The Miracles were the first Motown act to score a Top Five single, "Shop Around," in 1960, and the first to issue an album, 1961's Hi, We're the Miracles. They also came with their own one-man hit factory: Earth-angel tenor William "Smokey" Robinson wrote or co-wrote nearly every one of the songs on these two CDs, which manage to pack in five early-Sixties LPs. The singing and rhythms in the gorgeous "(You Can) Depend on Me" and the 1962 classic "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" are still steeped in Fifties doo-wop. But Robinson was already working toward his later-Sixties Midas touch with the rippled-harp silk of "I'll Try Something New" and the saucy-gallop B side "Mighty Good Lovin'."

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."