Marion Walter Jacobs was born in Marksville, Louisiana, without a birth certificate, quit school and left home by age 12, and survived by busking on the streets of New Orleans, Memphis, Helena and St. Louis alongside veterans like Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sunnyland Slim and Honeyboy Edwards. When he arrived in Chicago in 1946, electric guitars were drowning out the acoustic harmonica. This episode explains how he cupped a small microphone with his harp, plugged it into a PA system or guitar amplifier, pushed the tubes past their limits and turned distortion into a revolutionary new voice.

We follow his 1947 debut on the tiny Ora-Nelle label, his years defining the harmonica sound of Muddy Waters' band, the first amplified harp on record on Country Boy in 1951, and the 1952 Checker Records instrumental Juke, cut in a single take and still th ...