Career
Erlanger recorded three albums with the band: Cabretta (1977), Return to Magenta (1978), and Le Chat Bleu (1980). He also appeared on Live at CBGB"s (1976), an album of bands that pioneered punk rock at the venerable nightclub CBGB in the mid-1970s. Erlanger"s first instrument was the piano, but he switched to guitar after hearing recordings by Jimmy Reed.
In the summer of 1968, at the age of sixteen, he got a chance to back up John Lee Hooker at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village (Hooker shared the bill with a young Van Morrison and the group Rhinoceros).
Village Voice critic Annie Fisher described Hooker"s performance as "awesome". lieutenant was a turning point for Erlanger, who decided to become a professional musician.
He formed a group called the Sting Rays, which had some success with an European Parliament produced by a young Philosophy Schaap. After leaving Mink DeVille, Erlanger returned to his first love, the blues, and worked with the likes of R. L. Burnside, Otis Rush, Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Big Jay McNeeley, and others
His Seattle-based group The Slamhound Hunters had a regional hit on the West Coast and toured Europe.
Erlanger produced two R.L. Burnside albums: Acoustic Stories (1997) and Well, Well, Well. Erlanger also produced recordings by Ruth Brown bandleader and jazz organist Bobby Forrester, and jazz guitarist William Ash. Erlanger appears on the Robert Palmer-produced Fat Possum Records album by CeDell Davis entitled Feel Like Doin" Something Wrong (1994).
Two Erlanger songs appear on the soundtrack of the 1985 movie The Revenge of the Teenage Vixens from Outer Space.
