Consumer Guide Album

Koko Taylor: Koko Taylor [Chess, 1972]
Taylor sounds like you always wanted those women with Big in front of their names to sound--powerful, even rough, without ever altogether abandoning her rather feminine register. But though mentor Willie Dixon is the greatest contemporary blues composer, he's no more reliable album to album than any other song factory--the best lyric here, "Love You Like a Woman" ("But I'll also fight you like a man"), isn't his. Terrific production, though--his soul devices are so crude and obvious they're funny, amazing, or at least odd. B+