Moving on from yesterday’s Ray Charles post, but not completely… in the early ’50s he went down to New Orleans to work with Guitar Slim, and this was the result.

He played piano and produced the million-selling hit The Things That I Used To Do, which is considered one of the stepping stones of soul music.

Eddie Jones (aka Slim) had a brief career, curtailed by an early death, but was a hugely influential figure, not least on Jimi Hendrix, who acknowledged the part he played – and, by association, Prince.

One of the most flamboyant characters and talented guitarists of the era, the former cotton picker from Mississippi was playing with distorted overtones 15 years before Hendrix, wearing brightly coloured suits and dyeing his hair to match.

He had a wild stage show, playing astride an assistant’s shoulders, and used his 350-foot guitar lead to wander offstage and into the street outside, stopping traffic with his antics. Even Prince didn’t go that far!

Ray Charles had already covered Slim’s song Feelin’ Sad when he went down to the Crescent City to return the favour on this song, released in 1953.

Within six years Slim was dead, becoming an alcoholic after his career faded, and dying of pneumonia in New York in 1959, aged only 32.