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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I have to confess I didn’t know the name Beverley Martyn until I read of her death at the age of 79. More fool me.

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The death of Nedra Talley Ross, the last living Ronette, brings an end to that golden era of Sixties girl groups. She was just 14 years old when she formed the group with her cousins Ronnie and Estelle back in 1957.

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Traffic are one of those bands who somehow fell through the cracks of my musical journey. Consequently, Dave Mason was not a name that meant a great deal to me.

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Gregg Foreman, who looked and sounded every inch the rock star, was the founder of The Delta 72 and musical director for Cat Power.

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Andy Kershaw introduced me – us – to so much new music, making him second only to John Peel in terms of influence on my own formative tastes.

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If he had never written another song, Chip Taylor would have earned a place in the pantheon of rock history as the writer of Wild Thing.

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Terry Cox was the drummer with British folk-rock pioneers Pentangle, who also played on landmark albums by David Bowie and Elton John.

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Mike Vernon was a key figure in the British blues boom of the mid-Sixties, and produced a swathe of influential debut albums.

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Wayne Perkins was one of those Zelig-like music figures, a brilliant guitarist who pops up on records everywhere but never became a household name.

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