Episode Details

A Grammy-winning cowboy balladeer who accidentally invented the fuzz guitar sound that helped shape rock and roll — then deliberately crashed a magenta race car into a wall at nearly 200 mph to save another driver's life. Marty Robbins, born Martin David Robinson, lived like three different people in one country music timeline: teen pop idol, Western balladeer, and NASCAR daredevil.

His story runs from a Navy stint in the Pacific, where he taught himself guitar as a psychological survival tool, to hosting Phoenix television's Western Caravan, to Nashville stardom and an act of defiance that made him an early pioneer of outlaw country. When Columbia refused his politically radioactive material, Robbins simply bypassed the label — the same way he bypassed NASCAR's carburetor restrictors.

• Kept a blown studio transformer's distorted buzz on a 1961 track, pioneering the fuzz tone in mainstream music

• Deliberately wrecked his own race car at nearly 200 mph to save a fellow NASCAR driver

• Released banned-by-Columbia political songs on tiny Sims Records under the pseudonym Johnny Freedom

• Learned guitar in the wartime Pacific, fusing church songs, Western poetry, and Hawaiian melodies