Bonnie Raitt

By the time Bonnie Raitt found worldwide success with 1989's Nick of Time, the songwriter and master slide guitarist had already recorded 10 albums over two decades.

A pioneering figure in roots rock who spent her early years apprenticing with bluesmen like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Raitt, who was born in Burbank, California, in 1949, seemed to have stepped out of an imagined past, synthesizing strains of blues, folk, rock, and country in ways that felt both effortless and fresh.

She does it all on 1972's Give It Up, which spans raucous New Orleans-style R&B (\