In a smoky 1930s Pittsburgh club, a club owner pulled a gun on a teenage piano player and ordered him behind the drum kit so a young Erroll Garner could take the keys. That disputed but legendary story is the origin of Art Blakey, the self-taught pianist who became the thunderous architect of hard bop. This episode follows him from a childhood of profound hardship, through touring with Mary Lou Williams and Fletcher Henderson, a police beating in Georgia that left a steel plate in his skull, and a seat in Billy Eckstine’s big band alongside Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie.

We examine his trip to West Africa, which he insisted was about religion and philosophy rather than drumming, his conversion to Islam and the name behind his nickname Bu, the techniques he brought back, and the four-limb independence and violent hi-hat snap on beats two and four that made Max Roach call him Thunder. Then we look at the Jazz Messengers as an incubator that launched Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, and Terence Blanchard, and ask whether constantly hiring young players was mentorship or brilliant self-preservation.

• Bebop as a flock of birds versus hard bop as a freight train
• How Muslim names offered some Black musicians a pragmatic pass through Jim Crow indignities
• Benny Golson as musical director writing Along Came Betty and Blues March for the band
• Deafness, refusing hearing aids, and playing by the vibrations coming through the stage
• A legacy reaching Chrono Trigger composer Yasunori Mitsuda and an all-star funeral in 1990