In the Pottersville sequence of It's a Wonderful Life, an uncredited extra hammers away at a piano in the background of Nick's Bar. That extra was Anderson Meade Lewis, known as Meade Lux Lewis, one of the primary architects of the boogie-woogie craze and a foundational figure in the rhythm of early rock and roll. This episode traces his disputed 1905 birth in Chicago or Louisville, the violin lessons his guitarist father arranged, his switch to piano after his father's death when he was 16, and the shared keyboard sessions with childhood friend Albert Ammons where a new rhythmic language was born.

We follow his 1927 Paramount debut Honky Tonk Train Blues, which he re-recorded for Parlophone, Victor and the Camel Caravan radio show over the next decade, and the 1938 From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall organized by John Hammond ...