2CD BOX SET PLUS 12 PAGE BOOKLET. "When I die, they'll say 'he couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good'" Hound Dog Taylor
While producing this set JSP's John Stedman remarked "the reason this music is so tough it's played by tough old bastards". Hound Dog Taylor and The HouseRockers (Hound Dog on slide guitar, Brewer Phillips on guitar and Ted Harvey on drums) were indeed tough both on and off stage. Greg Lawrie, a musician who toured with Hound Dog during a 1975 Australian tour (with Freddie King, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Alexis Korner and Duster Bennett) described Hound Dog and the HouseRockers as "one of the rock 'n' rollinest bands ever, completely authentic, 100% raw blues, real rock and roll blues. Hound Dog tore the roof off every night with his slide guitar. He was a fantastic player, very basic, but he hit what needed to be hit, no more, no less".
Accounts of Taylor's early years in Mississippi include stories of him being ordered to leave home at the point of a gun by his stepfather and being run out of Mississippi by the KKK for having a relationship with a white woman. Mike Rowe's account of Hound Dog's early years in his book 'Chicago Breakdown' is succinct: "Theodore Roosevelt 'Hound Dog' Taylor was born in Greenville, Mississippi on April 14th 1916 (or possibly in Natchez on April 12th 1915). First, he tried the piano and then a cigar box guitar, to be replaced by the real thing, ordered from Sears Roebuck. He was nineteen and learned to play by watching musicians in Tchula, where he was then living. His big influence was Elmore James, but he names Lightnin' Hopkins and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) as other sources of inspiration and in fact he played with Sonny Boy on the King Biscuit programme. After some trouble in Mississippi he left to come to his sisters in Chicago. He played with Johnny Williams at Stormy's (at Root and Princeton) and there were plans to record them, which fell through."
