Bruce Iglauer didn’t intend to spend his whole career running a blues label. In the beginning, he was just a 20-something, diehard fan who was determined to record one album with his favorite artist: Mississippi-born Hound Dog Taylor.
Iglauer was working as a clerk for Chicago’s Delmark Records when he first heard Taylor’s mesmerizing sound at Florence’s Lounge on the city’s South Side. But when Iglauer couldn’t convince his boss to record Taylor, he decided to do it himself.
Fifty-five years later, Iglauer and his scrappy, independent label, Alligator Records, are still at it, having weathered the advent of CDs, online streaming, industry consolidation and, locally, the closure of dozens of blues venues. Through it all, Iglauer has been steadfast in championing blues and trying to keep the genre thriving in a world that’s hyper-focused on pop’s next big thing.
“I just wanted to create a situation where I was exposing musicians and making a living, and I never cared too much about making a lot of money,” Iglauer said on a recent afternoon. “I’ve succeeded in not making a lot of money, but I’ve had a wonderful time, and I intend to have more of a wonderful time.”
This week, the Chicago Blues Festival will celebrate Alligator’s milestone anniversary with a headlining set on Friday night. The lineup includes Alligator artists like Lil’ Ed Williams & The Blues Imperials, Ronnie Baker Brooks, Toronzo Cannon, Nick Moss and Tinsley Ellis.
Ahead of the celebration, WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times visited Iglauer and three of this week’s headliners at the label’s longtime headquarters: a converted three-flat building in Edgewater, where the bedrooms serve as offices and the walls are covered in concert posters and album covers. In Iglauer’s second-floor office, a Grammy (one of three the label has won) acts as a paperweight.
The whole place, which is well-worn from decades of use, has the feel of a sort of blues frat house.
On this day, the label’s boss and artists reminisced on their shared past: Williams is Alligator’s longest-tenured artist and Brooks’ father, Lonnie, was also signed to the label.
But they also talked about the future of the genre they all love. In recent years, the label has signed rising talent like Shemekia Copeland, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and D.K. Harrell. This spring, Alligator collected seven Blues Music Awards and 16 Living Blues Awards nominations.
Together, it spells an exciting new chapter for the genre, which traces its origins to the Mississippi Delta in the late 19th Century and made its way to cities like Chicago during the Great Migration.
“I’m thinking about the careers of this new generation of blues musicians, and how many of those careers I can launch at the age of 78,” said Iglauer, who is still looking for his next artist to sign — someone “raw” and “not too polished.” “I intend to live forever, but just in case I don’t, I want to have a legacy that people will remember, not so much for my name, but for the artists and the music.”
As they all prepare to take the stage this weekend at the largest free outdoor blues fest in the world, get to know Lil’ Ed Williams, Ronnie Baker Brooks and Nick Moss, three of Alligator’s Chicago-rooted artists.
Lil’ Ed Williams on why the blues will never die
Lil’ Ed Williams has spent so many years as an Alligator artist that he considers Iglauer — who is just seven years his senior — to be like a sort of father figure in his life.
“My dad left me when I was 6 years old. He left my house, and he said, ‘I’ll see you next weekend.’ And I never seen him again,” Williams said. “So Bruce was my long-lost dad.”
As a kid growing up on Chicago’s West Side, Williams’ uncle — the Blues Hall of Famer, J.B. Hutto — would sometimes leave his guitar around. Williams and his brother, fellow musician James “Pookie” Young, started learning to play.
Williams met Iglauer at B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted in the mid-1980s. The label owner asked Williams and his band if they’d want to record a few songs for an upcoming Alligator compilation record.
“So we get into the studio, and Bruce told us to go ahead and we start playing and every time I end a song, there were people in the back hollering, clapping and saying, ‘do another,’ so I just started playing like I would play in a West Side club,” said Williams. “I’m doing back bends, and crawling on my knees while I’m playing and Bruce came out and said, ‘Hey guys, we’ve done 30 songs. How about let’s do an album?’”
It was the beginning of their still-evolving collaboration, putting out music informed by real life.
“I don’t think the blues will ever die, I think it will always be a piece of the pie,” Williams said. “It’s your sadness, it’s your happiness, it’s your crying, it’s your laughter, it’s part of your soul.”
Ronnie Baker Brooks on carrying on a family tradition
As Ronnie Baker Brooks enters one of the upstairs rooms at Alligator HQ, he points to a framed photo of his father, the Hall of Fame singer and guitarist Lonnie Brooks. In it, he’s sporting a megawatt smile, denim jacket and his signature cowboy hat.
These rooms are filled with memories for the younger Brooks, who is 59. He accompanied his father here as a kid, and his sound was shaped by his mentors on the label, like Koko Taylor, also known as the “Queen of the Blues.”
When Taylor arrived at Alligator in 1975, she quickly became one of the label’s biggest stars and later, a musical mother figure to Brooks.
“When I was around 12 years old, my dad and her used to do a lot of shows together, and I would go just to be a roadie for my dad, and I’d be in the dressing room with her, and she’d say, ‘One day, you’re gonna have to keep these blues alive.”
That’s just what Brooks is trying to do. Going into Blues Fest this weekend, Brooks said that history is on his mind.
“I have to represent my father. I have to represent Koko Taylor. I have to represent Son Seals, Luther Allison, Albert Collins, and all the greats that I got the chance to learn from being at Alligator,” said Brooks, who grew up in Hyde Park.
In some ways, Brooks felt like an anomaly in his generation. Instead of playing the blues, many of his peers sought out careers in house music and hip-hop, which were exploding in popularity when he was coming up. Those newer genres offered more money and a better shot at stardom. But Brooks always felt loyal to the family craft and he’s encouraged now by the new generation of Black artists who are once again playing the blues.
“I love the diversity, but I also like to see the young African Americans playing it too, because it’s part of our culture, a big part,” Brooks said. “And I always say that the blues is a healer. It can heal me. It can heal you.”
Nick Moss on joining “the preeminent blues record label”
The blues did, in fact, heal something for Nick Moss. When his college athletic plans were scrapped due to a genetic kidney condition, Moss’ brother took him to a show at the now-shuttered Wise Fools Pub in Lincoln Park to boost his spirits.
That night, Little Charlie & the Nightcats played, and Moss’ world was changed.
“In my mind, I said, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” said Moss, who is 56. He started backing legendary blues players like Jimmy Rogers on guitar. But Moss is well aware of his place as a white musician in a genre founded and shaped by Black artists.
“I am walking a very, very fine line as a white man playing blues, and the only way that I can make it good in my heart and in my mind is by giving the utmost respect and reverence to the people that made this music and allowed me to be on stage and allowed me to learn from them,” he said.
Moss began releasing his music on his own. But over the years, he’d reach out to Iglauer, eager to join the label he’d followed since he was a teenager. But it wasn’t until he started collaborating with harmonica player Dennis Gruenling that he was finally signed to Alligator in 2017 — joining the same label that all began with one Hound Dog Taylor record.
“Everywhere I go around the world, people know who Bruce is and they know who Alligator Records are,” Moss said. “And as far as being the preeminent blues record label, there is no other.”
Courtney Kueppers is an arts and culture reporter at WBEZ.