Saints & Sinners

Performer: Johnny Winter
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: All tracks have been digitally remastered. Johnny Winter's sixth Columbia album was also his second since his comeback from drug addiction. Its predecessor, Still Alive and Well, had been his highest charting effort. Saints & Sinners was just as energetically played, but its mixture of material, including '50s rock & roll oldies like Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days," Larry Williams' "Bony Moronie," and Leiber & Stoller's "Riot in Cell Block #9," recent covers like the Rolling Stones' "Stray Cat Blues," and a couple of originals, was more eclectic than inspired. (Van Morrison completists should note that the album also contains Winter's cover of Morrison's "Feedback on Highway 101," a typical bluesy groove song that Morrison recorded for his 1973 Hard Nose the Highway album but dropped. Winter's is the only released recording of the song.) Abetted by the members of the old Johnny Winter Band -- Rick Derringer, Randy Jo Hobbs, and Richard Hughes -- plus his brother Edgar Winter and Dan Hartman, Winter produced forceful hard rock focused on his searing lead guitar runs and rough-edged voice. It was the less-impressive choice of material that kept this collection from matching its predecessor. Originally released in February, 1974, Saints & Sinners was reissued in February, 1996 with the previously unreleased song "Dirty," a Winter original, added. The slide guitar-and-flute track is not consistent with the rest of the album, but it is interesting to hear. Wonder who played the flute? ~ William Ruhlmann Together with 1970's JOHNNY WINTER AND one of the definitive albums of Johnny Winter's '70s tenure on Columbia Records, 1974's SAINTS AND SINNERS is an unpretentious slab of good old-fashioned guitar boogie. Winter's first release after a self-induced drying-out session brought on by his well-publicized addiction problems, SAINTS AND SINNERS seems almost deliberately low-key. With only two compositions of his own--plus another, "Rollin' Cross the Country," co-written with Dan Hartman, who plays bass, drums, and guitar on the track--Winter runs through a loose collection of rock & roll and blues covers. "Boney Maronie," the Stones' slinky "Stray Cat Blues," the Coasters' "Riot in Cell Block #9," and Allan Toussaint's "Blinded By Love" are fun romps, but Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days" and his own "Bad Luck Situation" seem to allude to Winter's personal life with an unflinching eye. The guitar-and-voice session outtake "Dirty" is added, and it's one of the most harrowing things Winter has ever done.

Texan blues guitarist Johnny Winter, surely the first albino blues guitar hero, was already a convincing artist in the '60s when still in his teens. At the dawn of the '70s, he embraced the sound of the time, adopting a louder, more frenetic blues-rock style. Backed by the McCoys, including guitarist Rick Derringer, he released a series of classic blues-rock albums, while his keyboard-playing brother Edgar, with whom Johnny played on and off over the years, achieved stardom in his own right. At the end of the '70s, Winter produced Muddy Waters, helping him make a triumphant comeback. In the ensuing decades, Winter maintained a prolific schedule of touring and recording.

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