From the Used Bin 5

There was twenty bucks in my pocket as I drove west on Silva Street from a friends house. The street ended right across from The Last Record Store. It pulled me like a magnet.

The used blues racks were stocked with about as good a selection as I've seen (I'll be back). With twenty bucks I had two picks. No, I don't know why anyone would sell these.



I fed my ever developing interest in California's hidden blues history with this one which I've wanted for years ever since I couldn't afford it in the late 60s. Most blues fans have heard "One Room Country Shack" (usually in Buddy Guy's version), this is the guy who wrote it, Mercy Dee Walton. He recorded it first in 1949, and I'll get that one of these days. This is his great 1961 record, with classic piano by one of the great itinerant piano perfessers. Mercy Dee travelled the great agricultural roads of California's Central Valley for years playing the jukes and honky-tonks for for the black, okie, and mexican farmworkers. With him are the fine harmonica player Sidney Maiden and drummer Otis Cherry, both Central Valley regulars. It's fantastic in its combination of downhome feel and piano technique. It's just so blues.



I've owned this for years as an LP, and I resist buying CDs when I already have the LP, but this is one of the greatest blues records ever made. Magic Sam made only two studio records before his death at the age of 32, this is one of them ("Black Magic" is the other). Most guitarists know at least a couple of tunes from this record, it sets so much style for so many. An incredible band too. "I Found A New Love" and "Every Night And Every Day" and "I Feel So Good (I Wanna Boogie)" are still played all the time. A master class on playing guitar and singing the blues.