Roosevelt Sykes was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1999, yet his grave in New Orleans went unmarked for 32 years. This episode follows the pianist known as the Honeydripper from his 1906 birth in the sawmill town of Elmar, Arkansas, through summers at his preacher grandfather's farm near West Helena, where a 10-year-old with no training taught himself to make a church organ mimic his own singing voice. At 15 he hit the road playing turpentine camps, sawmills and levee camps along the Mississippi River, where an older pianist named Lee Green, known as Pork Chop, protected him and taught him the split-rhythm technique that let his two hands work like two independent musicians.

We trace his one-dollar-a-night gig at Katy Red's barrelhouse in East St. Louis, the 1929 New York recording session arranged by talent scout Jesse Johnson tha ...