He borrowed Albert Collins’ bass monster Johnny B Gayden and cut three albums – the other two being Serious Business and Third Degree, both also deserving of your attention, though the latter’s the better – cementing his identity as a born-again bluesman in the Texas tradition. It’s as rough, raw and funky as white-boy blues ever got: straight-up live (apart from Blind Willie McTell’s Broke Down Engine, where Winter overdubs harp and mandolin atop his National Steel acoustic) and soaked to the bone in the influences of Muddy Waters, BB King and – on a hectic Mean Town Blues – John Lee Hooker, all cranked up and adrenalised to the max.įreed from the big label, the rock manager and their demands that he court the mainstream, Winter signed to Chicago-based blues indie Alligator in the 80s. There’s nothing ‘progressive’ or ‘experimental’ here: it’s a live set by the original trio cut as four-track demos in an empty Austin club, pre-dating his breakthrough and the Columbia deal. Two of the words in this album’s title are accurate, and one of them is ‘the’. THE PROGRESSIVE BLUES EXPERIMENT (Capitol) Johnny Winter: Life Inside His Final Tour.The other blues brothers: When Joe Perry Met Johnny Winter.Their relaxed Chicago-approved whomp smoothed down Winter’s tendency towards hyperthyroid excess without dimming his fire or softening his punch, and he rose to the occasion with some of the most passionate and authentic performances of his career. In the immediate wake of his triumphant production of Muddy Waters’ 1977 comeback album Hard Again and the subsequent tour, Winter took the same band – including James Cotton (harp), Pinetop Perkins (piano) and the great Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith (drums), not to mention The Big Mud himself stepping up for a duet vocal on Walkin’ Through The Park – into the same studio to cut an album of his own. Superior (The releases that built his reputation)Ĭareer-defining performances with Muddy Waters’ band. Relegated to the vaults after Winter dumped his original band in favour of the former McCoys, it was replaced on the release schedule by the subtle-it-ain’t-overwhelming-it-is Live Johnny Winter And, loaded with nuggets such as Good Morning Little Schoolgirl and Jumpin’ Jack Flash, which turned out to be his all-time bestseller. His official major-label debut was both underweight and overcooked, lacking the raw spontaneity of his Austin demos, but the ‘three-sided’ Second Winter brought it all home, mapping JW’s blues-rock landscape in all its idiosyncratic glory.Īdding younger brother Edgar to the team on sax and keys, it had a great Richard Avedon sleeve-shot and a prime selection of originals and covers, including the 120mph fireball version of Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, Little Richard’s Miss Ann slowed down to a languorous Lowell Fulson-style shuffle and a hectic sprint through Chuckleberry’s Johnny B Goode which should be entirely unnecessary but somehow isn’t.Īnd the home-brewed tunes which made up the final vinyl side were just spectacular: the stomping slide epics I Love Everybody and Fast Life Rider, the hyper-speed Hustled Down In Texas and the jazzy I Hate Everybody all revealed Winter to be more than just another white boy lost in the blues.Īnd, to add to this embarrassment of Roadhouse Deluxe riches, the Legacy edition comes bundled with a scorchio 1970 live set cut at the Albert Hall (and including an early version of bro’ Edgar’s Frankenstein, not to mention his finest enraged-bee vocal impression on the Nashville Teens’ Tobacco Road). Johnny Winter performing with Muddy Waters (Image credit: Getty)Ĭombines scorching covers and stomping originals to spectacular effect.
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