Silas Hogan got his big break at 51 and was back in a hard hat at an oil refinery three years later, not because audiences left him but because two executives had a falling out. Born in 1911 in Westover, Louisiana, Hogan picked up the guitar as a teenager, gigged from the late 1930s, relocated to Baton Rouge in the early 1950s, and did not sign his first record deal until 1962. This episode looks at the collision of art, blue-collar labor, and the unforgiving economics of the mid-century music business.

The conversation explains how Hogan's move to a Fender electric guitar and the formation of the Rhythm Ramblers, with Isaiah Chapman on lead guitar, Jimmy Dotson on drums, and Sylvester Buckley on harmonica, shaped a sound that marinated for nearly a decade in Baton Rouge juke joints. It follows Slim Harpo's introduction to producer J.D. Mil ...