Grant Green was so consumed by self-doubt that his first recording session as a bandleader for Blue Note Records sat in a vault for decades, released only in 2001 as First Session. This episode explores how that hesitant, self-taught guitarist from St. Louis became the label's most-recorded musician of the early 1960s and, long after his death, one of the most sampled artists in modern music. Born June 6, 1935, to a policeman father who played folk and blues, he took a year of lessons from Forrest Alcorn but mostly learned from records, modeling his phrasing on horn players like Charlie Parker and Lester Young rather than guitarists. Gospel gigs at 13 taught him to make a single note matter more than ten fast ones.

The hosts recount how Lou Donaldson heard him in a St. Louis bar in 1959 and brought him to New York, how Alfred Lion respected ...