In an early 1920s New Orleans alleyway, a kid sits at a discarded upright piano with keys missing, inventing new fingering patterns and percussive slaps to fill the gaps. That kid was Henry Roeland Byrd, who the world came to know as Professor Longhair, or Fess. This episode traces how a man who laid the rhythmic blueprint for funk ended up sweeping floors as a janitor before the world realized he was a genius.

We explore how New Orleans’ Caribbean connections fed him mambo, rumba, and calypso, and how he married boogie-woogie to a 2-3 clave and a habanera bass line to create what locals called rumba boogie. We follow his 1948 naming at the Caldonia Club, the 1950 national hit “Bald Head,” regional anthems “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” and “Tipitina,” the 1957 stroke, “Big Chief” with Earl King in 1964, and the years of poverty and gambling that followed, until Allison Miner and Quint Davis spotted him outside a record shop in 1971 and booked him for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, where the crowd abandoned three other stages to hear him.

• Why one hand in Havana and one hand in the blues took the swing out of American rhythm
• How Fats Domino sanded down the rumba boogie blueprint for a mainstream audience
• Newport, Montreux, and the 1975 Queen Mary party where Paul McCartney hired him
• “Crawfish Fiesta,” PBS Soundstage with Dr. John and the Meters, and the documentary that became his memorial
• Tipitina’s, founded in 1977 to give him a home stage, and his direct line to James Brown’s funk