Berline was born 6 July 1944 in rural northern Oklahoma, near the border with Kansas. He started playing the fiddle at a very young age and quickly developed a remarkable talent for it. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in the mid 1960s and moved to Southern California in 1969. In 1970, Berline won the National Oldtime Fiddle Contest Championship in Weiser, Idaho. Berline went on to win two more titles. In many of the competitions he attended in Weiser, younger virtuoso Mark O'Connor would earn the junior crown.