“Johnny Winter”

“Johnny Winter”

On July 14th, 2014 the world lost blues legend Johnny Winter. Johnny passed in a hotel room in Zurich, Switzerland while on tour. What has been interesting to us while doing this 3 post set on but a few of the great blues legends is how diversified and different each one of this guitar players were. Being lucky enough to see all three of these gentleman live a few times it is our conclusion that when it came to slide guitar Johnny Winter stood out as the best.

Not many blues players could fill a stadium like Winter did in the early 1970’s. As the producer and guitar player for the late Muddy Waters in the late 70’s through 1981 he was responsibly for bringing back to life the career of the “father of modern Chicago blues” and turn on a new generation to his music. As we all now that most of your 1960’s and 70’s biggest rock bands listed Muddy as one of there influences growing up.

In 1984 Guitar Slinger came out on Alligator Records and the Blues Rock label that Winter’s music was being labeled as changed to just Blues music. To us this is when he started to play and record his best music. We chose Winter of ’88 for the cover label this week because all of our other  Johnny Winter records are a bit trashed due to the all the abuse they have gone through being played so many times. In 2014 the Grammy’s posthumously gave him the “Best Blues Record” Grammy for his album Step Back. This would be his only Grammy Award for his solo work.  He had three other solo records that he where nominated for awards but he didn’t win. However as the producer for Muddy Waters they won three Grammy’s.

Highway 61 Revisited

It’s My Life Baby

Mannish Boy (with Muddy Waters)