In 1962, at the height of the folk and blues revival, researchers finally tracked down a missing legend of the 1930s blues scene working a quiet factory job in Chicago. They offered him adoring young audiences and a lucrative return to the stage. He shrugged, said he had no interest, and went back to his shift. That man was James Kokomo Arnold, a reluctant pioneer whose slide guitar and lyrics became the raw open-source code behind Sweet Home Chicago, Milk Cow Blues and the phrase dust my broom. This episode traces his chronological journey from Lovejoy Station, Georgia, where even his birth year is disputed between 1901 and 1896.

We follow Arnold through farm work in Buffalo, steel mills in Pittsburgh, and a profitable Chicago bootlegging operation during Prohibition, with a brief 1930 Memphis detour to record two sides for Victor as Gitfi ...