“But he felt that he shortchanged the blues.” The seventies made Winter a rock God, but he was feeling guilty about forsaking the blues.”Steve Paul, his original manager, it was his idea to have Johnny switch over into rock,” says Paul Nelson, Winter’s co-lead and rhythm guitarist for the past nine years who acts as Winter’s current manager but insists that “I’m more of his friend and a guitarist guiding him, guiding his career.” Nelson says that under Paul’s influence and after a big writeup in Rolling Stone, Winter crossed over, fronting what was originally the McCoys (“Hang On Sloopy”) transforming it into Johnny Winter And.“He understands and acknowledges that was finally his most successful part of his career,” Nelson says.
(Johnny Winter with Jimi Hendrix at The Scene Club in New York City in 1969) The compilation covers Winter’s journey starting with cuts from ’68’s The Progressive Blues Experiment through 2011’s Roots. That track and 55 others were recently released on Columbia/Legacy’s comprehensive retrospective, the four CD set True To The Blues: The Johnny Winter Story. King’s “It’s My Own Fault” that trumps any rendition of King’s, Winter’s voice and guitar exploring stratospheric regions out of range for most of his peers then and now. This cat can play!” Winter tears off a soulful, scorching version of B. “This is the baddest motherfucker, man,” Bloomfield says in his introduction. In 1968, Winter wasn’t known much outside of Texas, but that all changed on his first trip to New York City to sit in with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper for a performance captured on Live At The Fillmore East: The Lost Concert Tapes. He underwent physical therapy for stamina, quit smoking and was standing up for three or four numbers in recent shows.Īlthough initially known as a rocker, Winter’s first love was the blues. Winter kept on proving that for the rest of his career, even though hip replacement surgery forced him to sit down for many of his concerts in recent years. “I got out and I’m here to say, ‘Baby you can get out too,’” Winter sings, before adding “Every now and then I know it’s kind of hard to tell/But I’m still alive and well.” “Did you ever take a look to see who is left around?” Winter asks on the title cut, adding that “Everyone I thought was cool is six feet under ground,” alluding to the fact he was close friends with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who both died prematurely in their late ’20s. His recording career was put on hold for a year in ’72 because of his dependence on heroin and his recovery from it, but he came back in ’73 with what many consider his best rock album, the ironically titled Still Alive And Well.
Winter lived hard, flirting with heroin and alcohol, and often looked like he was only a few steps away from the grave.
It was a demise that some had predicted for decades. Johnny Winter passed away yesterday at the age of 70 in a hotel room near Zurich, Switzerland. He was a Texas fireball, a flaming tumbleweed out of Beaumont who blazed a trail across the world with his incendiary blues.
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