In 2007, a state governor officially declared Carl Story the father of bluegrass gospel music, decades after record labels had recorded his band and then locked the results in a vault. This episode follows Story from his birth on May 29, 1916 in Lenoir, North Carolina, where his father played fiddle and his mother played guitar, through his mastery of fiddle, guitar, and clawhammer banjo and the local fiddle contest that landed him a spot with J.E. Clark and the Lonesome Mountaineers on WLVA radio in Lynchburg, Virginia. At 18, he formed his own band, the Rambling Mountaineers, and blanketed the Carolinas with live daily broadcasts on WHKY, WSPA, and WWNC.

We examine why the 1939 American Record Corporation and 1940 Okeh sessions went unissued, how that forced the band to build a loyal audience through live radio and gymnasium shows, his 19 ...