In 1962, one of the architects of Memphis rhythm and blues walked away from music to run a laundry business in Queens, New York, bought with money he won in a poker game holding nothing but a pair of deuces. Rosco Gordon was born in Memphis in 1928, the youngest of eight children, and learned piano entirely by ear by mimicking his sister's lessons. After winning a 1950 talent show at the Palace Theater on Beale Street, he landed a WDIA radio show through Rufus Thomas and fell in with the Beale Streeters alongside Johnny Ace, Bobby Bland, and B.B. King. His off-beat piano style, known as the Rosco rhythm, soon made him a hot commodity for rival talent scouts Sam Phillips and Ike Turner.

This episode traces how Gordon recorded the same song, Booted, for two competing labels, how the resulting settlement traded him for Howlin' Wolf, and how fl ...