Clarence 'Pinetop' Smith was just 24 when a stray bullet in a Chicago dance hall ended his life in March 1929, one day before a scheduled follow-up recording session. Yet the single track he cut for Vocalion on December 29, 1928, Pine Top's Boogie Woogie, became the first record to put the phrase boogie woogie in a song title and laid down the eight-to-the-bar rhythmic blueprint that would echo through big band swing, rock and roll, and modern dance music. This episode traces the brief, blazing life of an Alabama kid who earned his nickname climbing trees and went on to alter the DNA of popular music.

We follow Smith from his disputed birthplace in Troy or Orion, Alabama, through the Great Migration to Pittsburgh and the TOBA vaudeville circuit, where he worked as a singer, comedian, tap dancer, and accompanist for Ma Rainey. In Chicago he  ...