Blue notes

London is gradually getting over Andy Murray losing again at Wimbledon, and is increasingly focused on the Olympics, but the city is still finding time to celebrate a rock'n'roll milestone: the 50th anniversary - hard though this is to believe - of the formation of The Rolling Stones.

The Stones played their first gig at the original Marquee Club in Oxford Street on July 12, 1962. As well as heavily dropped hints about gigs later this year and a 2013 tour, the anniversary is being marked by a photographic exhibition at London's Somerset House which continues until August 27, and 50, an official anniversary book published by Thames and Hudson.

The rockers have come a long way from the novice blues band they started out as, but have never really disconnected from those roots, and even today still seem to get a kick out of working with the few survivors among the American artists who originally inspired them.

Since acting as musical director for Chuck Berry's Hail! Hail! Rock'n' Roll film in 1987, Keith Richards has been a guest on albums by Johnnie Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers and Buddy Guy, among other blues artists.

Although less prolific Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood have also made guest appearances in similar contexts. The trio plus fellow member Charlie Watts (who leads his own jazz band), and former Stones bassist Bill Wyman appeared on last year's Ben Waters tribute to past Stone and blues and boogie pianist Ian Stewart, Boogie 4 Stu.

That album came out on Eagle Records, and to cash in on - sorry, coincide with - the Stones anniversary, Eagle Vision has just released Checkerboard Lounge, a DVD featuring Stewart, Wood, Richards and Jagger guesting at a Muddy Waters club gig in Chicago in 1981.