An artist vanishes in the mid-1940s and resurfaces years later with a new name, an electrified guitar and a heavy sound to rival the greatest legends of Chicago blues. This episode reconstructs the life of Robert Nighthawk, born Robert Lee McCollum in Helena, Arkansas on November 30, 1909, and father of bluesman Sam Carr. He left home young to busk through southern Mississippi, played with the Memphis Jug Band, and learned slide guitar from mentor Houston Stackhouse, with whom he performed on the radio in Jackson, Mississippi. In the mid-1930s, in the genteel wording of the historical record, he found it advisable to take his mother's maiden name, becoming Robert Lee McCoy, and relocated to St. Louis alongside Henry Townsend, Big Joe Williams and Sonny Boy Williamson.

We cover his May 1937 solo recording Prowling Nighthawk, the 1938 Victor  ...