His music shaped the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and rock and roll itself, yet his birth date is disputed across census and draft records, his death is wrapped in rumors of poisoned coffee, a dog attack, and a Chicago snowstorm, and his grave sat unmarked for nearly 70 years. This episode reconstructs the life of Blind Lemon Jefferson, the blind son of Texas sharecroppers who became the father of the Texas blues.

We follow his eight-hour nightly shifts playing street corners for bootleggers and gamblers, his gospel singing in Buffalo, Texas, and his move around 1912 to Dallas' Deep Ellum district, where a teenage T-Bone Walker guided him from corner to corner in exchange for guitar lessons. We trace how talent scout Mayo Williams brought him to Paramount Records in Chicago, why executives first hid him behind the gospel pseudonym Deacon L.J. Bates, ...