Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell

Weissberg was a Brooklyn-born Juilliard student who played with the Greenbriar Boys and the Tarriers before becoming one of New York’s most-called session multi-instrumentalists, turning up behind Bob Dylan, Billy Joel and Barbra Streisand. Mandell was a Philadelphia-born guitarist who came up through the same early-1960s New York folk scene and worked with Judy Collins, Bobby Darin and John Denver. Their arrangement for Deliverance is a marvellous piece of playing — the two instruments circling, goading and finally sprinting — and it deserved every bit of its No. 2 Hot 100 placing and its Grammy. The only thing wrong with the popular account is the chronology, and the credit line, neither of which was their doing: Weissberg himself blamed the label, and Mandell’s name was left off the single entirely.