In December 1964 a 27-year-old saxophonist was invited to play on alternate takes of the opening movement of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, only to have his parts left off the final record until a 2002 reissue. For Archie Shepp, that near miss was barely a footnote. This episode traces his path from Fort Lauderdale and Philadelphia's Germantown neighborhood, where he learned banjo from his father, to Goddard College in Vermont, where he studied drama rather than music, and then into the avant-garde bands of Cecil Taylor and the New York Contemporary Five.

The discussion covers how Coltrane helped Shepp secure an Impulse Records contract, the 1965 albums Ascension, Fire Music, and the split live record New Thing at Newport, the fusion of free jazz and African percussion on The Magic of Ju-Ju, the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algier ...