A special education teacher in mid-1970s Boston and a four-time Blues Music Award-winning guitarist who traded solos with Gregg Allman in sold-out arenas are the same person. Ronald Horvath, known as Ronnie Earl, was born in 1953 in Queens, studied American history at C.W. Post before transferring to Boston University, graduated in 1975, and went to work teaching children with disabilities. Then he saw Muddy Waters play the Jazz Workshop in Boston, and everything changed.

This episode follows his multi-day Greyhound bus trips to Chicago's South Side, the endorsement of Koko Taylor, his travels to New Orleans and Austin to absorb Kim Wilson and Jimmie Vaughan, his rhythm guitar apprenticeship at the Speakeasy in Cambridge, and his 1979 arrival as lead guitarist of Roomful of Blues. It then covers the 1984 formation of the Broadcasters, a sol ...