This chapter zooms in on WLS-Chicago’s “Ideal National Barn Dance” survey of 1937 to examine the construction of the virtuoso persona. This campaign invited devoted listeners to send in letters that outlined their “perfect program” by pairing their favorite songs with their preferred WLS performers. Soliciting this imagined program was not meant to simply identify hit songs or the most beloved musicians but to get at a more nuanced question: which combination of song and performer could elicit the best audience reaction? The issue was not who performed a number “best,” but whose persona interacted with—and arose from—a song in ways that audiences found compelling. After reviewing theories of musical persona, this chapter examines the results of the survey, ultimately utilizing them to theorize the virtuoso persona and its relation to labor, play, and humor. Along the way, I employ phenomenological insights on interpretation, sociality, and embodiment to elucidate the meaning (and many contradictions) of virtuosity, arguing that the virtuoso persona’s central quality is its partially unalienated relationship to its labor.