In 1959 producer John Hammond took out a missing persons ad in Variety to find one of the architects of 1920s American music. Ida Cox, billed as the Uncrowned Queen of the Blues, was living quietly in Knoxville, Tennessee, 14 years after a stroke ended her career mid-performance. This episode traces her from the shadow of Georgia's Riverside plantation, where she was born Ida Prather, through running away at 14 to join White and Clark's Black and Tan Minstrels, the brutal TOBA vaudeville circuit with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and a 1922 Memphis radio broadcast on WMC that made her a major name.

Beyond the stage, we examine her aggressive entrepreneurship: recording 78 sides for Paramount alongside Lovie Austin and Tommy Ladnier while secretly cutting records for rival labels as Kate Lewis, Velma Bradley, Julia Powers and Jane Smith; self-f ...