In a deafening 1950s Chicago blues club, a guitarist was unknowingly writing the blueprint for California surf rock, the phrasing of the Grateful Dead and the sound that would terrify a young Eric Clapton. This episode explores the life and legacy of Freddie King, one of the three kings of the blues guitar alongside Albert King and B.B. King, none of them related. Born in Texas in 1934 and taught guitar by his mother and uncle by age six, King absorbed the relaxed, open-string acoustic Texas tradition before his family joined the Great Migration to Chicago's South Side in 1949. By 18 he was working in a steel mill, married to Jessie Burnett, starting what would become a family of seven children, and sneaking into clubs to study Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James.

Repeatedly rejected by Chess Records for sounding too much like B.B.  ...