COLLECTION (34CD)
REVIEW
The first years of Alligator were dedicated to recording artists from
Chicago’s deep well of blues talent. Besides Hound Dog Taylor, the label
released albums by Big Walter Horton, the then-unknown Son Seals, Fenton
Robinson, Koko Taylor and Lonnie Brooks. In an effort to expose the wealth
of Windy City artists, in 1978 and 1980 we released the six-LP (now four-CD)
Living Chicago Blues set (and followed it with a single-album collection
called The New Bluebloods in 1985 to introduce some of the newly-arisen
Chicago talent).
Starting in 1978, Alligator began recording blues musicians from across the
country. Established blues stars like Albert Collins, James Cotton,
Gatemouth Brown, blues-rock guitar heroes like Johnny Winter, Roy Buchanan
and Lonnie Mack, and ‘next generation’ artists like Kenny Neal, Tinsley
Ellis and Little Charlie & The Nightcats all joined the Alligator
family.
As the blues grew further from its Deep South roots, and the
African-American audience turned to other forms of music, the large pool of
musicians who had grown up in the blues tradition began to dry up. At the
same time, a new generation of musicians, inspired by the blues but not part
of the historic flow of blues, began to reshape the traditional elements to
speak to contemporary audiences. Artists like JJ Grey, Anders Osborne,
Jarekus Singleton, Selwyn Birchwood, and the newest Alligator family
members, Toronzo Cannon and Moreland & Arbuckle, are defining blues and
roots music for future decades.
The previous Alligator Anniversary Collections have been aimed at showing
the complete span of the music we’ve recorded. For this collection, we have
chosen to shine the spotlight somewhat more on the current artist roster and
on those artists who are showing some of the directions Alligator will be
heading in the future.
Over the last five years, since the release of Alligator Records 40th
Anniversary Collection, we’ve lost too many members of the extended
Alligator family, not only artists on the roster and those who had
previously recorded for us, but also those who made memorable guest
appearances on our releases. We will always miss Michael “Iron Man” Burks,
Otis Clay, Michael Coleman, Popsy Dixon of the Holmes Brothers, Lacy Gibson,
Wendell Holmes, Long John Hunter, Smokin’ Joe Kubek, Magic Slim, Sista
Monica Parker, Pinetop Perkins, Ann Rabson, Pete Special of Big Twist &
The Mellow Fellows and Johnny Winter. We also pay special homage to The King
Of The Blues, B.B. King, who graced us with a guest appearance on Alligator.
This collection is dedicated to all of them.
No band epitomizes Alligator’s rough and ready Genuine Houserockin’ Music
spirit more than Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials. Ed Williams and his half
brother James “Pookie” Young learned to play and sing the blues under the
tutelage of their uncle, Chicago slide guitar legend J.B. Hutto. Growing up
on the city’s West Side, they played music for fun while working day jobs—Ed
in a car wash and Pookie driving a school bus. In the early 1980s, they
formed the first incarnation of the Blues Imperials and began gigging in the
West Side blues clubs......
