Wes Montgomery did not invent his revolutionary guitar style as a grand visionary. He did it because he was an exhausted parent in a crowded Indianapolis house who needed to practice without waking his sleeping kids. This episode explores how a working-class welder who did not seriously take up the six-string until age 19 built one of the most recognizable sounds in jazz out of pure everyday necessity.

We look at his Depression-era childhood, the pawn-shop tenor guitar his brother Monk bought with money from selling ice, and the night in 1943 when a Charlie Christian record changed everything. The conversation follows his year of obsessive learning by ear, his double life working days at a milk company and welding while playing clubs until 3 a.m., his two years touring with Lionel Hampton while driving between cities because he feared flyin ...