Auburn "Pat" Hare was born December 20, 1930 in Cherry Valley, Arkansas, and by the early 1950s he was a sought-after sideman in Memphis, recording at Sun Studio and backing Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Bobby Bland. In 1954, on James Cotton's Cotton Crop Blues and its B-side Hold Me in Your Arms, he pushed a small Sears and Roebuck amplifier far past its limit to produce a tearing, clipped tone that music historians consider the first recorded use of heavy, distorted power chords. This episode breaks down the physics of that sound, why engineers of the day treated it as a mistake, and how stripping the third out of a chord created the emotionally ambiguous, massive wall of sound that heavy metal would later build on.

The story also covers Hare's work with Junior Parker's Little Junior's Blue Flames, his blazing solo on the 1953 track Love ...