This week’s Blues Before Sunrise travels a broad musical road across its five hours, beginning with the buoyant, dance-minded language of early swing and jump blues before moving through blues ballads, pre-war recordings, spiritual material, a concentrated Shakey Jake Harris feature, and a closing hour where jazz and blues continually meet. The program is shaped less as a single style survey than as a sequence of connected listening spaces, each hour bringing a different emphasis while preserving the show’s commitment to voices and recordings from across the blues tradition.

The first hour establishes an animated opening with Mable Lee, Louis Jordan, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Ella Fitzgerald, the Inkspots, Albert Ammons, Paul Robeson, and Illinois Jacquet. Louis Jordan receives an extended run, with “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t,” “Deacon Jones,” “The Chicks I Pick,” and “What’s the Use of Gettin’ Sober” making a substantial center of gravity. Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson follows with four selections, while Ella Fitzgerald’s group of recordings shifts the hour toward a vocal focus that is also carried by the Inkspots and Robeson. Ammons and Jacquet help maintain the hour’s rhythmic momentum.

Hour 2 changes the frame, bringing Saunders King, Roy Hawkins, Cool Papa Smith, Jimmy Witherspoon, Ray Johnson, Louise Johnson, Alberta Hunter, Leroy Carr, Reverend Johnny Blakey, the Five Blind Boys, and Deacon Tom Foger into conversation. Hawkins and Witherspoon each receive multiple selections, giving the hour recurring performers rather than a quick succession of isolated names. The move from the blues material of King, Hawkins, Smith, and Witherspoon to Alberta Hunter and Leroy Carr opens the listening further, while the final spiritual selections provide a clear concluding direction without breaking the hour’s larger continuity.

The third hour reaches deeply into pre-war material, with Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, Blind Willie Johnson, Texas Alexander, Oscar Woods, Evelyn Preer, Juanita Stinnette Chappelle, Louise Anderson, Trixie Smith, Bumble Bee Slim, Walter Davis, and Sunnyland Slim. This is an especially varied sequence of performers and titles. The programming moves from Big Joe Williams and Bukka White through women vocalists including Preer, Chappelle, Anderson, and Smith, then gives sustained space to Bumble Bee Slim and Walter Davis before closing with Sunnyland Slim.

Hour 4 is the week’s special focus: an entire hour of Shakey Jake Harris. The show notes identify Harris as a bluesman born in Earle, Arkansas, who moved to Chicago at seven and worked as a musician, professional gambler, and part-time auto mechanic. The playlist draws from multiple sources, including material associated with the Prestige/Bluesville releases reissued by Jasmine. Twenty-two selections make this a substantial portrait rather than a brief spotlight, spanning “Let Me Be Your Lover Man” through “Further on Up the Road.”

The fifth hour offers a final blend of Delta Rhythm Boys, Milt Jackson, Arthur Prysock, Betty Carter, Jimmy Smith, Toni Harper, Slim Harpo, Bo Diddley, Harmonica George Smith, Little Willie Foster, Clarence Jolly, Lightning Slim, and Fleetwood Mac. Jazz vocal and instrumental names open the hour before the program turns toward Slim Harpo, Bo Diddley, and a late blues sequence that closes with “Albatross.” Across five hours, the show makes room for dance records, ballads, spirituals, pre-war blues, a featured artist, and a carefully balanced jazz-and-blues conclusion.