Mark O'Connor was born in August 1961 to a construction worker father and a dance teacher mother who insisted he learn guitar at age five; by ten he had taught himself flamenco. Seeing Cajun fiddler Doug Kershaw play Diggy Liggy Lo on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969 set off three years of begging until he got a fiddle for his eleventh birthday. In 1973, at 12, he silenced the veterans at Nashville's Pickin' Parlor and days later was introduced on the Grand Ole Opry by Roy Acuff, signing his first record deal on the spot.

This episode tracks a teenage run that included the Grand Masters Fiddle Championship and the National Flat-Pick Guitar Championship at 13 and the World Mandolin Championship by 19, then his deliberate escape from the prodigy trap: replacing Tony Rice in the David Grisman Quintet in 1979, studying Texas fiddle with Benny Thoma ...