HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HOUND DOG TAYLOR!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HOUND DOG TAYLOR! This week we celebrate the birthday of the man who started it all, the king of Genuine Houserockin ' Music and the artist who inspired the creation of Alligator Records. Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor was born on April 12, 1915 in Natchez, Mississippi. He came to Chicago in 1942, worked in a factory and began playing on the weekends at the outdoor Maxwell Street Market. With  a steel slide on the fifth of his six fingers (true), playing a super-cheap guitar through a dilapidated amp, and accompanied by only a second guitar and drums.

Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers played the rawest, roughest, happiest blues in Chicago. I first heard them at Florence's Lounge on the South Side and I was determined to get them recorded. Their music had to be heard! I couldn't get an established label interested, so Alligator Records was founded fifty-two years ago for the sole purpose of recording Hound Dog. When the world discovered him, he went from playing tiny Windy City clubs to Philharmonic Hall in New York and even toured Australia before his death on December 17, 1975. Hound Dog said, "When I die, they'll say, 'He couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!"