A jackpot of no less than forty-four late-seventies toasts, produced by Errol T and Joe Gibbs.
Brilliantly exuberant wordplay over classic Mighty Two rhythms.
Droopy drawers, 44; stuffed with winners.

Please double-click through the label image for a sna of the B-side label, which is missing the print around its centre-hole.

Stinging electric blues and sparkling Texas stride-blues piano, and dapper, sad, droll singing, with a measure of the slurred wit and poise of Percy Mayfield.
Mercy Dee picked cotton like his parents, and his writing about rural poverty is unforgettable: check his first, minor hit Lonesome Cabin Blues, and the bigger One Room Country Shack, covered by Mose Allison, Jr. Wells and co. ‘If I ever get from around this harvest, I don’t even want to see a rose-bush grow / And if anyone ask me about the country, Lord have mercy on his soul.’ He also richly and lovingly disses various girlfriends: ‘the mule-head woman… her mind in the gutter, and her hands on my pocketbook’; ‘the bird-brain baby, with a heart the size of a mustard seed…’
These sides are from 1949-55 — for Spire, Imperial, Colony, Rhythm, Flair, and Specialty — but don’t miss his comeback LPs for Arhoolie, too.

‘My life is blank and empty, like a pea out of a shell.’
‘I’ve tried so hard, and failed, baby.’