‘You gotta say LIttle Walter invented the blues harmonica .. No one had that sound before him. No one could make the thing cry like a baby and moan like a woman. No one could put pain into the harp and have it come out so pretty. No one understood that the harmonica – just as much as a trumpet, a trombone or a saxophone – could have have a sound that would drop you in your tracks!’. (Buddy Guy)

Some people have just got it. And, by it, I mean IT – the mojo that definitively separates the great from the very good and the merely good. From the sidelines or from the stalls we can often recognise, without expert knowledge ourselves, some invisible aura that marks out the special one, the summiteer, from those still scrambling up Mount Parnuss’ lesser slopes.

It’s not necessary to have been a…