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Bessie Smith, carrying more than weight on her famous shoulders
Song of the Day: After a series of early bluesmen, it's time to sprinkle some attention on the first true star of of the blues crossing into jazz, who not only mixed a little dirt into her powerful voice, but also into her lyrics
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Blind Willie McTell (1898-1959)
Song of the Day: Today's deep-south exploration goes to the Piedmont blues style of the man born in Thomson, Georgia, whose ragtime-like picking style and voice is so clearly a huge influence on Bob Dylan, Jack White and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
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Mississippi John Hurt (1992-1966)
Song of the Day: Pictured with Skip James on yesterday's Skip James post, his friend and contemporary Hurt was a blues country singer-songwriter known for his distinctively intricate fingerpicking style
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Skip James (1902 - 1969)
Song of the Day: Following Rev. Gary Davis, let's turn to the Delta bluesman from Bentonia, Mississippi, who was not only influential in his playing, but had a distinctive, almost ghostly voice that captures the fearful fragility of this Depression-era song
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Reverend Gary Davis (1896-1972)
Song of the Day: Moving from Blind Willie Johnson and his bottleneck guitar style, the finger-picking pioneer from Laurens, South Carolina who does a classic and clever talking version of this traditional number
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Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945)
Song of the Day: Following Solomon Burke and The Blind Boys of Alabama, let's take it way back to the great blues and gospel singer and bottleneck guitarist who was raised in Marlin, Texas
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Song of the Day: Following a series of gospel sings, let's move into a mixture of blues, soul and an even wider theme with song that brought this star back into the public eye in 2002, backed by The Blind Boys of Alabama
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Ray Chalres
Song of the Day: After Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing in rainy Manchester in 1964, another great's rendition of a another wet weather number written by Tony Joe White in 1967 from his 1972 album Through The Eyes Of Love
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Sister Rosetta Tharpe, singing and guitar-playing superstar, in action at Chorlton station in 1964
Song of the Day: After the great Mahalia Jackson, another superstar who could not only sing, but whose guitar playing was a major influence on Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and therefore everybody since them
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Mahalia Jackson
Song of the Day: Following a tribute to Aretha Franklin's passing, who could possibly follow that? Very few, but perhaps one of her inspirations, the great gospel singer, with three songs that show her extraordinary power and range
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Tinariwen
Song of the Day: After Ali Farka Touré's African-origin-blues crossover, another fork the musical track, from those Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert in northern Mali, from their 2014 album Emmaar
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Ali Farka Touré (right) with Toumani Diabaté
Song of the Day: After Nigeria's Fela Kuti, let's move over to Mali, and enjoy some of the finest work from great multi-instrumentalist whose final album, recorded in 2004, marked a crossroads between African music and blues
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An original single cover for Street Fighting Man (1968)
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Fast Fuse by Kasabian, a track that also quickly fires up passions, and is highly influential – recorded 50 years ago during an unprecedented period of demonstrations and riots
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Canned Heat
Song of the Day: Leaping back out of Springsteen's Pink Cadillac, we continue our road journey with two 1968 hits by the Los Angeles blues band – a cover of a cover a cover – and also go back down the dusty track to see where it all came from
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Going all the way? Pink Cadillac
Song of the Day: After yesterday's heart-racing number by Cake, let's pull in to a classic car song by The Boss that puts aside a certain amount of religious guilt and, with a little innuendo, gets straight down to backseat action
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The Spencer Davis Group, featuring Stevie Winwood
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Helen Reddy track, let's compare that brave feminist anthem to a similar-era powerful man cry, performed here with Hammond-heavy brilliance by Stevie Winwood and co from 1967
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Howling, growling, tenderly looming: Tom Waits is a moon poet
Song of the Day: On this day of this rare astronomical eclipse event, and after a series of other lunar-related songs, we come to an artist who has, across the course of his career, described this celestial body in around 100 different ways
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Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet – musician, artist, visionary.
Song of the Day: With the recent passing of The Fall's Mark E Smith, and all the songs, tributes and stories that have followed, it now seems only appropriate to follow up with music Smith loved by one of his major influences
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The Moody Blues in 1965
Song of the Day: As time goes on, this heartbreak song grows in meaning as we say farewell to more and more pop and rock stars, and there's none better than to pay tribute the recently departed Moody Blues frontman Ray Thomas
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From Atlantic single cover, 1962.
Song of the Day: For those facing what is often an arduous, weather-affected journey, travelling home after a Christmas visit, or waiting for their beloved to return with this 1962 classic
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