Born Ioannis Alexandros Veliotes to Greek immigrants in California, Johnny Otis grew up around his father's grocery store in a predominantly Black Berkeley neighborhood and made a deliberate, lifelong choice to live within Black culture. This episode explores how that choice produced the godfather of rhythm and blues, a bandleader, producer, talent scout, DJ, author, politician, and preacher whose life doubles as a front-row seat to the birth of rock and roll.

We cover the forged credit slip that bought his first drum set, his 1941 marriage to Phyllis Walker when the couple had to elope to Reno, the big-band hit "Harlem Nocturne," and the 1947 Barrelhouse Club in Watts where shrinking a swing orchestra to a hard-driving rhythm section helped invent the rhythm and blues sound. We look at his discoveries of Little Esther Phillips, Jackie Wils ...