Big Joe Williams did not just play the Delta blues; he engineered his own instrument to survive it. Born in Mississippi in 1903, he spent his early years busking in country stores, back alleys, local bars, and rowdy logging and levee camps, and toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels in the early 1920s. To cut through the noise of those rooms he built a nine-string guitar with unison pairs on the first, second, and fourth strings, wired on a primitive electric pickup, and nailed a pie plate and a dangling beer can to his amplifier so the whole rig rattled and buzzed. The modifications doubled as an anti-theft device, since no other musician could figure out how to play the thing.

This episode follows Williams from the work camps to St. Louis, where producer Lester Melrose signed him to Bluebird Records in 1935 and he cut Baby, Please Don't Go ...