This is a fantastic discovery If you like funky horn sections and you like powerful female voices. They don’t come much more powerful than Lydia Pense and her San Francisco-based band Cold Blood.

In a parallel universe blues belter Pense might have found as much fame as her contemporary Janis Joplin, who gave them their break by recommending them to promoter Bill Graham.

She’s every bit as compelling a live performer as Joplin, and her voice is a match for her, making it more of a surprise that they never achieved the same sort of success.

I confess I’d never heard of them til Craig Charles played their debut album on his Funk & Soul Show at the weekend. This slice of steamy soul, with blazing horns and Larry Field’s searing guitar, comes from that eponymous 1969 debut by Cold Blood.

Pense – a former child national rollerskating champion – was equally adept at smouldering slow burners like this one and the full-throated stompers that make up much of the album.

After recording four more albums in the early ’70s Pense took a decade off to raise children but put the band back together in the late ’80s and, remarkably, is still at the helm today.