Soul and blues legend Bobby “Blues” Bland died yesterday at the age of 83, according to reports.

Watch the videoes below to view hits from both Rihanna and the Kings of Leon whose gigs were reviewed this week.

The crest of the flood-swollen Danube surged towards the Hungarian capital, Budapest, today, while communities along the Elbe in Germany braced themselves for high water as the river churned towards the North Sea.

The singer, guitarist and songwriter Clarence Burke Jr., who died on 25 May at the age of 62, was a mainstay of the Five Stairsteps, the “First Family of Soul” group best known for the sublime 1970 US hit “O-o-h Child”, writes Pierre Perrone.

Hubcap Music – so titled because one of the guitars he uses was made from “two hubcaps and a garden hoe” – finds Seasick Steve back on form, with an album steeped in gritty boogie and even grittier attitude.

George Jackson, who died in his Mississippi home on 14 April at the age of 68 after a year-long struggle against cancer, was the co-author of "Old Time Rock and Roll" and hundreds of other soul, rock and rhythm and blues tunes. Jackson recorded dozens of singles in the 1960s but made his mark as a writer, beginning with FAME Studios. He later was a songwriter for Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. When Malaco bought Muscle Shoals Sound, it hired Jackson to write songs.

The lurid mix of a Twitter, pornography and a Tory MP has struck again, though this time the MP is not to blame. Rob Wilson, MP for Reading East, was making a point about David Bennett, the market trader who challenged Iain Duncan Smith to live off £53 a week, though his weekly income is not £53 as he implied, but £156. To help spread the message, Rob Wilson tweeted using a link supplied by someone at Conservative headquarters. Unfortunately, because of what the Tories euphemistically call a "technical hitch", the link users to a hard core pornography site.

Boys as well as girls are obsessed with their body image and many have low self confidence in their physical appearances as a result, according to a survey of children’s attitudes spotted by teachers in their classrooms.

Recorded in Willie Mitchell's Royal Studio with an all-star band including Spooner Oldham, Willie Weeks and Ray Parker Jr, Memphis is a late-night delight.

The Manchester United manager says Rooney will not be sold

After the mid-tempo disappointment that was Destiny's Child's long-awaited new single last week, the pressure was on for Justin Timberlake's latest, Suit & Tie' which, as the title suggests, is an ode to the joys of being handsome and well-dressed (a topic close to Timberlake's heart, presumably).

Buddy Miller is fast becoming a ubiquitous presence on quality Americana and, through work with the likes of Robert Plant and Richard Thompson, quality Albiona, too.

In 1955 Vincent "Duke Vin" Forbes launched the first Jamaican-style sound system on the British public; it was the prototype of the enormous sets of speakers on display each year at the Notting Hill carnival. "When I came here the people was backward – them didn't know what a sound system was," said Vin, who enjoyed a semi-mythological status in Britain's West Indian community.

You don't score any points for comparing Chesnutt to Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.