Track Listing

1. Wild About You Baby
2. Sun Is Shining - Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers, Hound Dog Taylor
3. Roll Your Moneymaker
4. Give Me Back My Wig
5. Walking the Ceiling
6. See Me in the Evening
7. Phillips Goes Bananas
8. It Hurts Me Too
9. What'd I Say
10. Rock Me [Live]
11. Phillips' Theme [Live][#]
12. Take Five
13. She's Gone
14. Ain't It Lonesome [Live][#]
15. Ain't Got Nobody

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72767 in Music
• Brand: Taylor
• Released on: 1999-02-23
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .24 pounds

Amazon.com
One could conceivably argue that Hound Dog Taylor was a blues punk; he favored energy, excitement, and above all, fun over minor considerations like, say, tuning. It's that exuberance that carries the day on this best-of collection. It's all material from Taylor's too-brief stint at Alligator in the 1970s (he died in 1975), but it's all good blues--blues good enough to launch a record label. Taylor's guitar is grungy enough to get a starring role in a Seattle band circa 1990, and while his voice never quite rises out of a monotone, it's still oddly expressive. Fast, furious, and brimming with energy, Taylor is the perfect cure for the wintertime blues. --Genevieve Williams

Customer Reviews

You've heard it before...but never this well.
There's something ironic, if not oxymoronic about 20 bit digital remastering of the music of a man who played on a cheap japanese teisco guitar and amp with blown speakers! But You'll have to admit, the distortion never sounded so good. This is a remastered greatest hits type album, although "Sadie" and a couple others are missing. However, in their place you'll find a couple previously unissued gems. If you're like me, you already have most of these songs, but you can never get enough Hound Dog. And if you want to buy your 1st Hound Dog, this would be a great choice.

Hound Dog Rocks The House
This is a remastered set which serves as an anthology of Hound Dog Taylor's work on the Alligator label. It also contains a couple of unissued tracks and some live cuts. Hound Dog Taylor was a rather obscure blues musician with a few rare singles issued when Bruce Iglauer saw him play at Florence's in Chicago during the early seventies. His music was so energetic, raucous, and raw that Iglauer decided he had to start a record label to record the unjustly obscure Taylor. With much hard work Alligator records was formed and recorded four albums by Taylor before he died. The gregarious Taylor had a trio consisting of himself on guitar and vocals, Brewer Phillips on rhythm guitar, and Ted Harvey on drums. Taylor could play slide guitar like the reincarnation of Elmore James and was adept at either the raucous boogie numbers for which he is well known or slow burning blues numbers. His style influenced such people as George Thorogood, Studebaker John, and Lil' Ed. This disc contains many highlights such as "Give Me Back My Wig", "Take Five", "She's Gone" and "See You In The Evening." A couple of my favorites "Sadie", "It's Alright", "Taylor's Rock", and "Gonna Send You Back To Georgia" were not included. However the disc is still excellent. Lovers of high energy blues and slashing slide guitar playing will become addicted and purchase the rest of Hound Dog Taylor's discs. The Hound Dog Taylor Tribute album on Alligator is also great and contains performances by a number of the musicians who were influenced by Taylor.

Fun, energetic blues-n-boogie
A slide guitarist of the Elmore James school, Theodore Roosevelt Taylor and his bass-less Houserockers played raw, nasty-sounding blues n' boogie 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, blasting his tonal mayhem through cheap Japanese guitars and Sears & Roebuck amplifiers.

This collection gathers (most of) the best tracks from Taylor's all-too-brief recording career (he died four years after setting foot in a studio for the first time), including the supremely groovy semi-slow blues "See Me In The Evening", the blustery instrumental "Walking The Ceiling", the funky "She's Gone", and takes on Elmore James' "Wild About You Baby", "Shake Your Moneymaker" and "The Sun Is Shining". Tampa Red's "It Hurts Me Too" is here as well, in an incredibly fuzzy, sloppy rendition which somehow still manages to sound compelling.

Taylor's best (semi-)original song is also included, the catchy boogie "Give Me Back My Wig", and a hidden bonus track at the end of the CD features Hound Dog Taylor on-stage telling one of his patented incomprehensible jokes.
"Deluxe Edition" doesn't collect everything of Taylor's that's worth a listen, and a couple of selections are very much debatable, but as an introduction it works very well, and it does manage to include virtually all of his very best songs.