When entertainer Smokey Ward forgot Frank Brown Jr.’s name on live radio at WPFB in Middletown, Ohio, he improvised the nickname Hylo, a nod to a voice that could hit high tenor and low bass in the same breath. This episode follows Hylo Brown from his 1922 birth in River, Kentucky and his family’s migration to Springfield, Ohio, through radio work beginning in 1939 at WCMI in Ashland and WLOG in West Virginia, and recordings with Bradley Kincaid in 1950.

The hosts examine the 1954 turning point when Brown pitched his song Lost to a Stranger to Capitol Records for Kitty Wells and A and R man Ken Nelson insisted he record it himself, his first Capitol session on November 7, 1954, the Buckskin Boys on the 50,000-watt WWVA Jamboree, his 1957 move to Flatt and Scruggs’ Martha White shows, the Timberliners lineup of Red Rector, Clarence Tater Tate, Joe Flapjack Phillips and Jim Smoak, his pivot to Starday and Rural Rhythm during the folk revival, his 1991 retirement, his death in January 2003, and his honors from SPBGMA and the IBMA.

• How a live radio mistake became a 40-year brand
• The vocal mechanics behind singing both bass and tenor
• Why Capitol Records refused to hand Lost to a Stranger to Kitty Wells
• Sky wave propagation and the national reach of the WWVA Jamboree
• How Brown repackaged his Appalachian roots for independent folk labels in the 1960s