High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Mercy Dee Walton was an American blues pianist, singer and songwriter, whose compositions ran the gamut from lowdown blues to jumping R&B numbers. According to journalist Tony Russell in his book The Blues - From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray, "Walton created a series of memorable blues about the unattractiveness of rural life, sardonically aimed at the black migrant workers in southern California who constituted his typical audience". Born in Waco, Texas, he moved to California just before World War II. He started playing piano at age 13 and learned his style from many of the ten-cent party house pianists that played out in the country on weekends, but had to earn his living in the fields chopping cotton, picking grapes or cutting spinach to make ends meet