Bob Seger's 1981 hit Trying to Live My Life Without You was a cover. The original, released in late 1972 on Hi Records, belonged to Otis Clay, a singer born February 11, 1942, in Waxhaw, Mississippi, whose family joined the Great Migration north in 1953. This episode traces how a young man trained in the gospel groups of Muncie, Indiana, and Chicago built the blueprint for modern soul and became a legend everywhere except mainstream pop radio.

The conversation follows his years with the Golden Jubilaires, the Famous Blue Jays, the Holy Wonders, the Pilgrim Harmonizers, the Gospel Songbirds, and the Sensational Nightingales, his 1965 signing with One-derful Records and 1967 hit That's How It Is (When You're in Love), and what happened when that label folded in 1968 and Atlantic bought his contract. It then covers his Cotillion Records sessio ...