In a smoky 1930s Pittsburgh club, a club owner pulled a gun on a teenage piano player and ordered him behind the drum kit so a young Erroll Garner could take the keys. That disputed but legendary story is the origin of Art Blakey, the self-taught pianist who became the thunderous architect of hard bop. This episode follows him from a childhood of profound hardship, through touring with Mary Lou Williams and Fletcher Henderson, a police beating in Georgia that left a steel plate in his skull, and a seat in Billy Eckstine's big band alongside Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie.

We examine his trip to West Africa, which he insisted was about religion and philosophy rather than drumming, his conversion to Islam and the name behind his nickname Bu, the techniques he brought back, and the four-limb independence and violent hi-hat sn ...