Like his recently diseased co-star George Lindsey, Griffith was a teacher before turning to acting:
Griffith was born in Mount Airy on June 1, 1926, son of Carl and Geneva Griffith. He took a liking to music and learned to play the trombone at 16.
Despite a so-so academic record, he was industrious, earning enough money sweeping the high school after classes to buy a bass horn and guitar.
He went on to UNC Chapel Hill and majored in music, taking five years to get his degree in 1949. He taught school for three years in Goldsboro.
As everybody knows, Mt. Airy was the model for Mayberry in the classic television series.
Griffith first became famous for his stage performance in "No Time for Sergeants," which he also starred in the movie version.
Then came his best movie performance as Lonesome Rhodes, a guitar-picking hick who spun wisdom on television but was a total jerk in his personal life in A Face in the Crowd. He was truly unforgettable in that part, which was based on Arthur Godfrey, of all people. Griffith/Rhodes meets his true love Lee Remick at a baton competition in this clip:
This from the New York Times obituary:
Far from the relaxed, gregarious, drawling Andy Taylor, Mr. Griffith was a loner and a worrier. He once hit a door in anger, and for two episodes of the second season of “The Andy Griffith Show” he had a bandaged hand (explained on the show as an injury Sheriff Taylor sustained while apprehending criminals).
But the 35 million viewers of “The Andy Griffith Show” would have been reassured to learn that even at the peak of his popularity, Mr. Griffith drove a Ford station wagon and bought his suits off the rack. He said his favorite honor was having a 10-mile stretch of a North Carolina highway named after him in 2002. (That was before President George W. Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.)
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