Alligator Records is a Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

-based independent

Independent record label

An independent record label is a record label operating without the funding of or outside the organizations of the major record labels. A great number of bands and musical acts begin on independent labels.-Overview:...

 blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 founded by Bruce Iglauer

Bruce Iglauer

Bruce Iglauer is the American founder and head of the independent blues record label Alligator Records in Chicago.Iglauer was born in Ann Arbor and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cincinnati, Ohio...

 in 1971.

Iglauer started the label with his own savings to record and produce his favorite band Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers, whom his employer, Bob Koester

Bob Koester

Robert Gregg "Bob" Koester is the American founder and owner of Delmark Records, one of the oldest independent record labels in the United States, and one of jazz's best-known imprints...

 of Delmark Records

Delmark Records

Delmark Records is an independent American jazz and blues record label, based in Chicago since 1958. The label originated in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1953 when owner Bob Koester released a recording of the Windy City Six, a traditional jazz group, under the "Delmar" imprint.-History:Born in 1932 in...

, declined to record. Nine months after the release of the first album, he stopped working at Delmark Records to concentrate fully on the band and his label.