Personnel: Hound Dog Taylor; Brewer Phillips (guitar); Ted Harvey, Levi Warren (drums).
RELEASE THE HOUND is an Alligator Records compilation of previously unreleased Hound Dog Taylor tracks, featuring a few songs in the studio, and a host of live performances from tours and radio broadcasts in the early 1970s. As usual, Taylor is backed by the Houserockers: drummer Ted Harvey (replaced by Levi Warren on a few tracks) and second guitarist Brewer Phillips, whose boogie-oriented lines and fills complement Taylor's perfectly.
Hound Dog Taylor was one of the rawest and most exuberant blues musicians ever put to tape, and these tracks are no exception. His keening tenor and raucous guitar blister everything from "Wild About You, Baby" to his herky-jerky cover of Ray Charles's "What'd I Say," and his slide work (Taylor's slide was reportedly made from a sawed-off kitchen chair leg with a brass pipe inside) sounds like a cattle prod battling a toaster. Churning rhythmic interplay from Phillips, and loose, rattletrap drums keep the whole thing on the edge of chaos. More primal, powerful, good-time music is hard to come by, house-rockin' music, indeed.
Professional Reviews
Mojo (Publisher) (p.112) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Raucous and rackety, clattering and sometimes shattering, the music of Hound Dog Taylor made even Howlin' Wolf sound conventional."
