Carey Bell was born on November 14, 1936 in Macon, Mississippi, a boy obsessed with Louis Jordan who wanted a saxophone his family could not afford. Handed a harmonica instead, the so-called Mississippi saxophone, he taught himself to make it wail like a horn by studying DeFord Bailey, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter and both Sonny Boy Williamsons. He was proficient by age eight and working professionally at 13 in the band of his godfather, pianist Lovie Lee, who brought him to Chicago in September 1956. There he sought out Little Walter at the Club Zanzibar and studied under Big Walter Horton, just as the louder, cheaper electric guitar was squeezing harmonica players out of club work.

This episode follows how Bell survived that shift by learning electric bass from Hound Dog Taylor, and how years of laying down bass lines rewired his harmonica phrasing into the percussive, rhythmic chug that became his signature. It covers his 1969 Delmark debut Carey Bell’s Blues Harp, the American Folk Blues Festival tour and a live recording at the Royal Albert Hall, touring with Muddy Waters, joining Willie Dixon’s Chicago Blues All-Stars, a 1972 Alligator duo album with Big Walter Horton, the best-selling 1990 Harp Attack! sessions with Junior Wells, James Cotton and Billy Branch, and his late-career solo peak with Deep Down in 1995 and Good Luck Man in 1997. It closes with his 1998 Blues Music Award, his recordings with his son, guitarist Lurrie Bell, his death in Chicago on May 6, 2007, and his 2023 posthumous induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.

• How wanting a saxophone shaped a completely different approach to the diatonic harmonica
• Why Chicago club owners in the late 1950s replaced harmonica players with electric guitar trios
• How playing bass gave Bell’s harp its locked-in, drum-like drive
• Why it took more than two decades with Alligator Records before his first full solo album on the label
• The father-and-son partnership with Lurrie Bell on Deep Down, Second Nature and a 2007 Delmark live set