My issue with the same error message was mysql environment not all the way set up. I needed to uninstall MySQL-python; install libmysqlclient-dev; reinstall MySQL-python to rectify the issue.
So the fix was too:
**I should also mention that I used the --no-cache-dir option with pip install to hit PYPI directly which helped discover the following:
sh: 1: mysql_config: not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
File "/tmp/pip-build-Y7RFpJ/mysql-python/setup.py", line 17, in <module>
metadata, options = get_config()
File "/tmp/pip-build-Y7RFpJ/mysql-python/setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
libs = mysql_config("libs_r")
File "/tmp/pip-build-Y7RFpJ/mysql-python/setup_posix.py", line 25, in mysql_config
raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found
and lead me to here
Using: mysql 5.7, mysql-python 1.2.5, django 1.8.9, ubuntu 16.04