Sporting a thin frame, six fingers on his left hand and a personality the size of the Sears Tower, Theodore Roosevelt “Hound Dog” Taylor was simply incomparable. While some continue to deem him as an aberrant madman swaddled in amplifier gristle and reeking of discount hooch, he was truly one of the greats of the blues. Any well-considered list of the genre’s indispensable LPs will include the loose, crazed, and eternally blistering 1971 monster he cut with the Houserockers.
Essentially a neighborhood band that transcendeth all geography, the Windy City weekend booze-joint mania of Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers eventually became celebrated all over the world. Their incendiary self-titled ’71 debut long-player also provided the Alligator label with its inaugural release; it stands as one of the greatest first albums ever recorded in any genre in large part because the trio’s sound was already fully-formed and confident.
In fact, Alligator Records came into being specifically to issue this rough diamond. The scoop is that Bruce Iglauer, then a shipping clerk for one of the USA’s most laudable (and still extant) indies Delmark Records, had been trying to get his boss Bob Koester to sign Taylor. When the situation appeared hopeless, Alligator was born.
In retrospect this might seem shortsighted on Koester’s part, but please cut the man a little slack. The Houserockers’ offerings were considerably more aggressive and gnarled than was the material that served as Delmark’s bread and butter at the time (Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, etc); they didn’t even have a bass player for crying out loud.
Taylor has been categorized as a descendant of Elmore James, and a solitary listen will verify that statement as truth. His hairy-assed slide guitar constantly slices and burns, the result alternating between a barely controlled wail and a grouchy, agitated grumble, and Taylor’s inspired updates of James’ “It Hurts Me Too” and a fascinatingly doom-laden and lyrically troubling “Held My Baby Last Night” nail down the connection.
That Taylor was able to revamp Elmore’s “Dust My Broom” into the blazing “Wild About You Baby” displays the depth of the influence, and also shows that the guitarist was far more than a rank imitator, with the tune bursting into the realms of frenzied interpretation. But the Houserockers’ adeptness at channeling and beefing-up Elmore-esque sonic residue is really just the tip of the iceberg.
Their unmoored, primal sense of abandon is diametrically opposite to the tightness that basically defined Chicago blues in the wake of the quite-disciplined house sound of Chess Records, though notably a pre-Houserockers Taylor did briefly pass through the famed studio. Much of this severe stylistic difference springs from the delirious playing of drummer Ted Harvey.
Harvey’s uninhibited sense of timekeeping is incredibly jazz-like, though it attains this quality without any of the conscious sophistication the comparison strongly implies; his is a raucous expression in keeping with electric blues at its most gutbucket, but it’s accompanied with a sense of abstraction that tempts me to call him the Max Roach of blues drumming. At times Harvey’s so loose and yet so vital (keep in mind the Houserockers are a trio) that his style even nods to the great free jazz drummer Sunny Murray.
And man, he sure loves hitting the cymbals. I happen to love hearing the cymbals getting hit, which makes for quite the positive circumstance. Along with Harvey, the other reason the Houserockers stand so afield of the main streams of electric Chicago Blues is their aforementioned lack of bass. Now, Taylor and second guitarist Brewer Phillips do swap rhythmic duties, but that’s a far cry from the anchoring presence that a trad bassist would lend.
Instead, Taylor and Phillips often tangle like a pair of demonically possessed snakes, the leader’s slide occasionally shifting into a mean and nasty mode of support, especially on the gigantic “Phillip’s Theme,” one of heaviest examples of hard rock blues to have ever made my acquaintance, and one thankfully devoid of the lethargy or bombast that often afflicts many less creditable purveyors of rock-tinged blues (or conversely, blues-drenched rock).
Taylor did cut three singles prior to this lithe beast of an album, but to my knowledge the session for Checker (a Chess label subsidiary) is the only one to ever resurface on non-bootlegs, and while that 45 is certainly intriguing and useful it doesn’t really pack the wallop of what was to come. It’s obvious that Hound Dog needed the Houserockers to send him into the stratosphere, and once there they commenced torching stages (Australia! New Zealand!) and studios until Taylor’s death in 1975.
The recordings stand as definitive evidence of one of the utmost blues bands ever assembled. Not only a group that extended Elmore James’ distillation and hardening (i.e. electrification) of Robert Johnson but also a trio forecasting the knotty, undiluted soul-junk unearthed by the Fat Possum label just when it seemed the blues was a terminal case, the form surviving on life support from the constant regurgitation of past glories.
Perhaps the clearest bond to the raw hill-blues of R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough would be the coiled up agitation of the LP’s opening track “She’s Gone,” though the comparison is in no way an obvious one. As Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers spins the impact of city-living upon its grooves becomes easily discernible, if gleefully twisted and wildly amped.
Again, Taylor’s primary influence is Elmore, but Jimmy Reed provides the core to “It’s Alright,” ‘60s instrumentalists like Freddie King seem to be the source of “55th Street Boogie,” and hitting like Albert Collins on thoroughbred steroids is “Phillip’s Theme.” By contrast Burnside and T-Model Ford emerged squarely out of the Southern country blues tradition (think of the scrunched-up ’60 waxings of Mississippi Fred McDowell). What ultimately links Taylor and select members of the Fat Possum crew is a sheer and very welcome potency.
But the Houserockers are far more than just the tissue between old and new. Robert Christgau summed it up perfectly when he called them The Ramones of the blues. This is most easily heard on the zonked boogie of the instrumentals “Walking the Ceiling,” “44 Blues,” and “Taylor’s Rock,” but the association also surfaces on numbers like “Wild About You Baby,” “Give Me Back My Wig,” and the slightly less molten “It’s Alright.”
By the ‘90’s end the debut had sold over 100,000 units, and the 9,000 copies purchased in the first year put Alligator firmly on the map. The imprint’s subsequent direction was generally far more refined next to what the Houserockers offered (though The Son Seals Blues Band, another massive Iglauer-funded debut from ’73, bookends really nicely with this one), and in numerous cases those slick and/or sophisto tones just didn’t suit my tastes. But I’m not complaining.
Because Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers is a gift for which I’ll be forever grateful. It’s a record I’ve spent over a quarter century getting affectionately smacked around by, and one I’ll happily carry with me until the end of the line.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
