A lot of record companies talk quite a Bit about their blues "product" but it's always been the small-label independents who really record and release the best blues discs. Alligator is a new company out of Chicago, where Chess and Vee Jay used to operate from. Needless to say, this disc is far superior to the most recent B.B. King or Muddy Waters albums– if you're really into the blues, labels like Alligator and Adelphi, as well as Blue Goose, Jewel, Arhoolie and Duke, are well worth the checking out.

Hound Dog Taylor and his band are regulars at the Expressway Lounge on 55th Street in Chicago and this album vividly distills all the live-wire exuberance and hard-as-nails force of his Elmore James-oriented brand of the blues, exactly as performed live. From Taylor's slow, John Lee Hookerish boogie "She's Gone" and his beautiful re-doings of James' "Held My Baby Last Night" and "It Hurts Me Too" to wild instrumentals on the order of "Walking the Ceiling" and "55th Street Boogie" to originals like "Give Me Back My Wig," Taylor and his two-piece band (second guitar and drummer) demonstrate all the thrust and immediacy of the Chicago blues tradition at its apogee. Taylor's slide-guitar playing is nonpareil and incisive (Freddy King "borrowed" a Taylor tune and turned it into his best-seller "Hideaway"), he has worked literally every blues club in Chicago, broadcasted "live" on Big Bill Hill's blues show on WOPA and has been trying to make a living as a full-time bluesman since 1957. Up until this album his recording career consisted only of two local-label 45s (one re-collected on Blue Flame LP 101) and I sincerely hope that this disc is the turning point in his career. Re-issue efforts are wonderful, but let's not neglect the still volatile bluesmen still in operation, such as Hound Dog Taylor. (RS 101)

GARY VON TERSCH