José María Merchan

His musical path began by listening to blues records and putting together the band METAFORA! with his friend Amadeu Casas, with whom he also shared the pioneering early years of La Cova del Drac. He began performing professionally in the late sixties at La Pèrgola de Montjuïc, a historic Barcelona venue, with black musicians of various origins: the United States, England, Africa or Cuba. In the early seventies he took part in line-ups of all kinds, such as Los Amaya or Esqueixada Sniff. A proof of his long career is his first number, “La Porta Blues”, written in the sixties and which he still plays with his current band, Merchan & Co. The blues, as he himself explains, has given him magical moments such as the night in 1976 when he met Muddy Waters after a concert at the Palau de la Musica, taking part in a jam at the Magic club with Bob Margolin, but above all it has given him a sentimental grounding: “It has given me feeling, a way of life, friends and a great deal of music. When I play a solo, I play the blues. I don’t know how to do anything else.”