He was a man of his generation, of his time, and of his region, and his life story follows a classic pattern.

Earl Collins was born in Douglass County, Missouriin 1911./n 1917 his family moved to Oak/ahoma, where they sharecropped and Earl augmented their income by playing fiddle at square dances through the bitter early years of the depression. He married in 1931 and he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California in 1935 where Earl turned his hand to any job he could get: hod carrier, truck driver, trash hauler, machinist, welder, mechanic. He retired in 1969 because of his always fragile health. For years he tried to convert his skill as a fiddler into a money-making occupation. He never made it, and in 1949, he put his fiddle away and did not play again until 1965, when his sons persuaded him to take it up again. Earl's extraordinary technique and musicianship made him a star on the old time fiddler's circuit in California; almost every weekend until his death in 1975 he played at one or another local contest or jam session.