A member of the Wallin Family, Wallin's parents, father Lee and mother Berzilla, were singers; Lee also played the fiddle and banjo and Doug's younger brother Jack plays banjo, fiddle, and guitar.
His song selection and style respectfully reflected the Wallins' long family heritage.
Like his singing, his fiddling was straightforward and traditional, emphasizing the simple beauty of each song's melody.
He was also a 1989 recipient of a North Carolina Heritage Award for his loving preservation of traditional music.
Although performances by Doug appeared on the Folkways album Dillard Chandler: The End of an Old Song[3] and on a couple of privately released cassettes, his music did not become widely known until the 1995 release of Smithsonian-Folkways' Family Songs and Stories from the North Carolina Mountains, a CD of field recordings which also features Doug's brother Jack on three tracks.