Johnny Winter: A Perplexed Appreciation of a Neglected Guitar Genius

Before I begin this review, I need to send certain readers on their way from the get go. There are some who do not relate to the blues idiom in music, just as there those, either by cultural upbringing or temperamental disposition, who do not relate to classical music. This is not written for those who dismiss out of hand the blues tradition in rock music, nor for those who merely see the blues style as acceptable for their listening only if is an occasional and marginal ornament to an otherwise pop-oriented song. Nor is this for inane blues purists who believe that only African Americans born to a share-cropper family should ever be (or should ever have been) permitted to play it.

Now to business: thank you Repertoire Records for so skillfully and lovingly remastering and reissuing the first two official records by Johnny Winter for new generations to discover and fully appreciate his music, and for older generations who knew of him in the era of his artistic emergence to recall just how talented and enriching to the genre he was (and remains). Unarguably, on the basis these two recordings alone, he is one of the most inventive, melodious, graceful and energetic blues rock guitarists who has ever lived.

It is indicative of one of several gaping holes of ignorance in canonical rock histories (which all seem to cross-reference each other rather than going back to the source material) that Johnny Winter barely gets even a mention. Perhaps it can be chalked up to the fact that he did not martyr himself to his art like the socially exploited/politically bedeviled Jimi Hendrix, or meet with an untimely fatal accident after successful rehabilitation like Stevie Ray Vaughn, thereby attracting to himself a mystique in rock annals. In fact, he has been lucky enough to live into late middle age. This is due in no little part to how he respected and loved his title to existence early enough to have gotten himself help to get free of heroin addiction, after a naive seduction by this nefarious drug in the midst of the chaos and novelty of international touring and new-found success as a young man.

The case for Johnny Winter is not a question of a talented yet frustratingly flawed musician who can be venerated as an underdog by pretentious music snobs. No, Johnny Winter is actually a consummate and consistent professional musician of the first order, easily worthy of favorable comparisons with the highest "guitar gods" of the guitar-oriented era of his musical breakthrough in the late '60s and early '70s. I think we must face the real possibility that the under appreciation of Johnny Winter must be chiefly laid at the feet of the rock industry's Achilles heel: its obsession with "ideal" physicality in its performing stars (however much that definition might change from from era to era). To come to the point: Johnny Winter was an albino, which is a normal genetic variation found in all "races" of humankind, including even African Americans.

The unfortunate obsession in our culture of pairing the "pretty boy" with our concept of "musical talent" is probably the ugly (hidden) truth behind Johnny Winter's lack of public and critical recognition. Ironically, it is the social ostracism he suffered from the beginnings of his life that drove Johnny (and his equally musically-talented also-albino brother, Edgar Winter) to work hard from an early age to develop musical talents that would socially redeem him in the eyes of his peers of whatever age. It is equally ironic that Johnny and his brother Edgar were not ugly looking at all but actually handsome, but for too many uninformed people their albinism alone defined them as physical "freaks".

Hopefully, by now, more of us have been educated about genetics and the superficiality of any concept of "too much" skin and hair pigmentation" or not "not enough" skin and hair pigmentation. All variations are natural, and albinism as a recessive visual trait arises in every living species on the planet. Jimi Hendrix was a handsome black man. Johnny Winter is a handsome albino man. Now move on and pay attention to what's really important: their inner musical gifts.

So, I please invite you to purchase Repertoire Records' recent releases of his debut album, Johnny Winter, and his sophomore album, Second Winter. I guarantee you will experience a musical epiphany...and then an aftershock of reflection: why does Johnny Winter's name not get expressed in the same breath as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Duane Allman, Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi and Eddie Van Halen?

As purely a side note, I have to mention that even though I am a great fan of Derek Trucks, Johnny Winter is the finest slide guitarist, bar none; indeed, Winter is a veritable shaman at putting the glass pill-bottle to the vibrating fretboard!

Oh yes, I forgot to remark upon his voice: Johnny is one heckuva blues crooner, wailer, testifier and growler!