This edition of Blues Before Sunrise moves through an unusually wide field of blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, vocal-group music, gospel, and postwar Chicago sounds before devoting its fourth hour to the Chicago Blues Fest. Across its five hours, the program favors carefully assembled sequences rather than a single stylistic lane, connecting solo performers, vocal ensembles, bandleaders, and instrumental voices through changing moods and recording approaches.

The opening hour establishes that breadth immediately. Elder Charles Beck and Winehead Willie set an early blues-centered tone, followed by a substantial run of Billy Eckstine and Ella Fitzgerald. Eckstine’s “Out in the Cold Again,” “Room with a View,” “A Sure Thing,” and “Fool That I Am” create a concentrated vocal section, while Fitzgerald’s selections extend the focus on singers and standards. “But Not for Me,” “You Got What Egts Me,” “It Was Written in the Stars,” and “Now It Can Be Told” give the hour a sustained, songbook-oriented center before Wild Bill Davis and Johnny Hodges bring another kind of ensemble presence. Cats & the Fiddle, Meade Lux Lewis, Bert Williams, and Eddie Lockjaw Davis complete an hour built on contrast and continuity.

Hour 2 shifts toward a stronger rhythm-and-blues and blues-programming profile. Richard Berry opens the door, and Ella Johnson and Buddy Johnson receive a particularly meaningful stretch of the hour. Their selections alternate among individual voices and shared program momentum, including “Any Day Now,” “A Pretty Girl,” “My Old Man,” “Send Out for a Bucket of Beer,” and “Bittersweet.” Big Joe Turner then becomes the hour’s major recurring figure, with four titles that reinforce the program’s attention to an artist through multiple recordings rather than a single representative cut.

That second-hour range continues through Little Brother Montgomery, Edith North Johnson, Johnny Temple, and the Cotton Belt Quartet, before gospel voices reshape the closing sequence. Rev. W.M. Rimson, Sister Ernestine Washington, the National Clouds of Joy, and the Flying Clouds of Detroit give the hour a deliberate final turn. The movement from blues and rhythm-and-blues material into sacred recordings is one of the program’s most notable structural decisions.

The third hour goes deeper into a stark, varied blues selection. Skip James appears twice at the outset, followed by paired Henry Townsend performances. From there, the hour moves through Bill Pearson, Sugar Underwood, Mamie Smith, Leona Williams, Hocial Thomas, Lavinia Turner, Marilyn Davis, Lucille Bogan, Walter Roland, Bumble Bee Slim, Blind Teddy Darby, Big Boy Teddy Edwards, and Chain Gang. The result is a long-form blues sequence that continually changes artist and title while retaining a strong overall identity.

Hour 4 is the program’s special Chicago Blues Fest segment. The supplied notes identify sets by Smokey Smothers & The Ice Cream Men, Floyd Jones in his last public performance, and John Brim with Scott Bradbury. Little Willie Littlefield adds a Houston connection to the festival-centered hour. The special places performance documentation and Chicago blues programming at the center of the broadcast.

The fifth hour provides a broad closing survey. Delta Rhythm Boys, Milt Jackson, Dinah Washington, Johnny Hartman, Shirley Scott, Brook Benton, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Robert Nighthawk, Big John Wrencher Johnson, Sunnyland Slim, Little Milton, and Fleetwood Mac carry the show through vocal, jazz, blues, and electric material. Its final sequence—from Little Milton’s two selections to “Albatross” by Fleetwood Mac—brings the five-hour program to a distinctive close.