Invent a new way to play an instrument, mentor future legends, score hits, and die young. Then watch someone else take your stage name, tour the world with it, and become more famous as you than you ever were. That is the documented history of John Lee Curtis Williamson, the original Sonny Boy Williamson, and this episode separates the true innovator from the myth that overwrote him.

We follow his 1914 birth in Madison County, Tennessee, his 1934 move to Chicago during the Great Migration, and the cross-harp technique and hand-cupping that turned the harmonica from a novelty into a lead instrument. We revisit the 1937 Bluebird sessions with Lester Melrose that produced “Good Morning, School Girl,” recordings made in the Sky Club atop Aurora’s Leland Tower Hotel, his mentorship of Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Junior Wells, and the June 1, 1948 robbery that killed him at 34 a block and a half from his front door. Then we examine how Rice Miller appropriated the name, why labels let it happen, and how the imposter’s longevity let him claim the 1960s blues revival.

• Why drawing air through a mismatched key lets a player bend reeds into wailing blue notes
• What a number four hit on the race records chart meant in 1947
• The last session with Big Joe Williams and the grave that stayed unmarked until 1991
• Enoch Williams and the free-for-all of copycat Sonny Boys
• Randy Newman’s 2017 song imagining the original Williamson confronting Miller from heaven