Hound Dog Taylor – Sitting Here Alone – Remastered

Hound Dog Taylor – Sitting Here Alone – Remastered

Theodore Roosevelt Taylor (“Hound Dog” just seems more appropriate for someone playing incredibly raucous slide guitar blues) was born this day, April 12, 1915, in Natchez, Mississippi.
He was old enough to have made a few appearances on Sonny Boy Williamson II’s KFFA radio broadcasts in Helena, Arkansas, before moving to Chicago in 1942.

Having only begun playing guitar at the age of twenty, it was not until 1960 that he cut his first single, for the Bea & Baby label. It was another two years before he released a second (for the Firma label) and five more after that that he released a lone 45 on Checker.

In 1971, Bruce Iglauer tried to convince Bob Koester of Delmark Records to sign Taylor. With Koester decidedly uninterested, Iglauer recorded Taylor and his band The HouseRockers, second guitarist Brewer Phillips and drummer Ted Harvey, and released the results on his newly minted Alligator Records imprint.

It is sad that Taylor never really got to see what he started with Iglauer. Cancer took him from us at the end of 1975.

Taylor cut three LPs in his lifetime (the third was released posthumously) but they are the definition of “Genuine Houserocking Music”

A self-deprecating Taylor once said of himself, “When I die, they’ll say, ‘he couldn’t play shit, but he sure made it sound good’.”

This comes a session that Taylor cut in 1967 for Chess.

Backing Taylor are Walter Horton on harmonica, Lafayette Leake on piano, Lee Jackson on bass and Robert Whitehead on drums.

Five songs were cut, but they all remained in the vault for twelve years, before seeing release on a 1979 compilation LP “Sultans of Slide Guitar – Rare and unreleased Recordings from 1953 – 1969”. Featured on the LP were Robert Nighthawk and Johnny Littlejohn.

It is not the backing musicians, but the production that makes the recording sound as if it were made at least ten years earlier.

Featured Photo by Andre Hobus