For decades the Delta bluesman known as King Solomon Hill was a ghost. Big Joe Williams falsely claimed the recordings as his own early work, a claim published in Samuel Charters' The Country Blues, and other enthusiasts guessed the singer was actually Sam Collins. This deep dive follows scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow, whose findings were contested by David Evans, as he carried cassette tapes to front porches in rural Louisiana and found four people who recognized the voice as Joe Holmes. The smoking gun came from a retired postal worker: King Solomon Hill was not a stage name but a 1932 mailing address, a community in Sibley, Louisiana centered on the King Solomon Hill Baptist Church, which Paramount Records simply used as his moniker.

The episode reconstructs the life of the self-taught guitarist born near McComb, Mississippi in July 1897, wh ...