A tombstone in West Lawn Memorial Park in Borger, Texas reads simply World Champion Fiddler. This episode tells the story of the man under it, Alexander Campbell Eck Robertson, born in Arkansas in 1887 and raised on a Texas Panhandle farm, whose father gave up the fiddle to become a preacher while Eck left home at sixteen to play medicine shows through Indian Territory. Drawing on Victor session logs and 1960s folklorist field notes, the hosts follow him through piano tuning for the Total Line Music Company, silent movie gigs with his wife Nettie, and Confederate reunions where he met 74-year-old fiddler Henry C. Gilliland.

In June 1922 the two took a train to New York and demanded an audition at the Victor Talking Machine Company. On June 30 they recorded Arkansas Traveler and Turkey in the Straw, the first commercial country music recordi ...