Time Magazine: "National Affairs: Byrd of West Virginia: Fiddler in the Senate"

excerpted:

As Byrd's views changed, so, it seemed, did his personality. For years, his hardtack demeanor and his relentless driving of aides belied a genuine, though rare, warmth. In 1972, for example, Byrd was the only Senator to show up at the funeral of Senator Joseph Biden's wife and infant daughter, who died in an auto accident; Byrd stood inconspicuously in the back of the church. Now his increasing self-confidence has begun to take some of the chill out of Robert C. Byrd (never Bobby or even Bob). Says one Senate aide: "The big news in the Senate this year is that Robert C. Byrd is a human being."

Even his attitude toward fiddling has loosened up. Though Byrd used to perform only at rural gatherings, he has begun to play at more Washington parties; at one he serenaded the President with Amazing Grace, Carter's favorite hymn. Byrd is even planning to cut a record with a West Virginia country music group, the Blue Grass Neighbors. As if to apologize for going commercial, he has also undertaken another, more dutiful, fiddling job: recording mountain tunes for the Library of Congress.

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Earlier in the article it says it was a KKK Grand Duke who sent Byrd into politics and told him to use his fiddling to draw his first crowds.

Byrd said later that joining the KKK was his biggest mistake.

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Senator Byrd on the Grand Ole Opry - Cripple Creek

~ Becky in Tucson