Jim Eanes, born Homer Robert Eanes Jr. on December 6, 1923, in Mountain Valley, Virginia, grew up in a Portuguese Sephardic Jewish family in the Martinsville area and suffered a severe left-hand injury early in life. Unable to execute the fast fretting runs that get guitar players noticed, he poured everything into his right hand and became a rhythm machine, a skill that carried him from his father's string band to Roy Hall's Blue Ridge Entertainers and a Roanoke radio slot in 1940, and, after Hall died in a 1943 car accident, to Uncle Joe and the Blue Mountain Boys, work alongside Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and a spot in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in 1948.

This episode follows Eanes through his 1949 Capitol Records solo debut backed by Homer Sherrill and Snuffy Jenkins, the Shenandoah Valley Boys and the WWVA Wheeling Jamboree, a De ...