As someone who's only learned to adore and love the blues with all my heart and soul in the last 3 years, I have to say this is one of my best blues purchases yet! This is a trashier, rawer side of the blues, a great disc to get up and shake your bootie like it was meant to shake for the blues!

55th Street Boogie, 44 Blues and She's Gone are my favorites!

Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers prove that you do not need to be great musicans to be a great blues players. Blues is as much an emotion as it is a music style and the great play the blues with soul. You will not be confusing Hound Dog with Robert Cray or Eric Clapton who are both better technically, but lack the raw soul needed to be great at the blues. The Dog brings it as raw as anyone and that is what makes this is a great blues album. The rawness of this album it may not be as accessible for everyone. Would only suggest for folks already deep in the blues. If you are looking for some great slide guitar that is a little more refined abd accessibile check out Lil' Ed and the Imperials.

This album is important historically for the blues being the first release for Alligator Records, which has since become a major blues label and help revived the blues in the early 80's. If you like raw honky tonk slide blues guitar this is the album for you.

This is the pivotal work for all rock and blues fans. It cannot get any more raw. For all you Black Keys, White Stripes, etc fans, this is what the bands aspire to be.

This is the real deal, music played by true bluesmen that were not in it for the money.

The guitar is so raw,
production so raw,
singing so raw

...they just must have turned on the tape recorder and said okay...now play!

What Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" is to jazz, this is essential for modern rock. This is absolutely ferocious guitar playing!

You don't have to be a Chicagoan to love Chicago blues. And it doesn't get more raw, low-down, gut-bucket, razor totin' South Side blues than the Dog!

For anyone who ever played a $50 Sears Silvertone guitar with a busted speaker amp providing the "fuzz" tone in his garage with his buds, THIS DOG'S FOR YOU!

Hawaiian Boogie alone is worth the price of the album (I doubt Hound Dog could have spelled Hawaiian!), and when I hear it, I'm back at the Checkerboard with my wife to be, our feet stuck to the beer-stained floor, surrounded by you real blues fans. You know who you are...

"When I die", Hound Dog Taylor is reported to have said, "people are gonna say 'he couldn't play s**t, but he sure made it sound good'!"
Well, truth be told, Theodore Roosevelt Taylor wasn't the most subtle or technically varied slide guitarist, but he and his Houserockers did indeed make it sound good.

The production on this their first record leaves a lot to be desired (the drums are mixed way too far into the background, and there are times when you can barely hear Brewer Phillips' second guitar), but having Hound Dog Taylor's crunchy, fuzzy lead guitar right up front isn't too bad, and he rocks on the funky "It's Alright", the fiery instrumental "Walking The Ceiling", and a raw, sloppy take on Tampa Red's "It Hurts Me Too".

Other highlights include the slow blues "Held My Baby Last Night", and Hound Dog Taylor's best song, the superbly groovy, up-tempo boogie of "Give Me Back My Wig" (later covered by Stevie Ray Vaughan among others).
Incredibly unsubtle and often unvaried, and too many mediocre instrumental pieces, too, but it's good fun all the same.
3 1/2 stars.