William August Marburg was born in 1931 into a Maryland tobacco fortune, raised on a farm in Riderwood, and educated at elite private schools. He discovered country music on the radio, was singing and playing guitar by 12, and at the University of Virginia in 1949 formed the Dixie Mountain Boys with Paul Clayton and Dave Sadler. Because his family considered hillbilly music a scandal, he adopted the name Bill Clifton and lived a double life on central Virginia radio.

This episode follows Clifton onto the WWVA Wheeling Jamboree, through his 1955 songbook 150 Old Time Folk and Gospel Songs that gave the genre a shared playbook, and into a self-funded 1956 RCA session with Ralph Stanley that forced Starday to give him a real contract. On July 4, 1961, at Oak Leaf Park in Luray, Virginia, he organized one of the first major bluegrass festivals  ...