Allen George Smith learned the harmonica from his mother at age four and spent his teens playing in a country band and a Mississippi gospel group before hitting a problem every street musician faced in the 1940s: nobody could hear him. This episode follows George Harmonica Smith from his birth on April 22, 1924 in West Helena, Arkansas and his upbringing in Cairo, Illinois to Rock Island, Illinois in 1941, where a day job at the Dixie Theater gave him access to an old film projector amplifier. Wiring a microphone to that salvaged amp pushed the tubes past their limits and produced the thick, overdriven harmonica tone that helped define electric blues.

We trace his move to Chicago in 1951, his time in Muddy Waters's band in 1954 and work with Otis Rush, and the 1955 tour with Little Willie John and Champion Jack Dupree that ended in Los Ange ...