In 1949 Curly Seckler and his wife Juanita wrote Traveling This Lonesome Road at home and never filed the copyright. Bill Monroe and Mac Wiseman recorded it without credit. This episode follows the man born John Ray Seckler on Christmas Day 1919 in China Grove, North Carolina, from long shifts in a cotton mill and banjo lessons with Happy Trexler, through the Yodeling Rangers and a daily 1935 radio spot in Salisbury, to a $20-a-week touring job with Charlie Monroe at nineteen.

The hosts explain what made him indispensable when he joined Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1949: the offbeat mandolin chop that acts as the band's snare drum and the high tenor harmony that cuts through a noisy room. They trace the chaotic musical chairs of 1951, including short stints with the Sauceman Brothers and the Stanley Brothers a ...