'You want to know how good the blues can get?' Keith Richards once said. He recorded less than 50 songs – including ones later covered by Cream ('Cross Road Blues'), Captain Beefheart ('Terraplane Blues') and the Rolling Stones ('Love in Vain,' 'Stop Breaking Down') – and performed alongside the likes of Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James and Memphis Slim as he rose to fame.

One of the Delta blues' most celebrated and singular talents, Robert Johnson recorded chilling, folkloric songs about hellhounds, the Devil and general despair amid swinging, dissonant, sometimes off-kilter guitar lines – the likes of which have reverberated through rock & roll for decades.