As a kid with no money for an instrument, Francis Hillman Blackwell built his first guitar out of a cigar box, scrap wood, and discarded wire. Born in 1903 in Syracuse, South Carolina, one of sixteen children, and raised in Indianapolis from the age of three, he earned the nickname Scrapper from his grandmother for his fiery temperament, taught himself guitar and piano, and was gigging as far away as Chicago while still a teenager. His 1928 partnership with pianist Leroy Carr produced How Long, How Long Blues, the biggest blues hit of that year, and helped define the polished, structured urban blues sound of the piano-guitar duo.

This episode traces how Blackwell's solo recording Kokomo Blues was reworked by Kokomo Arnold and then Robert Johnson into Sweet Home Chicago, how he walked out on Vocalion in 1931 to force equal songwriting credit ...