While you’re reading, listen to our Best Blues Songs playlist here.
Suffice to say that if Robert Johnson had never gone to the crossroads, or if BB King was still feeling a thrill, the world would be a poorer place. Many of the most influential blues songs reverberate to this day, and a few were probably covered by a local band in your town last weekend. Either they were famously covered, or the licks got borrowed, or they schooled the rockers in style and attitude. Without the blues there’d be no rock’n’roll, but certain tracks were especially pivotal. The great blues artists talked, the savviest rockers listened.