Was he born in 1905, 1910, 1914, or 1924? Was his name James Williams, James Williamson, or John William Henderson? The life of blues slide guitarist Homesick James resists the tidy record-keeping we expect, and this episode sifts through the shifting facts to trace a career that spanned nearly a century, from self-taught teenager at rural Tennessee country dances to electric pioneer on the South Side of Chicago and revered elder on 1970s European stages.

We explain what slide guitar and open tunings actually do, why trading a tuning was an act of trust in a world without instruction books, and examine his fiercely debated claim that he was Elmore James’ older cousin who bought him his first guitar and taught him slide. We follow his 1932 move to Chicago during the Great Migration, his early adoption of the electric guitar by 1938, the 1952 Chance Records session that gave him his stage name, his years in Elmore James’ band on “Dust My Broom” and “The Sky Is Crying,” and the 1963 night Elmore died of a heart attack on his couch.

• Why rural Black musicians of the era left almost no institutional paper trail, and how history was kept in the music instead
• The Robert Johnson lineage in his raw slide style
• His solo pivot after 1963: “Blues on the South Side” for Prestige and the “Chicago/The Blues/Today!” compilation
• The 1973 and 1975 American Blues Legends tours that gave him a European lifeline
• Fleetwood Mac’s cover of “Gotta Move,” the Deacon Blue shout-out in “Fergus Sings the Blues,” and his death in Springfield, Missouri at 96