Book Review: Bitten by the Blues by Bruce Iglauer

I checked the index immediately after purchasing Bruce Iglauer’s Bitten by the Blues at a used bookstore.  I was relieved that neither my name, the name of my former boss or the distribution company he owned were listed.  Enduring Iglauer’s furious outbursts decades ago left permanent emotional scars on my psyche.

As the founder of Alligator Records suggests in his 2018 autobiography, Iglauer played the role of “bad cop” to cash-strapped independent record label distributors in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.  He was right to demand past-due money, of course, but my beleaguered colleagues and I at the Olathe-based company were often plugging holes in a moldering dike.  As a buyer/sales rep/warehouse worker sympathetic to Iglauer’s concerns, I was the only person at the company willing to allow him to rage at length.

Iglauer maintains an even keel in Bitten by the Blues. He provides an excellent summation of the era’s independent record label distribution business in a temperate tone and shares sales data, the financial terms of recording contracts and the painful erosion of his retail and distribution networks with admirable candor.

I’m obviously partial to geeky music obsessives.  Iglauer’s effusiveness throughout Bitten by the Blues is charming.  The “and-then-I-released-this-album” format gets tiresome, but his raves compelled me to return to several Alligator titles including Roy Buchanan’s When a Guitar Plays the Blues, Professor Longhair’s Crawfish Fiesta and Michael Burk’s Show of Strength for the first time in years.

I share Iglauer’s disappointment in the general conservatism of the blues audience and appreciate his grim acknowledgment that the blues is in an artistic and commercial tailspin.  Iglauer helped shaped the direction of the blues but he’s frustratingly powerless to reverse its flagging fortunes.  Alas, even a flare-up of Iglauer’s fearsome rage won’t help the music locate its missing mojo.


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I write weekly concert previews for The KansasCity Star.

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I review Julian Vaughn’s Supreme at Plastic Sax.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)