Gus Cannon was born in Red Banks, Mississippi, around 1883, though his tombstone claims 1874, a discrepancy that reflects how little documentation existed for Black Americans born in the rural South after the Civil War. Raised alongside nine brothers who played fiddle, guitar, and banjo, he was sent 100 miles away at age 12 to sharecrop cotton in Clarksdale with his brother Tom. Unable to afford an instrument, he built his first banjo from a frying pan and a raccoon skin and taught himself downpicking on the tune "Old John Booker." At 15, with $10 from his brother, he set off to entertain workers at sawmills, levee construction sites, and railroad camps across the Delta, soaking up lessons from fiddler Jim Turner of W.C. Handy's band and from guitarist Alec Lee, who showed him how to play slide with a pocket knife.

This episode follows Cann ...