Koko Taylor

Crown Jewels

Alligator Records

 Why did Cora Ann Walton, born a sharecropper’s daughter in Memphis, Tennessee almost one hundred years ago, become Koko Taylor, the undisputed “Queen of the Blues?” These Crown Jewels—released on vinyl and as downloads only—from her zenith years on Alligator Records answer that question twelve mighty times.

Taylor migrated as many did from the deep south to Chicago in the early 1950s, but didn’t start singing in the clubs there until several years afterward. She instantly conquered every patron in every club with her kinetic voice. Drawing the attention of perhaps the ultimate blues songwriter, Willie Dixon, helped open doors. Taylor began recording in 1962, but it was her powerful 1964 take of Dixon’s blues party anthem, “Wang Dang Doodle,” with Buddy Guy on guitar, that ignited her fame. However, her nine Alligator albums, beginning with I Got What it Takes in 1975, are where her talents are displayed the most completely. The fifty minutes of Crown Jewels, which celebrates the 50^th anniversary of Taylor’s joining the Alligator family (she never had a contract!), provides a superb sampler of them from start to finish.

Several of these monumental songs have been cut by scores of others, but by the guttural thunder of her voice, Taylor owns them. It’s hard to think of some without thinking of Taylor. She certainly comes to mind for blues fans when “Wang Dang Doodle” fills the air, no matter who’s singing it. Taylor re-cut the song in 1978 for her second Alligator album, aptly titled The Earthshaker. That version which opens this collection strikes with a harder tone than her Checker hit, but otherwise the preference between the two is a matter of taste, or mood. Sammy Lawhorn and Johnny B. Moore’s guitars punctuate the galloping melody just as Guy did.

A full five of these Crown Jewels are taken from The Earthshaker, which besides “Wang Dang Doodle” also include Taylor’s booming reimagining of Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” into “I’m a Woman,” and her traipse through “(You Can Have My Husband but Please) Don’t Mess with My Man.” The latter, first cut by Irma Thomas in 1960, may not be as closely associated with Taylor, but its defiant, salacious theme fits her to a T and the band does a great job nailing the roughhouse melody.

Two more standout performances begin with Taylor’s penetrating live take on “I’d Rather Go Blind,” a song initially famous by Etta James’s version, but which has over the years become a veritable blues standard. Taken from her 1987 album Live from Chicago: An Audience with the Queen, it illustrates the debt owed to Taylor by everyone from Susan Tedeschi to Bonnie Raitt, but also what Taylor gleaned from Big Mama Thornton and later, Big Maybelle. Her 1993 album, Force of Nature (another ideal album title) opens with Taylor’s stomping performance of Little Milton’s “Mother Nature.” The song was tailor-made for her and its inclusion here was further mandated by Buddy Guy’s strident guitar work alongside her. Not a second of the tune is wasted.

Koko Taylor passed away in 2009 at 80 years of age, less than a month after bowling over the crowd at the Blues Music Awards in her hometown Memphis, going out with the same bang she always gave.

Tom Clarke for MAS

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