At twelve years old, Eddie C. Campbell was standing in the shadows of Chicago blues clubs watching the hands of Muddy Waters, Magic Sam, and Otis Rush. Born in Duncan, Mississippi, on May 6, 1939, he moved with his family to Chicago in 1949, arriving with a decade of the acoustic rural South in his memory just as the electric West Side sound was being invented. This episode explains how plugging in changed the physics of guitar playing, and why Campbell spent two decades as a sideman for Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Little Johnny Taylor, and Jimmy Reed, holding the groove for unpredictable frontmen in what amounted to nightly crisis management.

The turning point came in 1976, when Willie Dixon hired him for the Chicago Blues All-Stars, followed by his 1977 debut album King of the Jungle with Carey Bell and Lafayette Leake, released when Cam ...