Ali Farka Toure - "Cinquante Six"

Divide the guitar part into three: the bass (be patient, it comes rarely); the middle (repetitive and swinging); and the treble (running frantically in all directions - sometimes responding to the middle, sometimes ignoring it).  Then put the parts back together, if you can. Hear it as a whole again.  Start from the beginning, if you have to. Listen to the beginning's tentative teasing refrain in which the three parts act as one.  Then hear the treble leave and wander and do coy things and violent things.  Do you hear that it is simultaneously circular and linear?

Drink water as you listen: this song is bone dry.  Trust me.  I'm no camel, but nor am I a particularly thirsty man. [Buy]

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Irma Thomas - "Ruler of My Heart"

A stand-up bass stutters, constantly relocating the groove with its careful placement and delicate staccato phrasing.  That it stutters is nice, but relatively inconsequential compared to the important fact of why it stutters: namely the awe-inspiring voice of Irma Thomas, an instrument which possesses that most rare quality of at once being both smooth and rough, sweet and sour. [Buy]