For the first three decades of his life, Kenny Baker had little interest in bluegrass. This episode follows the fiddler born June 26, 1926 in Burdine, Kentucky, who worked the coal mines for Bethlehem Steel and served in the Navy before pursuing music, and whose ears were tuned to western swing fiddler Marion Sumner and the jazz of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli rather than local mountain players. His first major job was replacing Sumner himself in Don Gibson’s band.

The hosts explain how hearing Bill Monroe’s Wheel Hoss and Roanoke convinced Baker that bluegrass demanded the rigor he had trained for, leading to his first Bluegrass Boys recordings on December 15, 1957 and a record 25-year tenure. They detail his long bow style, the Uncle Pen project Monroe entrusted to him, how his intricate lines pushed Bill Keith to invent melodic banjo, his solo albums on County, Rounder, Ridge Runner and OMS such as Dry and Dusty, the awkward fact that his records often outsold Monroe’s, his 1984 departure, his long duo with dobro player Josh Graves, the 1993 NEA National Heritage Fellowship, his 1999 IBMA Hall of Honor induction, and his death on July 8, 2011.

• How radio and Navy service brought jazz and swing to a Kentucky coal miner
• Why closed positions and chromatic lines changed how Baker navigated the fingerboard
• The two Monroe tunes that finally made bluegrass make sense to him
• The long bow technique and how it fit above Monroe’s percussive rhythm section
• Balancing a solo career with 25 years as Bill Monroe’s sideman