"Charlie M. 1958" writes:

I'm no electrician, but it sounds like a bad connection in that
receptacle was keeping the juice from making the rest of the circuit.
This would make sense since it was the closes one to the box. Pulling it
out of the wall jiggled things enough to work temporarily, and replacing
it was the permanent solution.

Current code requires pigtails if the circuit continues downstream. I'm
sure things like this is the reason they don't allow receptacles to be
used to continue circuits except GCFI receptacles.

Brian Elfert