Roy Milton was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma in July 1907, the same year the territory became a state, and his family's history is recorded in the Dawes Rolls with his mother listed as a Chickasaw freedman and his father as a non-citizen. This episode follows him from an Oklahoma reservation and the Ernie Fields territory band in Tulsa to Los Angeles in 1933, where he formed the Solid Senders with pianist Camille Howard and helped define the sound that became jump blues.

We unpack why wartime economics forced bands to shrink and play harder, how Milton pressed and sold records on his own labels when major companies ignored his audience, and how his 1945 hit R.M. Blues sold over a million copies for Art Rupe's fledgling company, which became Specialty Records and later signed Little Richard and Sam Cooke. The conversation also covers a 16,000- ...