Andy Kershaw introduced me – us – to so much new music, making him second only to John Peel in terms of influence on my own formative tastes.

There’s been much talk of his enthusiasm for African bands; even now I cannot read the name of the Bundhu Boys without hearing it in his distinctive Lancastrian accent.

But it wasn’t just them, and it wasn’t just African music, though that led him there to report fearlessly for Radio 4 on the Rwandan genocide and Angola’s civil war, as well as Sierra Leone and Haiti.

Without him I doubt I would have discovered many of the African artists I love and would go on to see live over the next decade, among them Ali Farka Touré, Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal and Kanda Bongo Man  (another name I can only hear in his voice) and the amusingly named Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey & His Inter-Reformers Band.

But I also associate him with the new wave of rootsy country-rock garage bands that emerged from America in the mid-Eighties: bands like The Long Ryders, The Beat Farmers, Lone Justice and Jason & The Scorchers.

The best of the lot, for my money, were these guys, The Blasters.

Led by brothers Dave and Phil Alvin, the California band combined elements of country, blues and rockabilly with a blistering garage-band style forged during early gigs on LA’s punk scene in the early ’80s.

Andy Kershaw championed these groups during his stint presenting the Old Grey Whistle Test, as well as his long-running radio show.

Without him, I doubt my experience of Americana would have extended much beyond earlier Neil Young and Creedence records; at least for many more years.

I’m not going to dwell on the personality or mental health of a man who evidently made more enemies than friends, and was jailed for stalking his former partner.

Instead I’m going to post one of the songs he brought to my attention by The Blasters, which later reached a much wider audience thanks to Quentin Tarantino.

RIP Andy Kershaw (1959-2026)