Walter Trout spent decades becoming one of the best blues rock guitarists in the world, then, in his 60s, lost the ability to walk, speak, recognize his family or play a single chord. This episode draws on biographies, medical journals and retrospective interviews to follow the Ocean City, New Jersey native from the coastal music scene to Los Angeles, where he served as a sideman for John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton, Percy Mayfield and Joe Tex before taking lead guitar in Canned Heat from 1981 to 1984 and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers from 1984 to 1989.

We examine the alcoholism and substance abuse that shadowed his 1980s success, the conversation with Carlos Santana that he credits with saving his life, the 1989 launch of a solo career with Life in the Jungle, and his marriage to Marie, the Danish advertising executive who became his manag ...