A teenage soldier named Jimi Hendrix used to sneak off his base, risking court martial, to watch a guitarist command the stage in the Pacific Northwest. That guitarist was David William Kearney, better known as Guitar Shorty, and within a decade he would be wiping grease off his hands as a daytime mechanic. This episode traces the staggering gap between innovation and industry survival, starting with Kearney’s birth on September 8, 1934, his upbringing in Kissimmee, Florida, guitar lessons from his uncle, and the night at 16 when a Tampa club marquee spontaneously billed him as Guitar Shorty, a name he kept for life.

By his teens he had toured a year with Ray Charles, cut his first single, You Don’t Treat Me Right, for the Cobra label in 1957 under Willie Dixon’s direction, fronted a band at New Orleans’ Dew Drop Inn alongside T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner and Little Richard, and moved west at 19 to play with Sam Cooke. The hosts explain why a phenomenal sideman rarely became a solo star and how loud club stages inadvertently birthed the overdriven rock guitar sound. In Seattle he married Marsha, Jimi Hendrix’s stepsister, in 1962, introduced Hendrix to the wah-wah pedal and loaned him his own, and also influenced Buddy Guy. The 1970s brought a mechanic’s day job, a 1976 Gong Show win playing guitar while standing on his head, and eventually a late renaissance: a 2002 Bo Diddley tribute, Alligator Records in 2004, and Billboard blues chart entries with Watch Your Back and We the People. After his van and gear were stolen in 2016, the blues community rallied with benefits, and he kept recording with Swamp Dogg until his death in Los Angeles on April 20, 2022 at 87.

• The Tampa marquee that named him and the teenage years with Ray Charles, Willie Dixon and Sam Cooke
• How competing with horn sections in packed clubs helped invent aggressive, overdriven rock guitar
• Marrying into the Hendrix family and the wah-wah pedal loan that shaped 1960s rock
• Fixing carburetors by day and winning The Gong Show playing upside down: hustle versus tragedy
• Alligator Records, Billboard chart success in his 70s, the 2016 theft, and a final album with Swamp Dogg