Goodnight Boogie - by Matt Rogers

 

You know you're going to be in for a wild ride when you get not one, not two, but four crazy tales before you even get into the start of the book! Dan from the Black Keys tells of trading a new Stratocaster that his mom bought him as his first guitar (nice mom!) for a Teisco at an unscrupulous guitar shop in order to sound more like bluesmen like Hound Dog Taylor (he doesn't mention his mom's reaction, but I can't even imagine)! Rogers mentions that Taylor's origins are murky to the point where Hound Dog made up a name of a town that he was supposedly born in, and goes on to tell a story of self mutilation followed by Tom Waits reminiscing about the Dog shooting a heckler in the middle of a song and then finishing the tune! 

Sub-titled "A tale of guns, wolves and the blues of Hound Dog Taylor", Rogers intimates that there will be lots of drinkin', violence, a bit of insanity and lots of great music!

Taylor has a troubled life, with his father leaving the family when he was 3, his step-father kicking him out of the house when he was 9, living with his sister and learning to play piano (actually dragging the instrument by mule to play gigs!), then guitar. He started to make a name for himself but was chased out of the South by the KKK for messing with white women. He fled to Chicago with basically nothing, got some menial jobs and spent years scraping by and trying to break into the music scene. Eventually he met guitarist Brewer Philips - who also had a propensity for attracting violence - and they joined forces.

They started to gain some momentum, but their partnership was contentious, to say the least, with continual bouts of violence, and neither of them, nor their drummer Harvey, were businessmen. Eventually they fell in with some local white blues lovers who were knocked out by their wild shows and started Alligator Records in order to put out Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers. From there, Alligator Records' owner Bruce Iglauer, buoyed by the sales of the album, started booking and managing the band, leading to gigs around the country and even into Australia! Success began for the group, with good paying gigs, respect, reviews and lots of fan adulation. Of course, by this time, the guys were no youngsters and, after one more fight between Taylor and Phillips where Hound Dog shot Brewer three times (he survived), Hound Dog was diagnosed with cancer and succumbed reasonably quickly.

Quite the tale, with lots of big names giving lots of kudos to Taylor and the team, and lots of stories from the road and just in their own apartments! Really well written, a captivating read from start to finish. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in the life of Chicago bluesmen from the 50's through the 70's and the related scene.