Garnet Mimms is the guy who sang the original version of Cry Baby, better known (to me, at least) for Janis Joplin’s overwrought version, back in 1963.

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Ray Charles is rightly credited with almost single-handedly inventing soul and R&B in the early 1950s. But in the 1960s he surprised his fans, and the whole of the pop world, by turning his hand to country-and-western.

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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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Lou Reed and John Cale met in the early Sixties and you can hear the germs of the Velvet Underground’s song on their early songwriting collaboration Why Don’t You Smile, released by The All Night Workers.

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I’ve heard this song by Marvin, I’ve heard it by Dusty and I’ve heard it by the Stones, but until now I’d never heard it by Barbara til now. In fact I’d never heard of Barbara Randolph at all.

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I don’t think I’ve heard this before but someone the other day mentioned it as a highlight of the album The Notorious Byrd Brothers, so I looked it up.

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And then they were three… Tito Jackson’s death, at the age of 70, leaves the Jackson 5 down to a trio of Jermaine, Jackie and Marlon.

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Zoot Money was one of those Zelig-like characters who turned up as a sideman, playing keyboards on hundreds of records from the early Sixties. But he actually started out as a front man.

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When I was a schoolkid I loved Cream. Everybody loved Cream. And this was their signature song. They were the original “power trio” of guitar, bass and drums – Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

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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.

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