After finishing the Oryol gymnasium, he enrolled into the Moscow University's physics and mathematics faculty but dropped after four years of studying due to sudden passion for gathering folk songs.

In this he was much encouraged by his mentor Pyotr Kireyevsky who began commissioning the young man for long journeys into the Russian backwoods province.

Yakushkin who started out as a travelling salesman, exchanging goods for songs, relied upon this unorthodox method of the ethnographical study for the rest of his life.

Erratic behaviour aggravated by alcoholism (the side effect of another ploy for 'extracting' a song from a country man, that of buying them a drink) and carefree mindset involved Yakushkin in all kinds of trouble (including a couple of arrests and imprisonment for alleged 'agitation') and made him a legend in his own time.

No matter how chaotic, his stories highlight most typical and characteristic aspects of life, and in his ability to grasp the very essence of what’s happening around he's a real artist.