Before Earl Scruggs became the face of bluegrass banjo, DeWitt Snuffy Jenkins was playing a three-finger picking style on regional radio in the Carolinas. Born in Harris, North Carolina, in 1908, the youngest of ten children, he built his first banjo from scrap with his brother Verl and did not own a manufactured instrument until 1927.

We follow him from the Jenkins String Band and the Crazy Water Barn Dance on WBT to Byron Parker’s Hillbillies at WIS in Columbia, South Carolina, through the medicine show and vaudeville circuit where he earned his nickname, the 1956 Mike Seeger recordings for Folkways, a stretch selling cars, and a 1979 medicine show revival that led to PBS, the Smithsonian and New York City. We also settle the long-running rumor that he taught Earl Scruggs.

• How clawhammer differs from three-finger picking, and what Smith Hammett and Rex Brooks contributed
• Why a 1930s radio announcer could take over a band and put his own name on it
• The baggy pants, slapstick and minstrel elements of 1940s live shows
• How Byron Parker’s death in 1948 led to the Hired Hands
• The annual Snuffy Jenkins Festival in Rutherford County, North Carolina