Hound Dog Taylor - Deluxe Edition '1999

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Wild About You Baby
02. The Sun Is Shining
03. Roll Your Moneymaker
04. Give Me Back My Wig
05. Walking On The Ceiling
06. See Me In The Evening
07. Phillips Goes Bananas
08. It Hurts Me Too
09. Whatd I Say
10. Rock Me
11. Phillips Theme
12. Take Five
13. Shes Gone
14. Aint It Lonesome?
15. Aint Got Nobody
16. Hound Dog Talks (hidden track)

The music of Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers remains the place where rock &
roll and the blues meet at the end of a dark alley. A slide guitarist of the
Elmore James school, Taylor played raw, nasty-sounding music long on energy and
short on subtleties. Other blues guitarists used distortion before Taylor, but
he explored it to depths only previously investigated by white rock guitarists
playing instruments and amplifiers far superior in quality to the cheap Japanese
guitars and Sears & Roebuck amplifiers through which he blasted his brand of
tonal mayhem. But it simply wasnt the lack of a good guitar and amp rig that
made Taylors music stick out from the pack of leg-licking B.B. King imitators
that still infest the music. Taylors music flowed from the warmest of impulses,
brimming with good feeling, raw energy, and more than a little Canadian club. A
three-piece band with no bass player (second guitarist Brewer Phillips played
basslines on a battered Telecaster when he wasnt squeezing out metallic leads on
it), Taylor and the HouseRockers brought more raw energy to the blues than a
herd of modern boogie bands could only attempt to produce. His ragged but right
approach found him an enthusiastic audience with both grizzled blues veterans
and wide-eyed college kids, and influenced a number of up-and-coming slide
guitar practitioners. This entry in Alligators Deluxe Edition series draws from
Taylors four albums for the label -- three studio and one live -- along with two
previously unissued live tracks. The song selection is nigh to excellent,
stressing the connection between Taylor and the bands approach to rock & roll
(Whatd I Say, Give Me Back My Wig, Take Five, Walking the Ceiling) and the blues
(Wild About You, Baby, The Sun Is Shining, It Hurts Me Too, Rock Me). The two
bonus live tracks are a welcome addition to Taylors small recorded legacy and
show just how precarious and volatile the mixture of these three gentlemen could
be. Phillips Theme showcases Brewer Phillips playing some of his best lead
guitar work with Taylors heavily tremoloed bass rhythm finally overtaking the
whole shebang by songs end, while Aint It Lonesome? is a talking blues where
Taylor constantly cuts time on the band during the monologue, Phillips and
drummer Ted Harvey following his every quirky move the way only musicians who
have been playing together for years can. The CD also includes a hidden bonus
track at the end of Taylor on-stage telling one of his patented incomprehensible
jokes, one minute and 47 seconds of lunacy thats as much fun as the music that
preceded it. The bottom line is: This is way more than simply a cash-grabbing
sign pointed toward the rest of his catalog. Quite simply, if someone wanted to
know what Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers music was all about, you could
give them this CD and consider your mission accomplished.

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