In 1954, Guitar Slim had the number one rhythm and blues record in the country and a sold-out Southern tour when a car accident sidelined him. Promoters turned to a young New Orleans musician who had been imitating Slim at the Dew Drop Inn and sent him on the road to pass as the star. That trial by fire launched the career of Earl Silas Johnson IV, better known as Earl King, and this episode explores how he became both a charting frontman and the invisible foundation of an entire city’s sound.

We follow his gospel roots, the pragmatic switch to the blues, his 1955 breakthrough “Those Lonely Lonely Nights” on Ace Records, and the Imperial Records sessions with Dave Bartholomew, James Booker, and arranger Wardell Quezergue that produced “Come On” and “Trick Bag.” We look at the lost years after 1963, including shelved Motown recordings, the pivot to songwriting that gave Professor Longhair “Big Chief” and Lee Dorsey “Do-Re-Mi,” the “Street Parade” album with Allen Toussaint and the Meters that Atlantic declined to release, and his Grammy-nominated late-career renaissance on Black Top Records.

• How church projection gave his blues voice a raw, tearing urgency
• Why imitating Guitar Slim functioned as an apprenticeship rather than a trap
• “Come On” as covered by Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and “Trick Bag” by Johnny Winter, the Meters, and Robert Palmer
• “Glazed” with Roomful of Blues, “Sexual Telepathy,” and “Hard River to Cross”
• His death on April 17, 2003 and the funeral held during Jazz Fest with Dr. John, Leo Nocentelli, and Aaron Neville in attendance