Country Joe & The Fish is a name I remember hearing in my youth, though I don’t remember hearing any of their records.

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Jimi Hendrix was once asked how it felt to be the best guitarist in the world. Hendrix shrugged and replied: “I don’t know – ask Rory Gallagher.”

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Roy Buchanan was overlooked rather than underrated as a guitarist. No one who heard him could fail to have been impressed by his talent.

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Albert King had been making records for more than a decade when the blues legend recorded his signature song Born Under A Bad Sign in 1967.

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If there’s one artist I wish I’d seen live more than any other, it’s probably Nina Simone. Especially when she was a regular at Ronnie Scott’s in the 1980s. Except I had probably not heard of her back then.

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The growling blues-boogie of La Grange gave ZZ Top their big breakthrough in 1973, though they were already on to their third album by then – and would go on to enjoy a second lease of life in the ’80s.

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Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough did not come to fame until he was in his sixties – but made a lasting impression with his Hill Country Blues.

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Acoustic bluesman Eric Bibb found fame in his mid-forties and is still making remarkable music on his steel-strong guitar at the age of 73.

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Ask anyone to name the first female blues guitarist and you’ll probably be told it was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Or maybe Big Mama Thornton. Memphis Minnie came before both of them.

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I discovered the genius of Robbie Basho late in my musical explorations. He came to (minor) game alongside his fellow finger-pickers John Fahey and Leo Kottke but was forgotten for years after a premature death until a resurgence of interest in ‘American Primitive’ guitarists.

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