Johnny Winter
True To The Blues: The Johnny Winter Story

THE REVIEW

The Mississippi can be considered the cradle of the Blues, the place where it all began and developed over the centuries. Just think of the countless artists who were born here, such as Johnson, Waters, Wolf, Dixon, all great figures who enormously contributed to the development of this musical genre, later emigrating to the "Windy City," Chicago, making it the capital of the Blues. One immediately thinks of the great river, Highway 61, the endless cotton and corn fields surrounding the small and poor villages where black workers lived, sitting outside the shacks where they lived in the evening, singing sad songs of misery and poverty, hope, and religion. All this is true, but Texas was also an incredible hotbed of great musicians who contributed enormously to the growth of the movement at different times. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin Hopkins, T-Bone Walker were the fathers of Texan blues at the beginning of the 1900s, followed by equally legendary musicians like Freddie King, Albert Collins, Billy Gibbons, and the Vaughan brothers to our days, a rich tradition that elevates the "Lone Star State" to the home of the blues.

Surely John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is part of this large crowd of Texan musicians, enormously influencing the development of the purest blues and also contaminating it with other genres, which made him, over the decades, an absolute innovator of the genre. Born in 1944 in Beaumont, the little albino became interested in music from his early years, thanks also to his parents, both musicians, who taught him the first musical rudiments. He learned to play the banjo and piano, but after a few years, he was "struck" by the records of Waters and the great bluesmen of the '40s, a love at first listen that made him embrace the guitar, which he soon learned to play by trying to replicate his idols after endless listening to their tracks. After a long and miserable apprenticeship in various dives in Austin and Houston, the white guitarist was noticed by a Rolling Stone journalist, who wrote a long article about him, describing him as the best white blues musician around. Winter was hired by the owner of a well-known New York nightclub, The Scene, who soon got him a great record deal with CBS, and from there his rich career as a musician took off, which after forty years has not yet concluded. The box set is excellent and best describes the various phases of the guitarist's career, from the dazzling debut of '69 with the self-titled "Johnny Winter," where the young man already manages to create great tracks, inflamed by his incredible instrumental technique; speed, power, excellent slide guitar technique, his real strong point over the years.

Notable are the wonderful "Mean Town Blues" and "Be Careful with a Fool," as well as the exceptional version of "Lean Mississippi Blues," performed with grit and quality at the Woodstock festival, which greatly increased the Texan's notoriety, making him known throughout the United States. Great guitar, angry and gritty voice, a mix of blues and aged bourbon, and a strong and charismatic personality on stage made him increasingly popular and famous, also thanks to the extraordinary contribution of his band which included Tommy Shannon (future bassist of Stevie Ray Vaughan) and his brother, also albino, Edgar Winter, an excellent multi-instrumentalist who enriched the tracks thanks to his skilled technique on the piano and sax. Also worth remembering are the famous covers of well-known songs like Dylan's "Highway 61" and the Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash," exceptional versions performed with his second band, perhaps the most popular, "Johnny Winter And," where the second guitarist was none other than Rick Derringer, another great six-string player who, in addition to writing numerous tracks, had the ability to integrate perfectly with the wild and engaging style of the leader, which is fully noticeable in the live "Johnny Winter And Live" from 1971, the most famous album of the musician from Beaumont. After a few years away from the scene due to severe drug problems, Johnny returns to the field with more good studio albums, perhaps more rock-oriented than in the past, but undeniably of quality. In 1977, he began a fruitful collaboration with one of his lifelong idols, Muddy Waters, recording several albums with him, greatly increasing his popularity. Listen to the wonderful "I Done Got Over It," here in a live version with Waters and James Cotton, a great harmonica player who, along with Little Walter, made history in the blues world. At the same time, the albino musician released one of his most beautiful albums, "Nothin' but the Blues," with which he returned to the pure and visceral blues, a raw and simple but effective album, with the wonderful "Tired of Tryin'" as its strongest point.

The '80s saw him disappear from the stages for a while, but Winter continued tirelessly to produce excellent albums, up to the great "Roots" released in 2011, rich with excellent collaborations like the wonderful "Dust My Broom," masterfully performed with the young Derek Trucks, a great guitarist already a member of the Allman Brothers Band and a genius of slide technique, a fan of his since always.

"I know what a guitarist should be like. He should be like Johnny Winter, his slide technique is like a Picasso painting. He's Johnny, the Picasso of the Blues!" Leslie West, guitarist of the Mountain...