Merry Clayton is best known for her gospelly backing vocals on the Stones’ anti-war anthem Gimme Shelter, wailing in harmony with Jagger. But there was much more to her than that.

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Bo Diddley’s heyday was long gone by 1970 and he was mostly seen as a heritage act on the oldies circuit (if at all) by the time he tackled the topical issue of Pollution. But it’s a great track.

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Jerry Williams Jr is one of the great cult figures of 20th century American music – better known by his eventual stage name Swamp Dogg.

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This song has been covered numerous times by a who’s who of soul singers. This is the original – the first of two versions by bluesman Latimore – from 1974.

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Last night I finally got to see Mary Coughlan live for the first time – something I’ve wanted to do ever since I got a cassette of her debut album Tired & Emotional in 1985.

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Clarence Gatemouth Brown was already in his seventies when he recorded this memorable blues number. Just don’t call it blues.

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Tony McPhee never achieved the fame and fortune of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page or Jeff Beck, his fellow British guitarists to emerge from Britain’s blues boom in the 1960s.

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This song has history. In 1955 it gave Johnny Ace his biggest hit single… but only after his unusual death at the age of only 25.

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Blues legend John Lee Hooker stretched out his already lengthy I Hate(d) The Day I Was Born to nearly 20 minutes in San Francisco in 1964.

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I don’t know if psychedelic drugs were involved in the making of this song but I would be highly surprised if they weren’t. Then again, just listening to it is a mind-bending trip.

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