Something of a child prodigy as a fiddle player, he toured with Johnnie Wright and Kitty Wells, and performed as a teenager with the Curley Williams and Paul Howard bands at the Grand Ole Opry, before serving as a tail gunner in the Army Air Forces in World War II.
[1][2][3] On his return to civilian life in 1946, he toured with Whitey Ford and others before joining Red Foley's orchestra at the Opry.
He also began work as a session musician, sometimes as part of a group that also included Jerry Byrd, Louis Innis, and Zeke Turner, and became known as the first Nashville studio A-team.
[1][2][3] He returned to Nashville in the early 1950s, and recorded with Hank Williams, Webb Pierce, Faron Young, and many others.
He played on almost all of Price's recordings through to the mid-1960s, as well as those by George Jones and Bill Monroe, and became Nashville's most in-demand studio fiddle player over the period.