Long before Keith Moon or John Bonham, Gene Krupa drew up the blueprint for the drummer as star, and he did it playing acoustic jazz in the 1930s. Born in Chicago in 1909, the youngest of nine children in a devout Polish Catholic family, he spent a year at St. Joseph's College studying for the priesthood before leaving to gig around Wisconsin and Chicago, joining Thelma Terry and her Playboys at the Golden Pumpkin in 1927 and insisting on a full bass drum in a recording session that same year.

The episode covers his rise with Benny Goodman, the extended drum solos on Sing Sing Sing, the friction that led him to leave after the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, and his hardware innovations with Slingerland and Avedis Zildjian, including tunable tom-toms and the modern hi-hat. It also examines his 1943 San Francisco drug arrest, his rebuilding with ...