In 1940s Detroit, a 16-year-old girl slipped out into the freezing night clutching a forged birth certificate so she could enter amateur singing contests in jazz clubs. Born Lillie Mae Jones in Flint in 1929, Betty Carter grew up in an emotionally distant home where her father was a church musical director, and she later described her childhood as a lonesome trek with no cheering section. This episode traces how Detroit's jazz scene, including encounters with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, became the surrogate family that validated her drive.

The story follows her explosive stint with Lionel Hampton, who fired her seven times in two and a half years over her refusal to abandon bebop improvisation for crowd-pleasing swing, the nickname Betty Bebop she rejected, a decade of grueling dues in the 1950s, and the Ray Charles duets that put B ...