Earl Hooker's warm-up instrumental was secretly recorded, sold to Chess Records, and released with Muddy Waters' vocals pasted over it as You Shook Me. Then he went back and did it again on purpose. Born in 1930 near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and raised in Chicago after his family joined the Great Migration, Hooker was a cousin of John Lee Hooker, picked up the guitar around age ten, and, because of a severe lifelong stutter, poured his voice into the instrument rather than singing. By twelve he was busking on Chicago street corners with Bo Diddley and riding streetcars all day playing for tips with Junior Wells while dodging truancy officers.

This episode explores how Hooker fused the showmanship and jazz chords of T-Bone Walker with the vocal-like slide of mentor Robert Nighthawk, playing slide in standard tuning with a short steel slide s ...