On Friday, July 2, Alligator Records continues its 50th anniversary celebration with the vinyl reissue of Natural Boogie, the raw and raucous classic second LP from high-energy bottleneck blues legends Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers. Originally released in 1974 as the fourth title in Alligator’s catalog, this is the first vinyl pressing of Natural Boogie in over 30 years. It features genre classics including Sadie, Take Five, Roll Your Moneymaker and See Me In The Evening. The album was originally produced by label president and founder Bruce Iglauer, who personally supervised its remastering.
Iglauer started Alligator Records in 1971 as a young blues fan to record and release an album by the legendary six-fingered Chicago bluesman Theodore Roosevelt “Hound Dog” Taylor and his band. “When I die,” Taylor said, “they’ll say, ‘He couldn’t play shit, but he sure made it sound good!’” With Taylor playing razor’s edge slide guitar and singing with uninhibited joy, Brewer Phillips on second guitar picking out the bass notes, and Ted Harvey driving the beat, the band – playing their second-hand instruments through third-hand amps – made a loud, fast and joyful noise. According to Iglauer, “No one made a more wonderfully glorious racket than Hound Dog, Brewer Phillips and Ted Harvey.” With Taylor’s impossible-to-dislike music and persona, and Iglauer’s marketing prowess, Alligator’s and Taylor’s first LP, Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers, was a hit by blues standards, selling well enough to allow Alligator to release albums by Big Walter Horton in 1972, Son Seals in 1973, and the highly anticipated second release from Taylor in 1974.
Natural Boogie and Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers continue to have a huge impact on fans and artists alike. Dynamic blues-rock trio GA-20 will release a Hound Dog Taylor tribute album (on Colemine Records in partnership with Alligator) later this year. According to Black Keys founder and guitarist Dan Auerbach (who plays one of Hound Dog’s guitars on the new Black Keys album, Delta Kream), “I know for a fact I wouldn’t be in this business if Bruce hadn’t released those first two Hound Dog Taylor records.”
