Between Blind Blake's final recordings around 1932 and Blind Boy Fuller's debut in 1935, Piedmont blues changed dramatically, and Eugene "Buddy" Moss is the missing link that explains why. Born into a sharecropping family of 12 children in Jewell, Georgia, with a birth year debated between 1906 and 1914, Moss taught himself harmonica by immersion, busked on Atlanta's Decatur Street by 1928, and was pulled into his first Columbia session in December 1930 with Curley Weaver and Barbecue Bob as the Georgia Cotton Pickers. When Barbecue Bob died of pneumonia in late 1931, Moss taught himself guitar, partnered with Blind Willie McTell, and in January 1933 recorded 11 released sides in New York for ARC, more than his mentors got from the same sessions.

This episode explains how his bouncier tempo and relaxed vocal delivery made the intricate Pied ...