"Sloe Gin" was written by Bob Ezrin — the legendary producer behind Alice Cooper and Pink Floyd — alongside Michael Kamen. It was originally recorded by Tim Curry for his 1978 debut solo album Read My Lips: a brooding, dramatic meditation on loneliness and emotional collapse.

Joe Bonamassa rescued it from near-total obscurity, not only covering it but naming his sixth studio album after it in 2007. In his hands, the song became something else entirely.

A towering cinematic anthem — aching bends and sustained cries of stratospheric guitar that many consider one of the most emotionally expressive solos of his career.

Hambone Willie Newbern wrote this Delta slide guitar classic in 1929. It's been re-recorded over a hundred times — from Robert Johnson to the Rolling Stones. Muddy Waters electrified it in 1950 with snarling swagger.

In 1966, Cream took it further. Their debut album Fresh Cream featured a version that amplified the urgency into something ferocious, driven by Clapton's scorching slide guitar and the locked-in power of Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce.

Volume, intensity, and amplified menace — Cream turned a century-old Delta relic into a British invasion weapon.

Dylan's original appeared on John Wesley Harding in 1967 — stark, cryptic, semi-biblical, marking a shift from psychedelic rock toward country blues. A quiet, understated masterpiece.

Hendrix recorded his version just months later for Electric Ladyland. He didn't turn up the volume. He detonated the song — spiraling lead lines, thunderous rhythm, an ominous sense of apocalyptic drama. He transformed Dylan's country blues back into psychedelic blues rock.

It became Hendrix's biggest American chart hit. Many listeners don't even know it was Dylan's song first — and Dylan himself has said Hendrix's version is definitive.

Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy wrote this in 1929 as a stark country blues response to the devastation of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Rural despair captured in two voices and an acoustic guitar.

Led Zeppelin transformed it into apocalyptic grandeur — Robert Plant's echoing lament, Jimmy Page's grinding riff, and John Bonham's thunderous drum beat recorded in a stairwell at Headley Grange, creating one of the most iconic drum sounds in rock history.

Slow, hypnotic, and impossibly heavy — a cover so definitive it erased the original from popular memory entirely.

Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" from 1965 was a snarling, surreal slice of electric folk blues — biting satire and wild beatnik poetry inspired by the biblical story of Abraham, named for the road that follows the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Duluth.

In 1969, Johnny Winter transformed it from counterculture commentary into a full-throttle Texas blues rock assault. His searing slide guitar and manic energy turned Dylan's poetic imagery into something that felt like a barroom brawl in the best possible way.

Winter took Dylan's wit and replaced it with pure fire. Highway 61 never sounded so dangerous.