Whisnant had by this time developed his own version of the three-finger banjo style later popularized by contemporaries Earl Scruggs and Don Reno. Members of that band included Carl on fiddle, guitarists Ed McMahan and Dudley “Uncle Dud” Watson, and banjoist Johnnie Whisnant. Clark and the Lonesome Mountaineers his stay was short-lived and he soon left to re-organize his own group. In the middle 1930s he signed on with J.E. He organized the first iteration of his band, the Rambling Mountaineers, on October 13, 1934. Carl took up the fiddle at age nine and eventually learned guitar and clawhammer banjo. His father was an old-time fiddle player who enjoyed collecting recordings of Charlie Poole, Grayson and Whitter, and others.
Carl Story came by his love of old-time and country music naturally, having been exposed to it as a youth at home in western North Carolina.
