Both of the brothers stood out early in the blues/rock music scene for their talented playing at a very young age, as well as their striking platinum hair and light skin due to albinism.
#Best johnny winter album for free
In remembrance of the legend, here are 10 great tracks from Winter, playable for free on Spotify.īorn John Dawson Winter III in Beaumont, Texas, Johnny was the older brother of Edgar Winter, another renowned guitar player.
They wouldn’t be called the blues if everything was rosy.We will remember Johnny Winter for his incredible talent, his gracious respect for music and the guitar giants with which he stood shoulder to shoulder, and his indelible touch on the blues. It wasn’t always an easy ride- there were struggles with addiction and duplicitous management - but it was as good, and honorable, as a blues musician can ask for. After Waters died in 1983, Winter, who by then had already inspired followers like his fellow Texan Stevie Ray Vaughan, settled into a journeyman’s role, releasing albums at a steady pace and touring even more frequently than that. Those albums reconnected Waters with his own greatness - Muddy’s prior Seventies albums had been uninspired - and delivered him a late-in-life critical and commercial triumph. Starting in 1977, Winter produced a trio of swaggering, earthy albums for blues genius Muddy Waters, of which Hard Again is the first and best. (New listeners should start with 1969’s Second Winter this year’s True To The Blues compilation is comprehensive.) But stepping out of stardom’s spotlight gave him the opportunity to do his most valuable work, as a steward to the music that changed his life. Okay, you’re looking at me? Then watch this.Īs a concert draw and big-seller, Winter peaked in by the mid-Seventies. It was as if his playing (and his gutsy singing) was a challenge to audiences. Faster and flashier than his blues god contemporary Eric Clapton, Winter’s musicianship - a hyperactive, high-octane intensity was his great blues innovation - had the electric flair of someone who was determined to take charge of how he was seen by others. It’s probably overly romantic to say that one can hear any sort of outsider’s howl in Winter’s playing, which first came to wider attention via a 1968 Rolling Stone article that praised him for some of the most “gutsiest, fluid guitar you ever heard,” but at its best, there’s a beautifully articulated flamboyance to his music. “We both,” he explained, “had a problem with our skin being the wrong color.” I was a pretty bluesy kid.” That alienation, he believed, gave him a kinship with the black blues musicians he idolized. People teased me and I got in a lot of fights. In Mary Lou Sullivan’s entertaining biography, Raisin’ Cain, Winter, whose brother was multi-instrumentalist Edgar Winter (of “Frankenstein” fame), explained that, “Growin’ up in school, I really got the bad end of the deal. Johnny Winter and the 100 Greatest Guitarists What are the odds of that story coming true? What levels of self-belief, resilience and talent did it take to transform those biographical details - one could easily imagine, say, Thomas Pynchon conjuring them for a character (The whitest blues guitarist! Named Johnny Winter!) - into the stuff of a legendary career? As fellow blues guitar great Michael Bloomfield said when introducing Winter at a 1968 show at Manhattan’s Fillmore East, “This is the baddest motherfucker.” Winter was that, no doubt, but also a testament to the idea that with a lot of skill and dedication and more than a little luck, music can open any door. Johnny Winter, from little Beaumont, Texas, afflicted with albinism and 20/400 eyesight in one eye and 20/600 in the other, made an iconic life for himself by playing the blues. There are plenty of reasons why that’s notable - Winter was one of the first blues rock guitar virtuosos, releasing a string of popular and fiery albums in the late Sixties and early Seventies, becoming an arena-level concert draw in the process - but it’s the barest facts that remain the most inspiring. Legendary blues musician Johnny Winter died in his hotel room in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 16th at 70 years old.
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