Frankie Lee Sims claimed a birthday that never existed, February 29, 1906, but the real story of this Texas bluesman is stranger and richer than any fabricated calendar date. Born in New Orleans in 1917 to two guitar-playing parents, with Texas Alexander as an uncle and Lightnin' Hopkins as a cousin, Sims learned from Little Hat Jones in Marshall, Texas, then ran away from home at 12 to work as a traveling musician. By the late 1930s he was living a double life in Palestine, Texas: a respectable schoolteacher during the week and a hard-driving juke joint guitarist on weekends.

This episode traces how three years in the Marine Corps during World War II pushed Sims to abandon teaching and settle in Dallas, where crowded Deep Ellum clubs forced him to go electric alongside T-Bone Walker and Smokey Hogg. We dig into his 1953 regional hit Lucy M ...