Bluesman Ernie Southern does it all: He plays a mean slide guitar, he wields a wailing ten-hole harp, and he sells a demo tape that just won't quit, especially when he delivers it personally in his purple Ford like a man (you guessed it) "on a mission from God." The line from the 1980 John Landis film,
The Blues Brothers, fits Ernie Southern almost as well as it did Belushi and Aykroyd. When we heard Southern's incendiary cover "All Over Now," sung Delta-style on Nova Southeastern University's 88.5 FM Sunday-morning blues hour (the second-best blues hour in the Western world, behind the original King Biscuit Flour Hour out of Helena, Arkansas), we called him up. Two hours later he was handing us a tape of the song for $5, thrust through the window of his vehicle like contraband. Now
that's a bluesman.