"I Got What It Takes" (Koko Taylor)

Koko Taylor (born Cora Walton) got tired of sharecropping and breaking her back, picking cotton down South.  So she and her husband got the hell out of Memphis and went to Chicago in 1952 to find better jobs.  By the end of the decade, she was cleaning houses by day and singing in blues clubs by night.
It was a few years before she got her big break.  In 1962, she was attending a Howlin' Wolf performance, and the Wolf called her up on stage to sing a few numbers (so he could go backstage to get a drink of liquor).  After wrapping her set, she ran into prolific blues songwriter/bassist Willie Dixon, who also was at the show.  Dixon told her he liked her style and promptly helped her record her first single, a Mel Tillis tune called "Honky Tonky," for USA Records, a small blues label.  Soon after, Dixon convinced her to come audition for the head of Chess Records, Leonard Chess, who signed her immediately.  Ultimately, she'd stay with Chess Records from 1964-1972.
Her first single for Chess was the scorching "I Got What It Takes" (1964), written specifically for her by Dixon.  It's a 3-minute dissertation on why she is the baddest female around, delivered in manner that can only be described as foghorn-like.  (Not even Etta James at her most gritty and lowdown had the same atomic growl that Taylor had.)
And although Taylor is the star here, the backing band is no slouch.  Walter Horton's wailing harmonica and Buddy Guy's plucky lead guitar are the perfect foils for Taylor's vocal.  Then there's Jack Meyers on bass: he's playing at least a half step out of tune, yet it doesn't even matter.  There's something simultaneously immaculate and decadent about the bass being so in the pocket rhythmically yet in the wrong key chromatically.  It simply works in this context.
In short, her Chess debut proves why she earned the title "Queen of the Blues."