This week’s five-hour Blues Before Sunrise moves with the freedom of a program that has no single theme hour, yet it finds a strong shape in the way styles and voices answer one another. The opening hour settles into a polished, urban-minded sequence built around Milt Buckner, Dinah Washington, Joe Williams, Wild Bill Davis, Deek Watson & Brown Dots, Gene Rogers, Sissle & Blake, and Jackie Davis. “New York, Chicago, & Los Angeles” gives the hour an expansive frame, while Washington’s set holds the center with four consecutive selections. Joe Williams follows with another sustained run, and the programming gives both singers enough room to establish their presence rather than treating them as brief stops in a long list.

That first hour’s flow favors vocal authority, piano-led momentum, and a measured sense of swing. Wild Bill Davis supplies a substantial instrumental passage, and the sequence around “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” “April in Paris,” “Rough Ridin’,” and “Azure Te” opens the hour outward before the later selections bring it back to concise song form. The program then turns toward a broader run of rhythm-and-blues and piano blues in Hour 2, where Ruth Brown, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Cecil Gant, Percy Mayfield, Chuck Willis, Smiley Lewis, Eddie Bo, Fats Domino, and James Booker create an especially varied center section.

Hour 2 also makes room for early recordings by Crippled Clarence and Rosa Henderson before closing in a sequence of sacred vocal performances. Golden Gate Quartet, Rev. J.M. Gates, Spirit of Memphis Quartet, Harmonizing Four, and Wings Over Jordan shift the hour’s emphasis without breaking the program’s wider interest in strong voices and distinctive piano work. That movement from dance-minded material to spiritual music is one of the week’s clearest structural turns.

The third hour reaches farther back, concentrating on pre-war blues and related recordings by Calvin Frazier, Charley Patton, Charlie McCoy, Big Joe Williams, Blind Teddy Darby, Yank Rachell, Sammy Hill, Will Ezell, Little Brother Montgomery, Irene Scruggs, Lillian Miller, Tecumseh McDowell, Dora Carr, and Hammer Ring Chain Gang. The sequence is broad in personnel and pacing, with multiple selections from Charley Patton and Little Brother Montgomery giving the hour internal anchors. It is a compact survey of individual voices, piano pieces, duets, and band names drawn together by programming rather than by a stated theme.

Hour 4 brings the show into a tougher post-war frame. Howlin’ Wolf receives a three-song opening stretch, followed by Snooky Pryor, Jimmy Rogers, Floyd Jones, Jr. Wells, Earl Hooker, B.B. King, Johnny Ace, Little Milton, Billy “The Kid” Emerson, Lonnie “The Cat,” Ike Turner, the Flairs, and Bobby Bland. The hour’s progression makes space for familiar blues names while preserving the contrast of singers, guitarists, harmonies, and rhythm-and-blues sides.

The final hour closes with an unusual and satisfying blend. Basin Street Boys, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Hartman, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Scott, and Cats N Jammers establish a jazz-oriented opening before Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Freddy King, Guitar Slim, and Fleetwood Mac carry the program through blues and guitar-centered selections. The result is a five-hour show that trusts contrast: piano and organ, jazz phrasing and blues directness, sacred ensembles and solitary voices, older recordings and later interpretations.