The Robert Cray Band · 1983 Spin it Again - Robert Cray proved that blues could be young and urgent again without pretending the 60s never happened.

Odetta · 1962 Spin it Again - She was the queen of folk, but here she sounds like she owns the Delta.

Nina Simone · 1965 Spin it Again - After a decade of classical training at Juilliard, Nina Simone finally let the devil into her piano.

John Lee Hooker · 1966 Spin it Again - Bob Thiele put John Lee Hooker in a Chicago studio with Muddy Waters' rhythm section and got out of the way. This is what came out.

Muddy Waters · 1964 Spin it Again - After a decade of amplification and bravado, Muddy Waters stripped everything down and made the most intimate record of his career — four men in a room with wooden instruments and no safety net.

Vada Blue · 2019 Spin it Again - A British soul vocalist who sounds like she learned to sing by studying both Amy Winehouse and the space between piano notes.

Ry Cooder · 1974 Spin it Again - A man and his guitars in one room, the tape running, no looking back—and somehow more honest than anything louder.

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers · 1972

Fleetwood Mac · 1969 Spin it Again - Before Fleetwood Mac became a household name, they sat down in Chicago with Otis Spann and Willie Dixon and just played the blues—no second takes, no ego, just the tape rolling and four men who actually knew what they were doing.

Howlin' Wolf · 1971 Spin it Again - Sixty-one years old, kidneys failing, flown to London — and he was still the least impressed person in the room.

Eric Clapton · 1997 Spin it Again - Clapton stripped of the band, the arena, and the expectation — it turns out that's when he's most himself.

Bonnie Raitt · 1977 Spin it Again - She learned slide guitar from Mississippi Fred McDowell in person, and by 1977 she was making records this quietly confident while Warner Bros. looked the other way.

Blues Pills · 2014 Spin it Again - Elin Larsson was twenty-two and somehow already the most convincing blues-rock vocalist to come out of Scandinavia since forever.

Etta James · 2003 Spin it Again - Etta James at sixty-five, live orchestra, Capitol Studios — the woman had been singing 'At Last' for forty years and somehow found more to say.

Bettye LaVette · 2003 Spin it Again - She'd been making records since 1962 and this is the one that made people feel guilty for not knowing her name sooner.

Bettye LaVette · 2005 Spin it Again - Joe Henry recorded this in his house in South Pasadena and somehow made a sixty-year-old Detroit lifer sound like the only adult in the room.