region into a thriving bluegrass hub. His uncle Ellsworth T. Cozzens had recorded with Jimmie Rodgers, and Auldridge bought his very first Dobro directly from Josh Graves, the man who pioneered the instrument in bluegrass.

We explore how his training at the Corcoran and his day jobs at a Bethesda design firm and the Washington Star newspaper shaped a playing style known for unprecedented cleanliness and precise intonation, bringing urban sophistication to a rural instrument. The episode follows his work with ...