Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers

Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers: Hound Dog Taylor, Brewer Phillips (guitar); Ted Harvey (drums).
Producers: Hound Dog Taylor, Bruce Iglauer, Wesley Race.
Recorded at Sound Studios, Chicago, Illinois. Includes liner notes by Wesley Race and Bruce Iglauer.
A talent so mighty and so criminally overlooked that Bruce Iglauer started Chicago's Alligator Records just to put out his debut full-length, Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor may be as important to blues and roots postmodernists as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters were to the classic blues rockers. With a heavily distorted, highly amplified electric sound that eschewed the standard time-keeping of a bassist for the more propulsive chug of a rhythm guitar player, Taylor and his Houserockers brought the grimy juke-joint boogie back to the fore with this 1973 release. Influenced by Elmore James' loud and hard slide-guitar attack (James' standard "It Hurts Me Too" is given a rather fierce reading) and Freddy King's sweet melodicism, Taylor specialized in good-time dance-floor burners at a time when Chicago blues were sliding into a state of overblown reverence. Most of Taylor's originals are rocked-up party calls, greatly served by the minimal recording production they are given (it is a great lo-fi blues prototype for much of Fat Possum's work in the '90s). And while they may never be as lauded as the anthems of a John Lee Hooker or a Howlin' Wolf, chances are that purists are far more likely to boogie to 'em.