In the early 1940s a woman in a flour-dusted apron handed bread to customers at a Chicago bakery, earning enough to feed her seven children. None of them knew she had recorded with Louis Armstrong and helped build the foundation of the blues. This deep dive traces the life of Bertha Chippie Hill, born in 1905, one of 16 children, from either Charleston, South Carolina or Pratt City, Alabama depending on the source. By 13 she was in New York, by 14 she was dancing alongside Ethel Waters at Leroy's in Harlem, where older performers nicknamed her Chippie for being a child in an adult arena.

The episode follows her through the Rabbit's Foot Minstrels with Ma Rainey, her own act on the grueling TOBA circuit, and her 1925 arrival in Chicago, where she recorded 23 titles for OKeh between 1925 and 1929 with Louis Armstrong and Richard M. Jones, inc ...