Cornelius Green III was born in 1928 on the Dugas plantation near Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and spent his early adult years in punishing manual labor: a casino porter in Jefferson Parish, a rice mill hand, a construction hauler, a truck driver, and finally a shift worker at a Gulf oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. Music was his release valve. After guitar lessons from a cousin and a fixation on John Lee Hooker's Boogie Chillen and the melancholy of Muddy Waters, he was jamming at the Blue Moon Club in Lake Charles in 1955 when Clifton Chenier invited him to join the Zydeco Ramblers as second guitarist. The tour took him to Chicago and Los Angeles, where he fell asleep in the middle of an audition for producer Bumps Blackwell, losing his shot at a major deal and inspiring Chenier's song The Cat's Dream.

That botched audition turned out to ...