Death Don't Have No Mercy

"Death Don't Have No Mercy" is a song by the American gospel blues singer-guitarist Blind Gary Davis. It was first recorded on August 24, 1960, for the album Harlem Street Singer (1960), released by Prestige Records' Bluesville label during a career rebirth for Davis in the American folk music revival. The recording was engineered by Rudy Van Gelder at his studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and produced by Kenneth S. Goldstein, who had pursued Davis in Prestige's effort to capitalize on the revival.

"Death Don't Have No Mercy" features Davis' characteristically lively yet simple style of blues guitar alongside arrangement techniques and themes from gospel music, in what has since been considered a work of the "holy blues" genre. Unusual for traditional blues players, Davis performed the chord progression in the key of G-flat major with guitar fills in the relative minor (E-flat minor), lending the song a heightened sense of tension and emotional appeal. The lyrics, based on traditional spirituals, are a lament of death's periodic inevitability and reflect events from the bluesman's early life in the American South, such as the loss of his mother and the premature deaths of his seven siblings.

One of Davis' most well-known songs, "Death Don't Have No Mercy" was covered by Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and Hot Tuna in the 1960s, reaching the era's young white rock audience. Its performance also took on political significance as the decade ensued with growing opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The song was one of the last Davis performed before his death, playing a fierce rendition of it at a Northport, Long Island church concert in April 1972, organized in part by the future photographer Doug Menuez.