Born Cora Ann Walton on September 28, 1928, in Shelby County, Tennessee, the daughter of a sharecropper, Koko Taylor left the segregated rural South in 1952 with her truck-driving husband Robert Taylor, known as Pops, and headed for Chicago. In the packed, smoke-filled South Side clubs where electric guitars competed with the roar of the city, her rough, powerful voice became a survival tool. This episode traces how that voice caught the ear of Willie Dixon in 1962 and led to Checker Records, a Chess subsidiary, and the million-selling 1966 version of Wang Dang Doodle.

We examine why Dixon gambled on handing a newcomer a song Howlin’ Wolf had already recorded, how Taylor pivoted to relentless touring when the radio hits slowed, and how her 1975 signing with Alligator Records turned her into a legacy album artist with nine albums and eight Grammy nominations. From her 1985 Grammy win to 29 wins at the W.C. Handy Awards, a near-fatal 1989 car crash, roles in Blues Brothers 2000 and Wild at Heart, her own Chicago blues club, and honors including the Blues Hall of Fame and the NEA National Heritage Fellowship, we follow a career that ended on stage at the 2009 Blues Music Awards.

• Why the acoustic blues of the rural South had to go electric to survive in industrial Chicago
• How Taylor claimed Wang Dang Doodle without imitating Howlin’ Wolf’s growl
• The 1967 American Folk Blues Festival tour of Europe with Little Walter and Hound Dog Taylor
• Appearances on the children’s show Arthur with Taj Mahal and a shared stage with jam band Umphrey’s McGee
• Her influence on Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Susan Tedeschi and Shemekia Copeland, and the 2023 National Recording Registry induction of Wang Dang Doodle