Hour Five of this week’s Blues Before Sunrise feels like the living echo of Jim O’Neal’s life’s work. After two hours of reflection on the chronicler himself, Steve Cushing turns to the music O’Neal loved most: the real, unfiltered Blues played by artists who carried the tradition from front porch to studio and from acoustic to electric. These are the men who shaped postwar Chicago — their guitars, harmonicas, and voices defining what the world came to know as the modern Blues sound.

The hour opens with Robert Jr. Lockwood, one of the most intellectually and musically complex figures in Blues history. “I Am to Blame,” “Dust My Broom,” “Angel Child,” and “Little Queen of Spades” connect the dots between the rural Delta and the amplified Chicago scene. Lockwood was, of course, Robert Johnson’s stepson and protégé — a player who absorbed Johnson’s intricate chord work and reimagined it for the electric age. His phrasing, half jazz sophistication and half raw country edge, captures exactly what Jim O’Neal sought to preserve: continuity within change.

Robert Nighthawk’s “Down the Line” follows, his signature slide guitar tone smooth and mournful, a perfect counterpoint to Lockwood’s sharp elegance. Nighthawk’s sessions for United and Aristocrat Records in the late 1940s laid the groundwork for the Chicago slide style later carried by Muddy Waters and Elmore James. His music has the easy grace of someone who didn’t need to shout to make himself heard.

Memphis Slim’s “Gonna Need My Help Someday” and Big Walter Horton’s “Blues in the Morning” carry the program deeper into the South Side. Slim’s stately piano lines and Horton’s warm, fat-toned harmonica are reminders that Chicago’s urban sound always rested on rural foundations. Both men were storytellers as well as musicians, and both benefited from the kind of serious documentation that Living Blues championed.

From there, Cushing moves into a compact but potent stretch of postwar guitar heroes. Joe Hill Louis’s “We All Gotta Go Sometime” keeps the drive alive with his raw, one-man-band energy, while Johnny Young’s “Money-Takin’ Woman” reminds listeners of the mandolin’s place in electric Blues — a high, keening countervoice to the growl of the guitar.

Then come the Kings. Freddy King turns up the heat with “Now I Got a Woman” and “Man Hole,” both propelled by his ferocious picking and impeccable rhythmic sense. B.B. King follows with “Think It Over” and “Don’t Answer the Door,” two masterpieces of control and dynamics. In their very different ways, both men distilled the lessons of T-Bone Walker into new, unmistakably personal statements.

Bobby “Blue” Bland enters next with “That’s the Way Love Is” and “Queen for a Day,” his voice smoky and regal, proof that the Blues could hold its own in the world of sophisticated soul. Bland’s music represented the maturation of the Blues — the same kind of evolution O’Neal’s writing documented as the genre grew beyond its regional roots.

The set closes with Ike Turner’s “Sad as a Man Can Be” and “I’m Tore Up,” fierce and stylish performances that remind listeners how easily the Blues could cross into rock and rhythm. Turner’s bandleading discipline and drive made him both controversial and indispensable, a figure as complex as the genre itself.

Hour Five stands as a kind of living appendix to the Jim O’Neal conversation — a panorama of the very musicians whose names he spent his career writing down, recording, and preserving. Together, they tell the story of how the Delta found electricity, and how the Blues found the modern world.

Hour 5 Playlist

I AM TO BLAME – Robert Jr. Lockwood

DUST MY BROOM – Robert Jr. Lockwood

ANGEL CHILD – Robert Jr. Lockwood

LITTLE QUEEN OF SPADES – Robert Jr. Lockwood

DOWN THE LINE – Robert Nighthawk

GONNA NEED MY HELP SOMEDAY – Memphis Slim

BLUES IN THE MORNING – Big Walter Horton

WE ALL GOTTA GO SOMETIME – Joe Hill Louis

MONEY-TAKIN’ WOMAN – Johnny Young

NOW I GOT A WOMAN – Freddy King

MAN HOLE – Freddy King

THINK IT OVER – B.B. King

DON’T ANSWER THE DOOR – B.B. King

THAT’S THE WAY LOVE IS – Bobby Bland

QUEEN FOR A DAY – Bobby Bland

SAD AS A MAN CAN BE – Ike Turner

I’M TORE UP – Ike Turner