Picture a six-foot-six, 250-plus-pound heavyweight sparring with Joe Louis, then walking away from boxing to become the hidden architect of modern rock and roll. This episode traces how Willie Dixon, born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1915 into a family of fourteen children, became the bridge between acoustic Delta blues and the global explosion of rock, writing more than 500 songs and engineering the post-war Chicago blues sound from behind the scenes at Chess Records.

We start with a mother who spoke in rhymes, a teenage stint on Mississippi prison farms, and the gospel quintet where a carpenter named Theo Phelps taught him how a bass line anchors a band. We follow his 1936 move to Chicago, the 1937 Illinois Golden Gloves novice heavyweight title, the pay dispute that ended his boxing career after four pro fights, the one-string tin-can ba ...