In the summer of 1969, a 32-year-old guitarist set the Ann Arbor Blues Festival on fire, and international bookings began pouring in. Before the year ended, he was gone. Samuel Gene Maghett, known to the world as Magic Sam, was born on Valentine's Day 1937 in Grenada County, Mississippi, taught himself guitar by reverse-engineering Muddy Waters and Little Walter records, and moved to Chicago in 1956 at 19. Within a year he was recording for Cobra Records, where bass player and childhood friend Mack Thompson pointed out that Maghett Sam said quickly sounded like Magic Sam, and a persona was born.

This episode explores how Sam, alongside Otis Rush and Buddy Guy, built the West Side Sound: a stripped-down, modern urban blues in which he played rhythm and lead at the same time and cranked the tremolo on a cheap amplifier to fill a small club. I ...