In 1952, asked who the biggest singer in country music was, Hank Williams didn't hesitate: for drawing power in the South, it was "Roy Acuff, then God." That godlike fame is hard to imagine today. Yet the empire behind it began with disaster, a severe sunstroke that wrecked the young athlete's dream of professional baseball and pushed him toward a microphone instead.

This episode traces how a near-fatal collapse rerouted Roy Acuff's life and built one of country music's great institutions, from Grand Ole Opry stardom to co-founding the Acuff-Rose publishing empire. We look at the accident that changed everything, the showmanship that drew enormous crowds, and how he became the King of Country Music.

• Hank Williams's astonishing "Roy Acuff, then God" quote
• The sunstroke that ended his baseball dreams
• The pivot to mu ...