E9597 - Ivory Joe Hunter: The R&B Pioneer Who Crossed Into Country Music

Ivory Joe Hunter performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Grand Ole Opry, was recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress as a teenager, spent a day at Graceland with Elvis Presley, and is estimated to have written around 7,000 songs. This deep dive tells the story of an East Texas musician who spent his life demolishing the walls between rhythm and blues, pop, and country, and whose given name really was Ivory Joe.

We follow him from Kirbyville, Texas and a program manager job at radio station KFDM in Beaumont to Los Angeles in 1942...