Red Holloway, a tenor saxophone player who had a tone as big as the side of a house, made his name in jazz, but more quietly – or musically, more loudly – worked for John Mayall and a variety of rhythm'n'blues stars. "I enjoyed playing with Mayall," Holloway said. "He's a very good self-taught entertainer and I admire that. It takes an awful lot of nerve and perseverance to become successful like he did... We had a good working relationship."

When the drummer Michael Hossack jammed with the Doobie Brothers at Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco in June 1971, he proved such a natural fit alongside founding drummer John Hartman that the other two mainstays of the group, the guitarists, vocalists and songwriters Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmmons, asked him to perform with them at the Fillmore West. Within weeks, "Big Mike" Hossack and "Little John" Hartman forged a drumming partnership to match those driving the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers.

City manager angry at barbs from striker who is now 'not in my plans for the next three months'

When Swedish-Iranian singer Jasmine Kara relocated to New York, she found her homeland of the soul – not to mention an influential advocate in music-biz legend Marshall Chess, who considered her "the real deal".

If Etta James's life had not been weighed down with personal problems, mostly bad management, ghastly lovers, obesity, incarceration and heroin addiction, she would have been acclaimed as a remarkable female soul singer alongside Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Tina Turner. Her fans know how good she is but the general public in the UK only know her for her Top 10 single, the gritty and sensuous "I Just Want To Make Love To You", recorded in 1960 but a hit through a TV ad in 1996.

Drums - Ginger Baker
I think we need to go with a vintage drummer such as Ginger Baker, who played in bands like Cream and Blind Faith, because he was a machine. There's no other word for it. I used to play drums, it was the first instrument I learnt, and although I never really got into Cream that much, I used to drum along to what he was doing on record because I thought he was great.

Assailed by the double debilitations of leukemia and dementia, and requiring hospital care, Etta James has sensibly decided that The Dreamer will constitute the final chapter of her recording career.

We've got five collections, each of three boxed sets, to give away. You can win oodles of music from the greatest periods of three blues giants on these new three-CD sets.

This is the debut UK release for a 1978 live recording, which is Volume 5 in a top, top survey of the King of Motown's solo career.

Aretha Franklin is planning a huge star-studded bash to celebrate her 69th birthday tomorrow.

As with much American R&B, N-Dubz's songs on Love.Live.Life tend to circle around the soap opera of their lives in the glass bowl of showbiz.

Unfairly neglected in comparison with equivalent albums by labelmates Gaye and Wonder, the sensitive Smokey and Pure Smokey from 1973 and 1974 are subtle if schmaltzy affairs that repay repeated listening.