Born Cora Ann Walton on September 28, 1928, in Shelby County, Tennessee, the daughter of a sharecropper, Koko Taylor left the segregated rural South in 1952 with her truck-driving husband Robert Taylor, known as Pops, and headed for Chicago. In the packed, smoke-filled South Side clubs where electric guitars competed with the roar of the city, her rough, powerful voice became a survival tool. This episode traces how that voice caught the ear of Willie Dixon in 1962 and led to Checker Records, a Chess subsidiary, and the million-selling 1966 version of Wang Dang Doodle.

We examine why Dixon gambled on handing a newcomer a song Howlin' Wolf had already recorded, how Taylor pivoted to relentless touring when the radio hits slowed, and how her 1975 signing with Alligator Records turned her into a legacy album artist with nine albums and eight G ...