Hound Dog Taylor

<a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Alligator+Records%22">Alligator Records</a>, Chicago's leading contemporary blues label, might never have been launched at all if not for the crashing, slashing slide guitar antics of Hound Dog Taylor. Bruce Iglauer, then an employee of <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Delmark+Records%22">Delmark Records</a>, couldn't convince his boss, Bob Koester, of Taylor's potential, so Iglauer took matters into his own hands. In 1971, <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Alligator%22">Alligator</a> was born for the express purpose of releasing Hound Dog's debut album. We all know what transpired after that.

Named after President Theodore Roosevelt, Mississippi-native Taylor took up the guitar when he was 20 years old. He made a few appearances on <a href="spotify:artist:69VgCcXFV59QuQWEXSTxfK">Sonny Boy Williamson</a>'s fabled KFFA King Biscuit Time radio broadcasts out of Helena, Arkansas, before coming to Chicago in 1942. It was another 15 years before Taylor made blues his full-time vocation, though. Taylor was a favorite on Chicago's South and West sides during the late '50s and early '60s. It's generally accepted that <a href="spotify:artist:5dCuFngSPyOOnTAvrC7v2s">Freddy King</a> copped a good portion of his classic "Hide Away" from an instrumental he heard Taylor cranking out on the bandstand.

Taylor's pre-<a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Alligator%22">Alligator</a> credits were light -- only a 1960 single for Cadillac Baby's <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Bea+%26+Baby%22">Bea & Baby</a> imprint ("Baby Is Coming Home"/"Take Five"), a 1962 45 for Carl Jones' Firma Records ("Christine"/"Alley Music"), and a 1967 effort for Checker ("Watch Out"/"Down Home") predated his output for Iglauer.

Taylor's relentlessly raucous band, the HouseRockers, consisted of only two men, though their combined racket sounded like quite a few more. Second guitarist <a href="spotify:artist:3i1n87FI5X4V6MUpbQFDet">Brewer Phillips</a>, who often supplied buzzing pseudo-basslines on his guitar, had developed such an empathy with Taylor that their guitars intertwined with ESP-like force, while drummer Ted Harvey kept everything moving along at a brisk pace.

Their eponymous 1971 debut LP contained the typically rowdy "Give Me Back My Wig," while Taylor's first <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Alligator%22">Alligator</a> encore in 1973, Natural Boogie, boasted the hypnotic "Sadie" and a stomping "Roll Your Moneymaker." Beware of the Dog, a live set, vividly captured the good-time vibe that the perpetually beaming guitarist emanated, but Taylor didn't live to see its release -- he died of cancer shortly before it hit the shelves.

Hound Dog Taylor was the obvious inspiration for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Alligator%22">Alligator</a>'s "Genuine Houserocking Music" motto, a credo Iglauer's firm has followed for four decades and counting. He wasn't the most accomplished of slide guitarists, but Hound Dog Taylor could definitely rock any house that he played. ~ Bill Dahl, Rovi