Without Hubert Sumlin there would have been no Yardbirds, Captain Beefheart, Led Zeppelin, T-Rex or White Stripes. He was also an essential ingredient for The Rolling Stones. As Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist, his straightforward power was the perfect foil to Wolf’s guttural vocal roar. The combination of Sumlin’s razor-wire distortion and bouncy riffing was irresistible and prefigured – influenced – the hard rock which evolved in the late Sixties. It also gave Marc Bolan his electric guitar style when Tyrannosaurus Rex became T-Rex.

For a couple of uber-hip rock nerds, The Black Keys do often still make pretty conventional music. After flirting with hip hop on the Blakroc project (and some of that mentality rubbing off on 2010’s release, Brothers), it’s back to straightforward, if sophisticated, blues-rock for the Ohio-based duo. But if there’s not much that's groundbreaking or experimental here, it’s all pretty likeable stuff: the sort of material that gives unchallenging listening a good name.

It’s a song which hangs in the air like pollen or reefer smoke, before gradually rising like a never-to-be-answered prayer. It began life as a lullaby but grew up to be a protest song, a scream of existential angst and even a purred invitation to sex. It’s a song like no other song, in that it has been covered more than any other song (its nearest competitors being “My Way” and “Yesterday”), and it was written by three Jewish immigrants before eventually being adopted by African-Americans as their own.

The Dreamer is the relatively low-key swansong from one of soul’s greatest divas, a mountain of barely restrained power, who inspired and influenced several generations of singers. Why some musicians survive lives of excess and others don’t is something of a mystery. While Janis Joplin, for whom Etta James was the ultimate vocal and performance model, crashed early in her wild career, James has soldiered on, in spite of serious heroin addiction and a number of illnesses that would have felled most women of her age.

“Cocaine Blues” is a song whose murky origins lie at the very roots of blues, folk, country and rock’n’roll, possibly right back to the last days of minstrelsy. When Johnny Cash performs it on his riveting 1968 live album At Folsom Prison, it fairly hums with potency, just about as heartening as popular music gets. When Merle Haggard has a crack at “Cocaine Blues” on his latest album, however, the mood is the polar opposite. The clean easy-going tone conjures a country and western version of Hugh Laurie’s recent sedate, chart-bothering take on the blues.

I love the fact that under the “genre” tab on their Facebook page, Orchestre National de Barbès have opted for “Other” from the dropdown menu. Obviously in Facebookland “Other” simply means not rock, soul, hi-hop, jazz, reggae, classical etc. However, in a metaphysical/philosophical sense “Other” can mean that which is alien, different or exotic. But what tickled me is that the music of this Parisian-based, largely Algerian band actually embraces just about all the Facebook categories they could have clicked on, even if none of them fully sums up the multilayered din they create.

Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara produces guitar riffs that are like quiet musical mantras from which songs seem to blossom like exquisite orchids. Or at least that’s the effect achieved by a combination of the songs themselves and the exquisitely understated arrangements which one can imagine were a pleasure for Diawara to work on with regular World Circuit producer Nick Gold.

Justin Adams is considered to be one of the UK’s most original guitarists and record producers and is an extremely versatile collaborator. He was brought up in the Middle East - his father was a British diplomat in Jordan and Egypt - and his music is very strongly influenced by his early exposure to Arab culture, in addition to African music, blues, dub and psychedelia. 

"I wanted to do an album that would be very uplifting and positive, as well as inspirational," quoth the divine Miss P of her latest waxing. Starting as she means to go on, she opens with the chunky honky-tonk pop of "In the Meantime", which crams a panorama of hopes and fears behind its perky exterior. We shouldn't worry about nuclear war and Armageddon, she advises, because "nobody knows when the end is coming" and besides, "God still lives in the hearts of men". Oh, and we should take care to look after the planet, too.

No real surprises on John Hiatt's 20th album, except that he can still find ways to put together a fresh, punchy set of songs using much the same ingredients as he's been using for the past 40 years. The songs, as ever, are rooted in rock, blues, country, Southern soul and old-fashioned R&B, though producer Kevin Shirley (Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Joe Bonamassa etc) has brought focus and weight to the sound. 

No real surprises on John Hiatt's 20th album, except that he can still find ways to put together a fresh, punchy set of songs using much the same ingredients as he's been using for the past 40 years. The songs, as ever, are rooted in rock, blues, country, Southern soul and old-fashioned R&B, though producer Kevin Shirley (Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Joe Bonamassa etc) has brought focus and weight to the sound.