Bloomfield), Woodstock and a 1970 gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall (originally included on the bonus CD from the Legacy Edition of Second Winter) offers a glimpse of his primal first years on the national stage.Ĭlassic concert audio largely dominates the second disc of True to the Blues. Meanwhile, choice live material from appearances at the Fillmore East in 1968 (his New York debut, introduced to the crowd by the aforementioned Mr. Disc one focuses on his late-60s beginnings kicking off with two of the best cuts off his debut album, 1969’s Progressive Blues Experiment, in the one-two combo of “Bad Luck and Trouble” and “Mean Town Blues” before shifting tears with four cuts apiece from his “other” 1969 debut Johnny Winter (namely “Mean Mistreater” featuring heroes Willie Dixon and Walter “Shakey” Horton) and its powerhouse 1970 follow-up Second Winter (“Memory Pain”, anyone?). With the strange omission of material from the underrated Winter of ’88 LP notwithstanding, True to the Blues: The Johnny Winter Story offers the most comprehensive overview of Winter’s 45 year career ever assembled, pulling from his vast cache of studio and live material he’s recorded for Columbia, Blue Sky, Alligator, Point Blank and, most recently, veteran metal label Megaforce Records. But in the here and now, the spotlight shines directly on the ghost white guitar god celebrated on this amazing four-disc set. It would be awesome to see an anthology from those Muddy sessions turn up one day. Muddy Waters, whom Winter helped make the twilight of the blues giant’s career so special with the trio of albums he produced for him in the late 70s (those being 1977’s Hard Again, 1978’s I’m Ready and 1981’s King Bee ). His style was a straight-up shotgun blast of tube amp tempestuousness, as gutrot raw as the men he grew up emulating as a kid playing the rec room of the local children’s hospital near his hometown of Beaumont, Texas. In a time when the roots of the blues were being transformed by the British Invasion, Winter buzzed through the fanfare of his English contemporaries like a crosscut saw with a forcefulness and attack bearing sharper teeth than such fellow stateside comrades of the art as Jimi Hendrix and Mike Bloomfield. And just below, see a trailer for a new Winter documentary, Johnny Winter: Down and Dirty, that premiered at SXSW this past March.Growing up “special needs” with crossed eyes and perhaps the most famous case in albinism in American medicine surely wasn’t a winning hand dealt to Johnny Winter.īut at 70 years young, he can look back on a career still in full swing where he overcame all odds to become a man Leslie West of Mountain hails as “the Picasso of blues guitar”. Goode,” “Be Careful With a Fool,” and “Mean Town Blues.” Want to learn some Johnny Winter magic? Check out this video guitar lesson with the man himself. See Winter’s brilliant thumb-picking style on full display as he and the band rip through “Mama Talk to Your Daughter,” “Johnny B. In tribute, we bring you the full performance above of Winter with his band on Danish TV in 1970. ![]() Winter passed away Wednesday in his hotel room in Zurich at age 70. He played Woodstock, often covered Chuck Berry, Dylan, and The Rolling Stones, and released several albums with his own band. Despite, or because of, his blues bona fides, Winter was always a stalwart in the rock scene. “Out of all the hopped-up Caucasians who turbocharged the blues in the late Sixties,” writes Rolling Stone, “Texas albino Johnny Winter was both the whitest and the fastest.” While brother Edgar hung a synthesizer around his neck and explored Southern rock’s outer weirdness, Johnny stuck closer to roots music, playing with blues greats like Mike Bloomfield, Junior Wells, and Muddy Waters (he produced three Grammy-winning Waters albums).
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