Cars: Mercury Blues

K.C. Douglas: Mercury Blues

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Are you crazy about a Mercury? I know I was, at one time my family owned a model similar to the one pictured above, complete with a Wooga-Wooga horn guaranteed to cause anyone within range to jump through their skin.

K.C. Douglas's understated Country Blues shows how deeply he'd been influenced by Delta Bluesman Tommy Johnson. They performed together until 1945, when Douglas relocated to Vallejo, California, where he worked at the naval shipyards before entering the San Francisco/Oakland Blues scene. After a few recordings for the Arhoolie label, he died of a heart attack in 1975.


David Lindley: Mercury Blues

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David Lindley, an insanely talented multi-instrumentalist, has played with Jackson Browne (that's his lapsteel driving Running On Empty), among others. Here, he turns KC's tune inside out, it chugs away like a pile driver on a mission. Lindley proves that old Blues tunes never die, as long as there's someone breathing new life into them, they're as vibrant as the day they were written.