Blues Progressions

A guitar made out of a four-by-four fence post, laughed out of Gibson as "a broomstick with pickups" —and the same man in his garage stacking his own guitar eight times over. The tinkerer who gave rock itsguitar and its studio.
Series setup: rock was built by a network of builders, not one inventor — six episodes, six architects (the previous series was the instruments; this one is who made them possible)
The question: how did the guitar become a rock instrument?
The player first: Waukesha, Wisconsin; the harmonica holder; a phonograph needle wired to a guitar; country as "Rhubarb Red" by day, jazz as Les Paul by night
The railroad rail experiment — why a solid body means sustain and no feedback
The Log (built after hours at the Epiphone factory) and the sawed-in-half archtop "wings"; Gibson's rejection
An honest look at the contested "firsts": the Frying Pan, Bigsby and Merle Travis — Les Paul as one of the pioneers
The Hollywood garage: acetate-disc overdubbing, half-speed guitars, and "Lover"; W. C. Fields and the "octopus"
The 1948 crash and the arm set in the shape of playing; Mary Ford
Bing Crosby's Ampex, the extra playback head, and sound on sound
The eight-track "Octopus" — Les Paul's idea, Ross Snyder and Ampex's machine
The Gibson Les Paul: 1952 goldtop, the humbucker, the sunburst that flopped, the 1961 redesign
Listening Spine: "Lover," "How High the Moon," "Vaya con Dios," plus the Beano album, "East-West," and "Layla"
Blues Progression: Freddie King and Hubert Sumlin → Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Peter Green, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman — the blues rescues the guitar; and the studio-as-instrument idea that leads to Tom Dowd
 

Clap on the two and the four — that push you just felt is the backbeat, the heartbeat of rock and roll.The finale: the instrument that turns a lonely blues into a whole band and decides if a room catches fire.
The blues started without drums (solo Delta guitar + foot stomps); the drum kit is a 20th-century American invention out of New Orleans
The jug-band percussion tradition; the humble hi-hat
The backbeat (emphasis on 2 & 4) — rooted in African polyrhythm and gospel hand-claps — the heartbeat of rock
The groove defined: kick + snare + cymbal = one person playing bass, backbeat, and pulse
The shuffle (triplet swing; Fred Below's Chicago shuffle; the half-time "Purdie shuffle") vs the straight-eighth rock drive (Earl Palmer, the Bo Diddley beat) — the line where blues becomes blues rock
Playing ahead/behind the beat; the pocket
The drummers: Ginger Baker, John Bonham ("When the Levee Breaks"), Charlie Watts, Mitch Mitchell; Al Jackson Jr. the "Human Timekeeper"; the two-drummer Allman Brothers (Butch Trucks & Jaimoe) and the long-form jam
Tone Recipe: kick/snare/hi-hat/ride/toms, sticks vs brushes; ghost notes, fills, hi-hat→ride; tone is in the hands
Progression Spotlight: the drummer narrates the 12-bar (fills at the turnaround, crash on the "one") and conducts the dynamics of a jam
Series wrap-up: all six instruments — cry, roar, answer, roll, ground, pulse — as one conversation
 

Drop your attention to the very bottom of a song — that low, round thing you feel in your chest morethan you hear. Almost nobody notices it, and it's holding the whole song together. The hidden engine.
The bass's unique job: the hinge between rhythm and harmony — root notes define the chords, the kick-lock ("the pocket") drives the groove
Why bass is felt: the physics of low frequencies working on your body
Where it came from: piano left hand, upright/washtub bass, rockabilly slap → Leo Fender's Precision Bass (1951)
The rhythm section: bass + drums as one four-limbed instrument
The players: Willie Dixon (Chess bassist AND songwriter of the blues canon); jazz walking (Ray Brown); James Jamerson's melodic revolution
Blues-rock heroes: Jack Bruce (Cream) & Paul McCartney make bass a voice; Bill Wyman, John Paul Jones; Berry Oakley (Allmans' "third guitar," "Whipping Post"); Duck Dunn & Tommy Shannon (the pocket); Andy Fraser's use of space; Geezer Butler & Roger Glover go heavy
Tone Recipe: P-bass vs J-bass, fingers vs pick, flat vs roundwound; power through clarity, not just boom
Progression Spotlight: rooting, walking, and riffing the 12-bar; octaves, slides, connecting runs; tension & release as forward motion
 

One beat-up upright, one player, and a left hand rolling like a freight train — and suddenly one person is the whole band. The most underappreciated instrument in blues rock: the piano.
The barrelhouse: rough sawmill/turpentine joints where one pianist was the entire band
The two-hand division of labor: left hand = bass + drums, right hand = bluesy melody
Boogie-woogie: the relentless rolling left-hand ostinato — a direct ancestor of the rock beat; Pinetop Smith; the 1938 Carnegie Hall "Spirituals to Swing" craze (Ammons, Johnson, Lewis)
The masters: Roosevelt Sykes, Memphis Slim, Champion Jack Dupree; Otis Spann as Muddy Waters' soulful heart
Crossover to rock and roll: Professor Longhair/Dr. John (New Orleans), Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis; Johnnie Johnson's piano behind Chuck Berry's riffs
Gospel fusion: Ray Charles ("What'd I Say") invents soul; the church piano teaches rock to reach the heavens
The Hammond B3 & Leslie: Booker T, Al Kooper, Deep Purple, Procol Harum; Gregg Allman & Chuck Leavell; Ian Stewart, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins
Tone Recipe: acoustic piano vs Hammond+Leslie vs Wurlitzer/Rhodes; the blue-note "crush"; comping
Progression Spotlight: 12-bar in full view — dominant-seventh harmony, turnarounds, the left hand as bass + roadmap, gospel passing chords

A few bucks, fits in your pocket, no strings or keys — and in the right hands, cupped around a mic, it moans like a sax and cuts through a whole band like a siren. The biggest small instrument in the blues.
What a harmonica actually is: free reeds, the ten-hole diatonic, cheap Hohner Marine Band, the "Mississippi saxophone"
The two magic tricks: bending (shaping the note inside your throat) and cross harp / second position
Early voices: DeFord Bailey's train pieces, Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy Williamson I making it a lead instrument
The big bang: Little Walter cups a bullet mic + amp, cuts "Juke" (#1 R&B, 1952) — a new instrument
Sonny Boy Williamson II (King Biscuit Time, "Help Me"); Big Walter Horton, James Cotton, Junior Wells & Buddy Guy; Howlin' Wolf
The swampy side: Jimmy Reed & Slim Harpo → the Rolling Stones
Into blues rock: the Stones, Yardbirds, Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Magic Dick, John Popper; the harp rack & folk-rock
Tone Recipe: a harp in every key, cross harp, tongue-blocking, bending, hand-wah & throat vibrato, bullet mic + tube amp
Progression Spotlight: call-and-response over 12-bar, the IV-chord draw chord "freight-train" chug, melody + rhythm at once
 

The problem amplification solved: guitar from background rhythm to lead voice
Pickups, sustain, grit — why an electric guitar is a new instrument, not a loud acoustic
Charlie Christian invents the guitar solo; T-Bone Walker invents electric blues lead ("Stormy Monday")
Muddy Waters' Delta muscle; jump blues; Chuck Berry as the blues→rock-and-roll hinge
The solidbody revolution: Fender Telecaster/Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul
The voice takes over: B.B. King's vibrato & Lucille, Albert King's bends, Freddie King; Buddy Guy's fire
Blues becomes blues rock: Clapton's "Beano" Les Paul-into-Marshall, Cream; Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page; Hendrix reinvents everything; SRV carries it on; the Southern-rock twin-guitar branch
Tone Recipe: solidbody + cranked tube amp, single-coils vs humbuckers, bending & vibrato, wah/fuzz — and why tone is in the fingers
Progression Spotlight: 12-bar, shuffle vs straight-eighths, the pentatonic box, question-and-answer phrasing, double-stops & hammer-ons
 

There's a sound in the blues that doesn't play notes so much as it cries them. That's slide guitar — the instrument that sounds most like a human voice weeping and singing at once. We start the series here.
Why slide sounds like a voice: gliding between pitches, no frets, the notes between the notes
Delta roots: W.C. Handy's Tutwiler train-station encounter, the diddley bow, Hawaiian steel, resonator guitars, gospel slide
Open tunings (open G/D/E) — how one bar of glass plays the whole 12-bar
The players: Son House, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Tampa Red, Blind Willie McTell → Muddy Waters & Robert Nighthawk electrify it in Chicago → Elmore James turns it into a rock riff ("Dust My Broom") → Duane Allman makes it soar (At Fillmore East, "Statesboro Blues," "Layla") → Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Bonnie Raitt carry it on
Tone Recipe: glass vs metal slide, open tunings, light touch + heavy muting + vibrato, tube-amp sustain
Progression Spotlight: the 12-bar blues, I–IV–V, turnarounds, minor-key variation, blue notes
 

The finale brings it home to right now. Joe Bonamassa as the model for the modern DIY blues-rock empire (and his Royal Albert Hall night with Clapton); Gary Clark Jr. fusing the blues with everything modern ("This Land"); Kingfish carrying it straight out of Clarksdale, mentored by Buddy Guy — the living, unbroken chain. The 2000s garage-blues wave (White Stripes, Black Keys) that snuck the blues back onto the radio; Marcus King at the blues/Southern-rock crossroads; Larkin Poe and Samantha Fish leading a more open genre; the global scene; and streaming putting the whole 100-year history in your pocket. Then the close: six episodes recapped as one unbroken, hand-to-hand river — and the host's parting gift, handing the listener the thread, with a promise that Blues Progressions keeps going.
 

The loudest, most virtuosic chapter. The power trio as an invention (Cream) that forces the guitar into godhood; the extended live jam traced straight back to call-and-response; "Crossroads" as a Robert Johnson song turned rocket; the Marshall-stack volume arms race; Clapton and Duane Allman's "Layla" crossing threads with the Southern Rock series. Then Hendrix — a chitlin'-circuit bluesman to the core, discovered by a Brit and flown to London, who used feedback and the studio as instruments, called his music the "electric church," and turned the national anthem into a howl at Woodstock. And Johnny Winter — Texas fire who turned around and produced Muddy Waters' Grammy-winning comeback, paying the whole debt back. The secret hero throughout: volume itself as a new expressive tool.
 

The wilderness and the morning after. How disco, punk, new wave, and hair metal pushed blues rock to the margins (Muddy Waters died in '83; the industry called the blues a museum piece) — and how it survived underground in clubs, festivals (the Chicago Blues Festival launched in '84), and the hands of the faithful. Robert Cray and George Thorogood cracking the door; then the full revival: Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time," Gary Moore's "Still Got the Blues," Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker finally getting paid while alive, Clapton's "Unplugged" and "From the Cradle" walking a mass audience back to the Delta — and SRV's 1990 death turning him into a north star. The host's own chapter: never stopping listening, the Allman/Gov't Mule/Tedeschi-Trucks lineage, and running sound & lights for the NJ blues/Southern-rock cover band Crossfire — keeping the flame lit in the small rooms.