Kenny Wayne Shepherd went from tearing through cheap plastic toy guitars bought with his grandmother's grocery reward stamps to playing the white Stratocaster Jimi Hendrix used at Woodstock on national television. This episode traces the unorthodox musical education of the blues rock guitarist born Kenneth Wayne Brobst in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1977, the son of radio personality and concert promoter Ken Shepherd, and explains how he reached the top of the industry without ever learning to read a note of written music.

We begin with the Labor Day weekend in 1984 when a seven-year-old Shepherd met Stevie Ray Vaughan, the plywood Yamaha knockoff with punishing high action that built his hand strength, and the cassette-rewinding method that wired his ear to the microtonal blue notes sheet music cannot capture. From a video of his first public ...