{"id":27358,"date":"2024-03-26T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=27358"},"modified":"2024-03-27T08:08:10","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T12:08:10","slug":"a-look-back-at-johnny-winter-archival-releases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/26\/a-look-back-at-johnny-winter-archival-releases\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back at Johnny Winter Archival Releases"},"content":{"rendered":"

IMPORTANT NOTE: This review concerns the long out-of-print vinyl releases of early Johnny Winter material — The Johnny Winter Story<\/i>, About Blues<\/em> and Early Times<\/em> — NOT any subsequent reissues. \u2013 bk<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The phenomenon we call \u201covernight success\u201d is, in reality, something that rarely if ever actually happens. It typically takes years for an artist to achieve a level of notability and success. And once they do, there\u2019s a nontrivial segment of their audience that is curious and interested about the creative work they did before breaking through.<\/p>\n

That helps explain the sustained interest in, say, those seven albums Bob Seger made before Night Moves<\/em> (they\u2019re nearly all out of print and likely to remain so; Seger largely disowns them). It also justifies the many reissues of pre-Allman Brothers Band recordings<\/a> by Gregg and Duane Allman. And the surge of interest in the recently unearthed \u201cRockin\u2019 Roxburgh\u201d tape<\/a> \u2013 a live Beatles recording from when the band was right on the cusp of fame \u2013 reminds us yet again that a certain segment of the public is curious enough to justify the reissue of little-heard material by their favorite artists.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Born in 1944, Johnny Winter\u2019s musical career began when he was a teenager in Beaumont, Texas. He released his debut album The Progressive Blues Experiment<\/i> on a small label in 1968, and shortly thereafter signed with Columbia. But Winter had been recording for years, and in the wake of his success, those early recordings found inevitable reissue as The Johnny Winter Story<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The 1969 LP was released on the GRT Records label. It featured 14 songs drawing from both original material and blues classics. Close on its heels came two other collections of juvenilia, 1969\u2019s About Blues<\/i> and Early Times<\/i> from 1970. Winter had no involvement in the release of those records, and reputedly wasn\u2019t happy about their existence. Today, used copies of those rushed-to-market cash-in releases circulate, though on discogs.com, Early Times<\/i> is blocked from sale, suggesting that it\u2019s considered a pirate, bootleg or otherwise unauthorized release.<\/p>\n

Winter passed away in 2014<\/a>, and Paul Nelson \u2013 his late-period manager who helped him regain control over much of his catalog \u2013 left us earlier this month.The upshot of all this is that if you want to hear this music, it\u2019s back to those semi-legit vinyl releases for you. So once again, please note that this review concerns those out-of-print titles — The Johnny Winter Story<\/i>, About Blues<\/em> and Early Times<\/em> — NOT any subsequent reissues.<\/p>\n

Those new to this archival material shouldn\u2019t expect production values or performances to rival Winter\u2019s official catalog, but neither is this music any sort of embarrassment. For listeners who wish to place Winter\u2019s high-profile Columbia (and post-Columbia) work in a larger context, the tracks on The Johnny Winter Story<\/i>, About Blues<\/em> and Early Times<\/em> are revelatory.<\/p>\n

Pete Welding\u2019s essay included in The Johnny Winter Story<\/em> attempts to place Winter\u2019s work in historical context; as a result, Winter\u2019s name isn\u2019t mentioned \u2013 and then only briefly \u2013 until more than halfway through the essay. There\u2019s no information at all regarding the when, where, who or how of these recordings. We do know that they were mostly cut in the first half of the \u201860s, some apparently as early as 1961. Welding does make plain that the goal (of Winter and\/or whomever commissioned and paid for the original sessions) was little more than \u201ctrying to get a hit just like somebody else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winter\u2019s \u201cLucille\u201d instrumental rewrite \u201cCreepy\u201d isn\u2019t the most original thing in the world, but it does let us hear him play some tasty leads. And his old-school reading of Johnny \u201cGuitar\u201d Watson\u2019s \u201cGangster of Love\u201d (released as a single) is a great deal of fun. And there is one shocker: with its jangling guitar lines and close vocal harmonies, \u201cSpiders of the Mind\u201d sounds like a West Coast folk\/garage band exploring the sonic space between The Leaves, The Byrds and Bob Dylan. Few who didn\u2019t know would even identify the artist as Johnny Winter, and it suggests that he could have gone a very different musical direction, had he wished.<\/p>\n

Overall, compared to Winter\u2019s signature style of the \u201870s and beyond (including those ace Alligator releases), the tunes on The Johnny Winter Story<\/i> and its two sister releases are generally quite restrained and pedestrian. But they\u2019re never less than interesting, and a reading of \u201cPlease Come Home for Christmas\u201d hints at the howling vocal character he\u2019d eventually make a major part of his persona) is a delight.<\/p>\n

These recordings are certainly more \u201ccommercial\u201d minded than Winter\u2019s more well-known material, trafficking in r&b and blues-pop styles. There are horn charts on many of the tracks, and Winter\u2019s searing lead guitar appears only occasionally. But none of that takes away from the enjoyment of these recordings. As long as one considers them for what they are \u2013 archival audio documents of an artist still developing \u2013 the tracks on The Johnny Winter Story<\/i>, About Blues<\/em> and Early Times<\/em> deserve a listen. As Welding writes about these recordings in the final sentence of his essay, \u201cEnjoy them.\u201d<\/p>\n

You might also enjoy my interview with Johnny Winter.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IMPORTANT NOTE: This review concerns the long out-of-print vinyl releases of early Johnny Winter material — The Johnny Winter Story, About Blues and Early Times — NOT any subsequent reissues. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,19,60,62,65],"tags":[1204],"class_list":["post-27358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-compilation","category-rb","category-rawk","category-review","tag-johnny-winter","cat-9-id","cat-19-id","cat-60-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27358"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27368,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27358\/revisions\/27368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}