Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker is the musician B.B. King called his sole inspiration for picking up an electric guitar, the player Chuck Berry named as a foundational influence, and the showman whose behind-the-head and teeth-playing stage tricks Jimi Hendrix copied decades later. In this deep dive we trace Walker's evolution from a multi-instrumental childhood in Dallas, where his stepfather Marco Washington of the Dallas String Band taught him ukulele, banjo, violin, mandolin, piano and guitar, to the Deep Ellum blues circuit, where he worked as protege and guide to Blind Lemon Jefferson and cut his first Columbia record in 1929 as "Oak Cliff T-Bone."

The story then moves to Los Angeles and the Central Avenue scene, where Walker was hired by the Les Hite Orchestra purely as a singer, and to the moment around 1940 when he realized the magn ...