W.C. Clark left Austin convinced its R&B scene was dead, joined Joe Tex's national touring band, then quit two weeks after sitting in on bass at an East Austin jam with Jimmie Vaughan and Paul Ray. Born Wesley Curley Clark on November 16, 1939, he started in a church choir, picked up guitar around 14, absorbed jazz and blues, and drew attention from Big Joe Turner, Albert Collins and Little Johnny Taylor before that fateful night sent him home for good.

This episode looks at how he built rather than joined a scene: forming the W.C. Clark Blues Revue in 1975, playing the Triple Threat Revue with Lou Ann Barton and a young Stevie Ray Vaughan, teaching Charlie and Will Sexton as kids, and being honored on Austin City Limits for his 50th birthday in 1989. It also confronts the March 1997 van crash near Sherman, Texas that killed his fiancee ...