Mercy Dee Walton One Room Country Shack

Mercy Dee Walton
One Room Country Shack
Specialty

The many Specialty blues reissues of note include Mercy Dee Walton's One Room Country Shack. The title track, one of Mercy Dee's two top ten R&B recordings, may be familiar from versions by Buddy Guy or Mose Allison, but Dee's dry vocal really captures the starkness of his blues poetry. While compiler Billy Vera notes Mercy Dee's sophisticated lyrics bear some comparison to Percy
Mayfield, his themes and some of his lyrics reflect the rural sharecropping life he grew up in.

His three Specialty recordings are included here along with 18 other sides, some of which served as demos perhaps. Sides like Love is a Mystery show a bit of versatility as he is in the club blues mode of a Charles Brown, while Winter Blues almost sounds like a remake of One Room Country Shack,
although with totally different lyrics. A similar accompaniment is heard on Dark Muddy Bottom with its powerful depiction of a sharecropper's life getting up at 4:30 to hit up his beat up team. A boogie backing is found on other songs like Pauline while Get to Gettin', a duet with Lady Fox, is a New Orleans flavored rocker.

The unissued sides are a welcome addition to his sparse recorded legacy, and while there may be a certain sameness to some of the songs here musically, the wit and imagery of his songs, his understated vocal delivery and Texas blues piano make Mercy Dee's recordings a treasure to his fans.


I received a review copy from Fantasy Records which owned the Specialty catalog. This review originally appeared in the Jazz & Blues Report in 1993. Here is "One Room Country Shack."

Dust My Rhythm & Blues: The Flair Records Story

Dust My Rhythm & Blues: The Flair Records Story
Ace (UK)

A compilation "Dust My Rhythm & Blues: The Flair Records Story" is one of a series of double CD reissues that the English Ace Records label has issued that survey the Bihari Brothers legendary Modern Records label and its subsidiary labels that include Flair, RPM and Kent. Flair was the third subsidiary and in its three years of existence issued some terrific music although it never had a national hit. Originally intended to be the Bihari's country label, the label shifted direction with Elmore James being the first R&B artist assigned to Flair. This reissue has a number of choice recordings from the likes of Elmore James (seven sides including "Standing at the Crossroads"); his pianist Little Johnny Jones (with the classic "Dirty By the Dozen (Sweet Little Woman)"; Mercy Dee; pioneering electric blues guitarist Saunders King; Richard Berry (famous for "Louie Louie" (not included here) represented by several tracks including "The Big Break"); the doomy West Coast downhome blues of Johnny Fuller, the vocal group The Flairs (whose Cornell Gunter would enjoy fame with The Coasters); Shirley Gunter; Ike Turner (a couple instrumentals including "Cuban Get Away"); and Clarence 'Bonton' Garlow doing the rollicking "Route 90." The 50 tracks include some alternate takes and some selections that had not previously been issued on CD. If not having complete session information, the wonderfully illustrated booklet accompanying these 50 tracks includes Tony Rounce's essay with history of the label as well as his discussion of the artists and the recordings.

I purchased this CD. This is one of a number of short reviews I have written for the 2015 Holiday Gift Guide edition of Jazz & Blues Report. Here is Clarence Garlow's recording of "Route 90."

Down Home Blues Classics: Texas 1946-1954

Various
Down Home Blues Classics: Texas 1946-1954
Boulevard Vintage

A four CD European Public Domain reissue of Texas down home blues has just been re-released after being unavailable for several years. This is one of a series of reissues that makes available some terrific 'country' blues from the years following the end of World War II. Including a booklet from blues scholar Neil Slavin, the first disc is devoted to 25 of the finest early recordings of Lightnin' Hopkins including classics like "Katie Mae," "Short haired Woman," "Let Me Play With Your Poodle," "Tim Moore's Farm," and "One Kind Favor." The other three discs include selections from Frankie Lee Sims, Mercy Dee, Lil' Son Jackson, Clarence Garlow, Texas Alexander, Smokey Hogg and many others. I note that the fabulous 4 disc set devoted to early Chicago postwar blues is also available.

I purchased this CD. This is one of a number of short reviews I have written for the 2015 Holiday Gift Guide edition of Jazz & Blues Report. Here is a performance by Smokey Hogg of "Worried Blues," to give a sample of what is on this compilation.

 

Mercy Dee's classic down home blues classic

This review is from the September 1993 Jazz & Blues Report and while this CD has been discontinued, it is still available from some sellers at Amazon Stores.

The many Specialty blues reissues of note include Mercy Dee Walton’s One Room Country Shack. The title track, one of Mercy Dee’s two top ten R&B recordings, may be familiar from versions by Buddy Guy or Mose Allison, but Dee’s dry vocal really captures the starkness of his blues poetry. While compiler Billy Vera notes Mercy Dee’s sophisticated lyrics bear some comparison to Percy Mayfield, his themes and some of his lyrics reflect the rural sharecropping life he grew up in. His three Specialty recordings are included here along with 18 other sides, some of which served as demos perhaps. Sides like Love is a Mystery show a bit of versatility as he is in the club blues mode of a Charles Brown, while Winter Blues almost sounds like a remake of One Room Country Shack, although with totally different lyrics. A similar accompaniment is heard on Dark Muddy Bottom with its powerful depiction of a sharecropper’s life getting up at 4:30 to hit up his beat up team. A boogie backing is found on other songs like Pauline while Get to Gettin’, a duet with Lady Fox, is a New Orleans flavored rocker. The unissued sides are a welcome addition to his sparse recorded legacy, and while there may be a certain sameness to some of the songs here musically, the wit and imagery of his songs, his understated vocal delivery and Texas blues piano make Mercy Dee’s recordings a treasure to his fans.

Mercy Dee's Troublesome Blues

It was back in the early 1990s that Arhoolie made available its 1961 recordings by Texas pianist-singer Mercy Dee Walton Troublesome Mind. Mercy Dee, who died in 1962, was one of the more distinctive performers and lyricists of the postwar blues. You may not have heard his Specialty recording, One Room Country Shack, but are likely familiar with other recordings of the song (Including Buddy Guy) and will have a sense of the powerful lyrical imagery conveyed (“People, I sitting here a thousand miles from nowhere. Here in my one room country little shack,”). The album includes a remake of it along with several songs employing the same melody as well as also possess distinctive and equally compelling lyrics like Have You Ever Been Out In The Country. While not as extroverted a showman as other Texas born pianists who moved to the West Coast such as Amos Milburn and Little Willie Littlefield, Mercy Dee played crisply and thoughtfully. On the slow pieces he plays a spare bass while playing authoritatively with his right hand. He certainly could barrelhouse with the best of them as on Mercy’s Shuffle or the rocking Red Light, with his clever use of rhymes in the tradition of What’d I Say. Mercy Dee's straightforward vocals mixed with his lyrical imagery and solid piano (backed by among others K.C. Douglas and Sidney Maiden) packed a real punch. This is a first rate reissue.

(This is rewritten from my original review which appeared in the February 1992 Jazz & Blues Report.