Named Bela Anton Leo Fleck after composers Bartok, Webern, and Janacek, the New York City kid seemed destined for concert halls, but what actually hooked him was Earl Scruggs playing The Beverly Hillbillies theme and Dueling Banjos on the radio. This episode traces the 15-year-old whose grandfather bought him a used banjo at a New Jersey garage sale, the stranger on a train platform who tuned it and pointed him to Pete Seeger's instructional book, his failed French horn studies at the High School of Music and Art, private lessons with Tony Trischka, and busking on New York sidewalks with bassist Mark Schatz.

We follow his 1979 solo debut Crossing the Tracks, nine years with New Grass Revival, and the 1988 formation of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones with Victor Wooten, Howard Levy, and Future Man on the self-invented Drumitar, whose second al ...