A harmonica that fits in a shirt pocket somehow sounds like an entire brass section, and the man playing it did not come from Chicago or the Delta but from the sunny suburb of Goleta, California, where he was once known as Goleta Slim. This episode traces how Kim Wilson, born in Detroit in 1951, placed himself in the room with the architects of electric blues by the late 1960s, absorbing direct mentorship from Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Taylor, Albert Collins and George Harmonica Smith while studying the records of Little Walter, James Cotton and Slim Harpo.

We break down the mechanics of his sound, from tongue blocking to cupping a taxi dispatcher's microphone into an overdriven tube amp, then follow his detour to Minneapolis and the band Aces, Straights and Shuffles before the 1974 move to Austin, Texas. There he met Jimmie Vaughan ...