This week’s Blues Before Sunrise moves through five hours of blues, R&B, jazz, vocal groups, spiritual material, and early recordings before arriving at a long-awaited Spotlight on Lefty Bates. The program’s shape is unusually broad, but it holds together through a recurring attention to performers who could make a compact recording feel immediate, whether working under their own names or within a larger band, vocal group, or orchestra.

The opening hour has a strong jump-blues and R&B pull. Timmie Rogers starts the program, then Louis Jordan receives an extended run that includes “Caldonia Boogie,” “Let the Good Times Roll,” and both parts of “Saturday Night Fishfry.” Don & Dewey and Rudy Green carry that motion forward, followed by Little Ester, the Delta Rhythm Boys, Albert Ammons, Miller & Lyle, and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. The result is an hour built around lively changes of pace, with piano, vocal harmony, and band material sharing the room.

Hour 2 centers on major voices and a productive mix of blues, R&B, and spiritual recordings. Nappy Brown opens the hour, while Ray Charles is heard across a substantial sequence: “Hit the Road Jack,” “Unchain My Heart,” “Crying Time,” “You Don’t Know Me,” “Chattanooga-Choo-Choo,” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Grant Jones, Faye Adams, Eddie Chamblee, Leroy Carr, St. Louis Jimmy, and Georgia White extend the hour before a closing group of gospel and spiritual selections by Alphabetical Four, Rev. J.M. Gates, Golden Stars, Golden West Singers, and Flowers of Joy.

The third hour reaches further into pre-war blues, placing Roosevelt Sykes, Buddy Moss, Curley Weaver, Peetie Wheatstraw, Walter Davis, CowCow Davenport, Bessie Smith, Mary Stafford, Ethel Waters, Maggie Jones, Gladys Bentley, and others in close succession. Sonny Boy Williamson I appears twice, while the Mississippi Sheiks and Fred Thompson bring the hour toward its close. The programming makes room for singers, pianists, duos, and string-band material without forcing them into a single narrative.

Hours 4 and 5 provide the show’s special focus. Lefty Bates, a Chicago blues guitarist who made comparatively few recordings as a leader but was much in demand as a session player, is heard in a generous selection drawn from two Koko Mojo CDs containing 56 recordings that feature him. “Rock Alley,” “Chicago Cha-Cha,” “Somebody Will Understand,” “Background,” “Ninety Days,” and “Edna” form the core of Hour 4, alongside recordings by the Chargers, Flamingos, Bertha Henderson, Al Smith Orchestra, Wally Wilson, Four Buddies, Earl Washington, Red Holloway, John Lee Hooker, and Ben Imen.

Hour 5 continues that context with the Charioteers, Lester Young, Arthur Prysock, Georgia Carr, Brother Jack McDuff, Al Smith Orchestra, Honey Brown, the Eldorados, Johnny Pate Quartet, Priscilla Bowman, Earl Washington, the Chargers, Horace Palm, Tiny Topsy, Piney Brown, Tommy Powell, Aristo Kats, and Fleetwood Mac. Together, the final two hours offer a chance to hear Lefty Bates not as an isolated name, but within the varied musical company represented by the recordings.