Chris Rea, English rock and blues singer-songwriter known for his distinctive gravelly voice and slide guitar playing and for Driving Home for Christmas has died. He preferred to see himself as “an ordinary bloke from the grass roots, with a craggy, lived-in face, singing about life”. He was born 4 March 1951 in Middlesborough and what leaps out of his chart is a mix of hardship with rolling crises alongside soaring confidence and good luck. Throughout his life he had ser