Uncle Dave Macon

Influenced heavily by the 19th-century vaudeville musicians he heard during his youth in Tennessee--and decades crisscrossing America in his first life as a mule driver--Uncle Dave Macon became a key figure in country music despite a late start. When advances in trucking technology caused his business to flag, Macon picked up his banjo, teamed up with fiddler Sid Harkreader, and embarked on his first tour at the age of 54. In 1925, he was invited to join the earliest incarnation of the Grand Ol’ Opry, and would go on to record classic sides with the Delmore Brothers, Roy Acuff, and many others. The jovial Macon continued to perform with the Opry, in the position of living connection to country music's earliest days, up until his death in 1952.