Aside from practicing some hoedown rhythm patterns he’d heard from Paul Warren and other early bluegrass fiddlers, Carter based his education almost entirely on copying how fiddlers played behind singers. “I never even learned many fiddle tunes,” he says. “I remember learning ‘Katy Hill’ from a recording by Georgia Slim [aka Robert Rutland], who was a great player. But mostly I listened to how the fiddle player backed up the singers. Bobby Hicks [of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys and Porter Wagoner’s band] was one of the greatest backup players ever. Everything he did complemented the singer, and that really hit home with me. I also listened a lot to Chubby Wise, who had the best tone I’ve ever heard. He could get more out of one string or even one note than anybody.

“Later, when I heard Benny Martin, my outlook changed because I’d never heard anybody play sliding double stops like that. I still pattern my playing after his.”

Before long, Carter, who’d spent six months in vocational school studying to be a draftsman after earning his high-school degree, was playing well enough to drop out and join the Goins Brothers, a seasoned and very traditional bluegrass family band. For six months he toured with them, from Missouri to the Northeast, and might have stuck with them longer, if not for a fateful stop in Nashville.

In February 1992, backstage at the annual Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America award show, Carter was approached by acclaimed fiddler Tad Marks, who told him that he had just given notice to his bandleader that he was quitting the gig. Since the gig happened to be with McCoury, Carter knew exactly what had to be done.

“I made a beeline to Del,” he chuckles. “And I announced that I really wanted to play with his band.”

Much to Carter’s surprise, McCoury wound up agreeing with him and invited him into the group. In fact, McCoury seemed a little surprised, too: “I auditioned a lot of guys,” the bandleader remembers. “Some of them had been playing a long time. Actually, all of them were better than Jason, at that stage. But even though Jason hadn’t developed that much, I heard something in his playing, a feeling for the blues, that the older guys didn’t have. That’s something you can’t teach. Also, I’d had accomplished fiddle players in the band who just couldn’t grasp how to play a melody in a song, but Jason got that right away, as soon as he came in. And even at that young age, when he played a break in a tune, he jumped right in and cut it all to pieces.

“He had that attitude, and that suited me just fine.”

Carter’s playing has advanced rapidly since then, to the point that he cut a solo album on the Rounder label—On the Move, released in 1997—and he has spread his smooth, melodic sound around on projects for artists ranging from comic Jeff Foxworthy to country-rocker Steve Earle. He’s changed his instrument since joining the band, trading the Hopf violin that his father had bought him for an Ernst Kreusler, which he plays with a Seifert bow that Stuart Duncan gave him more than a decade ago.

One thing stays the same, though. “I really like my gig,” he insists. “Playing with Del was my dream. It’s still my first priority. I don’t have any plans to give it up.”