Blues in the blood?

Blogging over at The American Spectator about a Dutch blog that erroneously stated that I'm not related to Crazy Cousin John:

I am a distant cousin of John McCain, a kinship that can be traced back to two brothers, Hugh and Alexander McCain, who migrated westward from South Carolina circa 1800. One branch of the family ended up as plantation owners in the Mississippi Delta, the other branch ended up as East Alabama dirt farmers. I'm a proud descendant of the Alabama dirt-farming McCains.

Following that link to the 2000 Salon article, I noticed this paragraph:

Tracing the genealogies of slaves is often easy, because slaves frequently adopted the surnames of their owners. In 1876, for example, a Mary J. McCain married Isham Hurt. The two had a son, blues guitarist "Mississippi" John Hurt, in 1892 on Teoc, the plantation community where the McCains owned 2,000 acres.

The mighty McCain mojo might be hereditary.