Jimmy McCracklin spent more than a decade selling records to one regional community through tiny West Coast labels before a single television appearance turned him into a national pop star overnight. This episode traces the 70-year career of James David Walker Jr., born in 1921 in either Elaine, Arkansas or St. Louis, Missouri depending on the source, who joined the Navy in 1938 and settled in Richmond, California. There he walked into the Club Savoy, owned by his sister-in-law Granny Johnson, a home-cooking hub where the house band backed touring legends like B.B. King and Charles Brown, and where McCracklin absorbed the mechanics of a great band before fronting Jimmy McCracklin and his Blues Blasters in 1946.

We follow his grind through labels like Globe and Modern, the 1957 song The Walk, released on Checker in 1958 and propelled by Amer ...