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Alligator Records 30th Anniversary Collection |
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Saturday, 31 December 2005 09:13 |
The Alligator Records 30th Anniversary Collection
By John Sinclair
It's hard to believe, but it's already been 30 years since Alligator Records issued its first LP, a rough and raucous set of primal electric blues by a raw, gloriously rowdy three-piece outfit from Chicago by way of Mississippi known as Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers.
Although the album was enthusiastically received by the small coterie of urban blues fanatics who were desperately seeking signs that the blues would continue to evolve and grow into the 1970s and beyond, the eponymous Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers LP didn t make much of an impact on the marketplace, and it seemed inevitable that Alligator Records would remain a labor of love well into the foreseeable future.
It was clearly Bruce Iglauer's love for the blues and his determination to get Hound Dog's music onto record and out into the world beyond Chicago that drove the 23-year-old Cincinnati native, just out of college at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and newly settled in the Windy City, to apply the proceeds of a tiny inheritance to the launching of his little blues label and seeing the first Alligator LP into print. Now, three full decades later, Alligator Records is the largest independent contemporary blues label in the world, boasting a catalog of over 190 titles the bulk of them produced by Iglauer himself and Bruce Iglauer is one of the most successful and widely respected individuals in the blues business today.
Bruce met the blues in 1966 at the University of Chicago Folk Festival, where he was totally blown away by a Mississippi Fred McDowell performance which literally changed the course of his life. Soon he was busy booking Howlin Wolf and Luther Allison for appearances at his college and making trips to Chicago in fiendish pursuit of obscure blues records and live performances by the living giants of the blues. After graduation Bruce moved to Chicago and landed a job as a $30-a-week shipping clerk at Bob Koester's Jazz Record Mart, doubling as an assistant to Koester at his Delmark Records operation. Delmark had been making fine traditional and modern blues albums by Roosevelt Sykes, Sleepy John Estes, Big Joe Williams, Magic Sam, Luther Allison, Junior Wells, Jimmy Dawkins and other blues heavyweights since 1959, keeping the blues flame burning throughout the 60s and into the 70s.
Iglauer also joined a select group of obsessive Chicago-based blues lovers including Jim O Neal and Amy Van Singel, Tim Zorn, Paul and Diane Allmen, Wesley Race and others who founded Living Blues, America's first magazine dedicated to keeping the authentic blues alive. O Neal and Van Singel later established the Rooster Blues label and the Stackhouse record shop in Clarksdale, Misissippi, and Wes Race is credited for turning Iglauer on to Son Seals as well as co-producing the Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers album.
Hound Dog had a tremendous impact on Bruce Iglauer, and he spent the next four years of his life (until Taylor's untimely demise in 1975) totally caught up in the music and affairs of the Houserockers. First Iglauer tried to convince Delmark to record this incredible band, but it wasn t quite Koester's cup of tea, so when a couple thousand dollars that had been willed to him by his grandfather came into his hands, Bruce decided to do the thing himself, and Alligator Records was born.
From a business standpoint, the young entrepreneur couldn t have picked a worse time to launch his new blues label. By 1971, the pioneering post-war independent blues imprints Chess/Checker, Modern/RPM, King/Federal and the other small concerns that recorded and sold blues records to a black audience had either gone under or been sold to large entertainment conglomerates, leaving the surviving blues giants whose recordings had provided the independents with plenty of product bereft of a reliable outlet for their music.
The blues stars of the 50s and 60s and their audience were growing old, and many of their once-loyal listeners were switching their affections to the R&B and soul music produced and marketed by new companies like Stax/Volt and Motown. What was left of the established blues industry had begun to abandon the musical and emotional force of the Delta-based electric blues which had given such eloquent expression to the painful complexities of African American life in the cities of the North and chose instead to market a shallower and slicker sound designed to please a musically sophisticated modern audience that had long left the South behind.
At the same time, rock music was well on its way to establishing an utter hegemony over the radio airwaves and record bins of the nation, effectively blocking the blues and other root forms from entering the ever-tightening circle of popular success. From time to time a blues legend like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush or Freddie King would be adopted by a best-selling rock star and produced for release on a major label, but these instances were few and far between at best and failed in their mission to catapult the bluesmen into mainstream acceptance.
This was the table set by fate for Bruce Iglauer, a young man with a vision and a whole lot of nerve who was ready and willing to put his life on the line if that's what it would take to make authentic Chicago blues records and give them a first-class introduction to the world at large. He d witnessed the enthusiastic response authentic blues artists were beginning to enjoy at college concerts and festivals and from progressive rock radio programmers who would actually play blues records in regular rotation, and he basically set out to identify and develop a whole new audience of blues record buyers among the ranks of students, hippies and rockers who had yet to meet the blues in its purest and most exciting form.
Iglauer's idea was to put out one album, work it as thoroughly as possible, see what might happen, and maybe put out another one next year. And, from the very beginning, Bruce was aware that he needed to provide professional management and booking services to his artists in order to maximize their exposure in the marketplace, create new performance opportunities and spur record sales wherever the artists were booked to perform.
Slowly but surely, Alligator moved to establish a distribution network, put Hound Dog Taylor albums in the hands of sympathetic publications and radio stations, and build contacts with the nightclubs, festivals and campus concert presenters who were open to booking blues artists. The college concert market had been opened up by pioneering blues agents like Dick Waterman, and college radio stations were gradually airing more and more blues recordings. And, while the mainstream press had little interest in blues of any stripe, the college papers, rock music magazines and alternative weeklies could be persuaded to pay some attention to modern blues artists who operated largely beneath the radar of the mass media.
Following on the modest success of its first release, Alligator made a fine album with harmonica master Big Walter Horton, signed the compelling guitarist Son Seals and cut an LP with Fenton Robinson, making sure to inform the listening public that the veteran bluesman had penned its title track, Somebody Loan Me a Dime, which had just been a big chart hit for Boz Scaggs on Columbia Records.
Alligator took a significant step forward in 1975 when former Chess Records star Koko Taylor joined the label's embryonic artist roster and released I Got What It Takes, winning the company its first Grammy nomination (its first Grammy award, for Clifton Chenier's I m Here!, would come in 1982). Then legendary Texas guitarist Albert Collins signed with Alligator in 1978, bringing a big reputation and high visibility as an established blues artist who had enjoyed major label affiliations and been profiled in Rolling Stone. Because of Collins, Iglauer has said, the media perceived Alligator had become a major blues label. Marketed by the label under its slogan Genuine House-Rockin Music, both Taylor and Collins became important contract artists who built their careers as popular blues performers on the series of album releases issued by Alligator on a regular basis.
Alligator staked another convincing claim to major blues label status in 1978 with the first three albums in its historic Living Chicago Blues series, a six-LP set that featured unrecorded or under-recognized Chicago blues artists like Magic Slim, Carey Bell, Jimmy Johnson, Pinetop Perkins, Johnny Big Moose Walker, Detroit Junior, Luther Guitar Jr. Johnson, Queen Sylvia Embry and Lonnie Brooks, who was signed to his own album deal and soon became one of the label's brightest stars. This ambitious project was modeled on Samuel Charters historic 1965 three-album set for Vanguard Records, Chicago! The Blues! Today!, which had brought neglected blues masters like Otis Spann, James Cotton, Big Walter Horton, Otis Rush, J.B. Hutto and others into the forefront of the contemporary blues world.
Alligator began to branch out in two more significant directions when Iglauer started licensing records from European labels and smaller blues independents, bringing LPs by well-known artists like Buddy Guy and Clarence Gatemouth Brown to his imprint. And Iglauer began making records with roots-rock guitar heroes with mainstream radio recognition, helping revive the flagging careers of Roy Buchanan, Lonnie Mack and Johnny Winter, whose Guitar Slinger album put the label into Billboard's Top 200 chart for the first time.
In late 1979 Iglauer collaborated with Dr. John to produce Professor Longhair's Crawfish Fiesta, one of the finest of all Alligator albums but, sadly, the influential New Orleans pianist's last recording. Iglauer has worked with other co-producers on various projects, but on most Alligator dates you ll see Bruce Iglauer listed as the producer of record, making albums that are always well thought out, impeccably recorded and mixed for maximum impact. By now his productions must number in three figures a remarkable achievement for a blues record man.
By the mid- 80s Alligator had grown from one or two releases a year to 10 to 14 albums and would soon become the first blues company to produce CDs. The label's roster of artists continued to grow under Iglauer's careful direction: Lil Ed & the Blues Imperials, The Kinsey Report, Katie Webster, James Cotton, Charlie Musselwhite, Elvin Bishop, Bob Margolin, Little Charlie & the Nightcats, Kenny Neal, Maurice John Vaughn and Tinsley Ellis all cut for Alligator, gaining the benefit of the company's close attention to maximizing record sales and furthering the development of their careers.
Another Alligator highlight was its brilliant series of Trumpet Records reissues showcasing sides by Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Big Joe Williams, Willie Love, Jerry McCain, the Southern Sons and other Delta blues and gospel artists recorded by Lillian McMurry in Jackson, Mississippi between 1951 and 1955. Alligator's license to reissue these historic recordings most of them unavailable since their original release as 78-rpm singles lasted long enough to produce several essential CDs (now out of print) that provided a real treasure trove for modern blues listeners.
Alligator turned 20 years old in 1991 and celebrated with the release of The Alligator Records 20th Anniversary Collection, a triumphant double-CD compilation which became one of the label's best-selling albums. Then Iglauer took the show on the road with a sensational cross-country tour that featured Koko Taylor, Lonnie Brooks, Lil Ed & the Blues Imperials, Katie Webster and Elvin Bishop. The tour was recorded for the Grammy-nominated album, Alligator Records 20th Anniversary Tour, and documented by director Robert Mugge (Deep Blues) for the film Pride & Joy: The Story of Alligator Records.
The company continued to roll through the 1990s, building on its successes and expanding its musical focus beyond the genuine house-rockin music which had served the label so well since its inception. The acoustic blues revival was represented by John Jackson, Cephas & Wiggins and Corey Harris, who brought in New Orleans piano master Henry Butler for an album of rollicking blues duets. C.J. Chenier advanced the zydeco banner first brought to the label by his late lamented father, Texas blues legend Long John Hunter was finally introduced to the world, Chicago harmonica masters Junior Wells, Carey Bell and Billy Boy Arnold were effectively showcased, Saffire The Uppity Blues Women proved a surprise success, harpist William Clarke brought the West Coast sound to the label, and emerging young blues stars like Dave Hole, Coco Montoya and Michael Hill gave Alligator a firm foothold on the future.
One of Alligator's greatest triumphs came in the mid- 90s when the label helped pave the way for Luther Allison's return from his long self-imposed exile in Europe to take America by storm and establish himself at the very top of the contemporary blues world. Luther's blazing guitar swept away everything in his path as he leveled audience after audience with his joyful, exuberant, deliriously unstoppable performances, beautifully documented by the label for a blistering live album that was released after Luther was suddenly struck down by cancer and died at the age of 58.
Alligator entered the 21st Century with a bang, introducing new blues stars Shemekia Copeland and Michael Burks, signing established or emerging artists like Marcia Ball, Rusty Zinn and the Holmes Brothers, and producing new albums for the label's contract artists (Koko Taylor's most recent release, Royal Blue, is one of the finest of her long career). Bruce Iglauer continues to stay busy in the studio and always keeps an ever-vigilant eye open for new opportunities to take the label and its artists into previously unconquered territories.
Now, before you spin these two discs one featuring live recordings and the other choice studio cuts from the Alligator catalog take a good look at the lineup here and give yourself a moment to marvel at the breadth and depth of blues artistry represented on this 30th Anniversary Collection. Three decades following its most humble beginnings, Alligator Records has grown into a mighty powerhouse of contemporary roots music, and the company promises to keep growing without a let-up in sight. Let's offer our thanks and appreciation, because that's definitely an achievement to be proud of.
Detroit/Ann Arbor/Detroit
May 28-June 7, 2001/
New Orleans, June 19-20, 2001
John Sinclair is editor of Blues Access magazine and host of the Blues & Roots show on WWOZ in New Orleans. He met Bruce Iglauer when Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers performed at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, an event which Sinclair served as co-producer and Creative Director.
(c) 2001, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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