I discovered Johnny Winter’s music in 1970. I was young, impressionable – and liked what I heard. It is my intent to speak of his early recordings, simply because that is what I liked, heard and purchased. My fondness for those early records stays with me. We live and get older, and as the people around us and the artists we grew up with pass away, we begin to realize just how short life is. And how serious it can be. And how precious.
It’s been a tough week.
I hope we all learn to appreciate every moment.
jazzmanblue
I discovered Johnny Winter’s music in early 1970, a few months after buying my first LP.
For JW, things started in 1968, with The Progressive Blues Experiment, a superior example of Texas blues coming to the foreground of American popular music. Originally released on a local Texas label, the album opens with a powerful rendition of Rollin’ and Tumblin’, and closes with Chester Burnett’s Forty Four. In between it contains the first recorded version of Winter’s Meantown Blues, and enough gritty, stinging leads to satisfy the most demanding Blues head.
In 1969, his debut album for Columbia was made. The label paid a top dollar (600K) advance to sign him, based only on reputation, word of mouth, and a smooth talking agent.
I can’t say Columbia did wrong, as the music is proof of a solid investment – at least in musical terms. (As for the financial terms? I’m sure Columbia Records recouped the advance. But who really cares about that.)
Listening to the album this weekend, it reminds one of just how much territory the Blues occupied in the overall Rock landscape of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. Heck – it was everywhere. The Rock LP charts were saturated with blues based artists, giving the era from 1967 to 1975 a unique character unlike any other. Sometimes… only sometimes… I miss those days.
The JW concert staple, Sonny Boy Williamson’s Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, appears here. So does the Robert Johnson gem When You Got a Good Friend, done appropriately with acoustic guitar. It’s a solid outing, and also features Winter’s own I’m Yours and I’m Hers, (a personal favorite) and B.B. King’s Be Careful With A Fool. Since I bought this album later on, memory reminds me I was a bit disappointed on first hearing. All of these years later, I cannot imagine why.
The album Second Winter followed for Columbia, also in 1969:
This album is one of two 3 sided double LP’s we know of (The other being Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s The Case of the Three Sided Dream in Audio Color [1974]. If you know of others, please send me an email with the title!)
Many consider Second Winter to be JW’s high water mark, and so many an argument will begin with this record. I personally love his choice to cover Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, and disliked his choice to cover Johnny B. Goode; both remained concert staples over the decades which followed. One was adventurous, the other trite; but such is the way with great artists – the chosen path is uniquely their own, and JW was no exception.
On a personal note:
I purchased my first LP in December of 1969. It was the beginning of an avalanche. First one, then another – and before long, albums were accumulated well in excess of what ones discretionary funds would indicate to be reasonable, or even possible.
One of those early purchases arrived via the Columbia Record Club in early 1970:
This was the first album by JW I purchased, and I played it till it was raw.
To my then young ears, this album sounded heavy and hard. Some of the Rock and Roll influence brought in by Rick Derringer (of McCoys fame – See Hang On Sloopy) did soften things up a touch, although I heard a few jokes at the time regarding Derringer’s Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo. Questions followed as to how a tune with such a title could be a real rock tune. Well, those folks asking the question clearly did not listen to the album. Loaded with gems from beginning to end, the album loses nothing in terms of quality and dynamism in its forty four year journey to the present. Listening to the CD version this weekend, it seems the band’s cover of the Winwood/Capaldi tune No Time to Live does not suffer in comparison to the Traffic version. And – although more Hard Rock than Blues – JWA kicks from start to finish with not a weak moment on either side. It is a Rock Rarity: an album with no filler.
(I was only able to procure a CD copy of the Johnny Winter And album earlier this year. While the vast majority of J’Ws recorded output has been readily available on CD for the longest time, Johnny Winter And on CD remained surprisingly elusive for more than 30 years.)
As a follow up in early ‘71, the band released a live recording which became more well-known as an album than the studio release:
Did the band’s ass kicking version of JW’s Meantown Blues have something to do with the album’s popularity? There is little doubt to these ears, although the entire record is a sonic blast of rocking high energy. My thinking then, as well as now, remains the same in one regard, however: the sound quality could stand some improvement. Whatever one thinks of the sound on the LP, I remember this record taking off, in contrast to the quiet reception afforded the studio release.
After this album, Winter disappeared for a bit. His addiction to heroin became publicly known, and he took time necessary to recover, only releasing Still Alive and Well in 1973. It was a welcomed return. (JW’s version of Silver Train kicks the ass of the Stone’s version from Goat’s Head Soup. No surprise there.)
Over the years, Winter was able to retain the guitar fire that captured those early Texas audiences, even into his late 60’s. When you have it, you have it – and JW made sure to never let it go.
All in all…
In retrospect, Johnny Winter was among a number of artists in the late 60’s and early 70’s capable of launching young rock oriented listeners into a frenzy of musical discovery. The albums above did so for me and a number of friends back in ’70 and ’71, and to many others as well, no doubt. The size and quality of JW’s discography will speak for itself for many decades to come. He will be missed, and remembered well, because of it.
There are those, as yet unknown, young people of the present and future, who will hear these albums and be inspired to pick up a guitar and carry the music forward.
May it happen soon. We will all be the better for it.
John Dawson Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014)
Rest in Peace
July 20, 2014
New York City