This week on Blues Before Sunrise, Steve Cushing delivers a musical history lesson that is as engaging as it is essential: a refresher course on the deep relationship between prewar country blues and the electrified postwar blues that reshaped Chicago’s soundscape. Listeners are reminded of how the early bluesmen of the Deep South—artists such as Son House, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, and Tommy Johnson—laid the groundwork for the next generation. These men carried rural stories, bottleneck slide guitar, and raw emotional power into recordings that would become the bedrock of blues.

Hour by hour, the show demonstrates how these prewar pioneers influenced the postwar giants who followed them to Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s. Muddy Waters took Son House’s haunting “Walking Blues” and electrified it into a Chicago anthem. Robert Johnson’s slide-driven “Dust My Broom” became Elmore James’s calling card. Charley Patton’s booming voice and rough-hewn guitar work foreshadowed the primal growl of Howlin’ Wolf. Even Tampa Red’s “Black Angel Blues” found new life through Robert Nighthawk’s postwar “Sweet Black Angel.”

Hour 1 sets the scene by tracing the connections between jazz, swing, and jump blues, with Julia Lee, Jesse Price, and Jimmy Witherspoon showing how rhythm and phrasing tied urban entertainment to blues roots. By Hour 2, gospel and early rhythm and blues collide, as voices like LaVern Baker, Fats Domino, and Mahalia Jackson highlight how sacred and secular music walked parallel lines in shaping mid-century sounds.

Hour 3 returns to the prewar era, with Blind Blake, Mamie Smith, Ida Cox, and Sonny Terry capturing the wide stylistic range of 1920s and 1930s blues. From washboard rhythms to harmonica fox chases, these sides showcase the variety of voices and stories that carved the blues’ foundation. Then, in Hour 4, the show drives home its core theme: the direct lineage from prewar innovators to Chicago postwar masters. Each pairing makes the influence undeniable, giving listeners a vivid sense of continuity across decades.

Finally, Hour 5 provides a soulful wind-down with Sam Cooke’s velvet gospel-infused voice, Bobby “Blue” Bland’s sophisticated blues ballads, and Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross” bringing a reflective close. Jazz touches from Jimmy Smith and Billy Eckstine add depth, while the Ink Spots and Ernestine Anderson lend tenderness.

This week’s broadcast is less about surprises and rarities and more about revisiting the building blocks that shaped our understanding of the blues. For many listeners, it may feel like going back to the classroom, revisiting lessons learned long ago—but with the joy of hearing them through the speakers once again. The Prewar/Postwar Refresher reminds us that the blues is a continuum, a conversation between generations of artists, and that each classic recording carries echoes of what came before and what would come after.

Whether it’s Son House calling down the Delta, Muddy Waters amplifying that cry in Chicago, or Sam Cooke bridging gospel and soul, Blues Before Sunrise celebrates the unbroken chain of influence. It is, as always, both a history lesson and a celebration.