Hound Dog Taylor

Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor (born 1915 in Natchez, Mississippi; died 1975 in Chicago, Illinois) was the embodiment of raw, unvarnished Chicago juke joint blues. Born with polydactyly (six fingers on each hand), Taylor migrated to Chicago in the 1940s and became a fixture on the Maxwell Street market and the South Side club circuit. Playing cheap, Japanese-made electric guitars through cracked, heavily distorted amplifiers, he utilized a ferocious, highly rhythmic slide technique indebted to Elmore James. With his band, the HouseRockers (featuring Brewer Phillips on second guitar and Ted Harvey on drums, notably lacking a bass player) Taylor created a deafening, joyous racket. In 1971, fan Bruce Iglauer founded Alligator Records specifically to record Taylor's band.