Johnny Winter [Expanded] [Remaster]

Performer: Johnny Winter
Artist: Willie Dixon; Edgar Winter
Producer: Johnny Winter; Johnny Winter
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Also available in a 3-pack with SECOND WINTER and CAPTURED LIVE. Personnel: Johnny Winter (vocals, guitar, slide guitar, harmonica); Johnny Winter; Big Walter Horton (harmonica); Albert Wynn Butler (tenor saxophone); Norman Ray (baritone saxophone); Karl Garin (trumpet); Peggy Bowers, Elsie Senter, Carrie Hossell (background vocals); Edgar Winter (alto saxophone, piano); Willie Dixon (acoustic bass); Tommy Shannon (electric bass); John Turner . Audio Mixer: Thom Cadley. Liner Note Author: Steven Paul. Recording information: Nashville, TN (02/??/1969-03/05/1969); San Francisco, CA (02/??/1969-03/05/1969). Photographers: Hiro ; Eddie Kramer; Sandy Speiser. Among white blues singers of the 1960s, there were some who studied the music so intently they amazed even the genre's creators with their technical mastery. A select few, however, seemed to be born oozing authenticity, sounding just as soulful as the greatest black bluesmen while forging a completely new sound. Johnny Winter belonged in the second category. A long-haired hippie albino, he astounded initially skeptical listeners with his Howlin' Wolf-like vocals and wild Johnny Guitar Watson-esque guitar stylings. THE WOODSTOCK EXPERIENCE showcases Winter's first taste of national exposure, first with his 1969 self-titled debut album, and then with his set at the Woodstock festival later the same year. The latter recording is the revelation here--a tornado of raging slide guitar and shouted vocals that sounds as if a late night Lone Star State roadhouse gig has been magically transported to the upstate New York farm. With several tracks clocking in at over 10 minutes ("Mean Town Blues," a hellacious Edgar Winter-led jam on "Tobacco Road"), the album showcases Johnny at his freest and most explosive. When Johnny Winter burst upon the American music scene in the late 1960s, he was initially looked upon as a something of an oddity--an albino guitarist playing and singing the blues--until people actually heard him perform. The Texas native played a sharp, bracing style of (mostly) electric blues with few concessions to rock & roll audiences. His 1969 self-titled debut reveals a fierce talent out to show the world that he could play the blues with the best of them. Inspired by the raw sounds of blues icons Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters (whom he would often work with in the '70s), this set sizzles with passionate, incendiary electric soloing (B.B. King's "Be Careful with a Fool"); slashing, Delta-style acoustic slide guitar (Robert Johnson's "When You Got a Good Friend," the ominous original "Dallas"); and soulful, horn-accented balladry ("Two Steps from the Blues," one of three bonus tracks on this 2004 remastered edition). Winter would go on to record many albums in both blues and rock & roll styles--and play with artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, the Allman Brothers, and Sonny Terry--but his first remains one of his finest. Sony Legacy's remastered and expanded reissue of Johnny Winter's self-produced debut album for Columbia Records -- recorded in 1969 -- is nothing short of a revelation. Unlike most of his peers, who purposefully wed blues to rock and made it palatable to pop audiences, Winter's approach to the blues was pure and savage. He approached rock & roll from the heart of the blues. His guitar tone was like barbed wire dipped in lighter fluid and was as precise as a stiletto. On this recording and Second Winter, Johnny played the blues pure and simple. Whether it was the stinging raucous Delta music as played acoustically on "Dallas," or his savage electric attack on "Mean Mistreater," "Be Careful With That Fool," or "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" -- complete with horns and piano by brother Edgar -- Winter's blues were easily separated from the masses. His uncompromising, completely mythical, and romantic fascination with the music was propulsive and profound. A listen to "Leland Mississippi Blues" or the strolling tough National Steel blues of "If You've Got a Friend" gives as complete a portrait as is necessary of a man who not only came out of the Texas blues tradition, but extended the whole Southern legacy and brought it deep into mainstream American culture while employing and paying homage to its creators -- Willie Dixon plays bass on this record! Containing three bonus tracks, this is one of the most welcome reissues in the blues canon to come down the pipe in quite a while, and if there is one Winter recording to own, it should be this one. ~ Thom Jurek

Q (5/97, p.144) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...Winter's vocals rasp with a raw edge that matches his cranium-scooping guitar sound...Before the '70s, Winter was burrowing beneath some deep blues roots." Down Beat (p.68) - 3 1/2 stars out of 5 - "His lines, even the speediest and the wildest, have a sense of order. Back then, Winter could really sing, too..."

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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