A Tribe Called Quest laid down a marker as one of the more original and eclectic voices in hip-hop with 1990 single Bonita Applebaum.

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Gwen McCrae is best known as the Queen of Rare Groove for her much-sampled repertoire of funk and soul. And her accidental role in launching disco.

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Free were in the vanguard of the blues-rock revolution that chnged the face of British music in the late 1960s.

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Anika has carved out a niche as a kind of modern-day Nico, bringing glacial cool to her dub-infused electro music.

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Scottish funkster Jesse Rae might not have made a name for himself but he did write the huge hit Inside Out for Odyssey.

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15-16-17 were, as the name suggests, three teenage girls from Jamaica who made their name singing lovers rock in late-1970s London.

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I loved this song, with its retro jazz vibe, when it came out in 1983 and I must still have the 12-inch single gathering dust in my vinyl collection.

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Here’s a hit single from back in the early Seventies that I had completely forgotten about – an a cappella cover of Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush.

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Alice Coltrane channels the spirit of the blues in her approach to jazz piano on this grief filled instrumental composition from 1970.

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David Allan Coe was an asshole; about that there can be little disagreement. A self-mythologising braggart, he was never slow to trade on his troubled past, even if much of it was in his imagination.

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