On a porch in 1968, nursing an elbow injury from a horse fall, Duane Allman emptied a glass Coricidin cold medicine bottle, slid it over his ring finger and taught himself slide guitar in a single afternoon. Within a few years he was recognized worldwide as a master of the electric guitar, and by 24 he was gone. This episode traces the Nashville-born guitarist from the murder of his father in 1949 and a resented stint at military academy to the B.B. King concert that convinced him and his brother Gregg to devote their lives to music.

We look at the mechanical advantage of a naturally left-handed player fretting a right-handed guitar, the failed Los Angeles band Hour Glass, and the Muscle Shoals session on Wilson Pickett's cover of Hey Jude where a blistering solo caught the ears of Jerry Wexler and Eric Clapton. From there we follow the for ...