IMO, Johnny Winter ‘s covers of the Stones songs were the best of any artist.Silver Train, Let it Bleed, Stray Cat Blues, Jumping Jack Flash.Too bad the Stones never recorded with him.I would have preferred him on say a Jagger solo album over Jeff Beck



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-04-30 13:42 by Taylor1.

Johnny was the man.

I saw him in 2008 and 2009. How I envy those of you who saw him in the 1969-1994 period.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-13 02:31 by Milan.

Johnny winter was so great! The Stones played one of his song live in 1969.
Rockandroll,
Mops

[youtu.be]

So true that Johnny Winter has the best covers of Stones songs . I always regretted that the Stones in one of there tours when they rolled thru Texas never got together and invited Johnny Winter to join them on stage for one (or a few ) songs . How great would that have been to hear the Stones and Mick singing and Johnny tearing it up on his Sunburst Reverse Gibson Firebird V ! I love Johnny Winter !!!!!!!!

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TheGreek
So true that Johnny Winter has the best covers of Stones songs . I always regretted that the Stones in one of there tours when they rolled thru Texas never got together and invited Johnny Winter to join them on stage for one (or a few ) songs . How great would that have been to hear the Stones and Mick singing and Johnny tearing it up on his Sunburst Reverse Gibson Firebird V ! I love Johnny Winter !!!!!!!!

I would have love to have seen that

I will be in the minority here but Johnny Winter has never done anything for me. he is one of those names (like Radiohead) where I keep coming back to them, thinking "It must be me, I am missing something that everyone else is seeing". But it never grabs me. He had a great image.
Jagger has said that at the end of the day you also got to have some luck. JW did not get the exposure in the Woodstock movie that helped other artists from his class.
I have his albums. I met him twice. (nice guy), but I got to say I have seen many unknowns in bars who I'd prefer over him.

I liked his renditions of Like A Rolling Stone and Stray Cat Blues + his song Rock'n'Roll People.

Apart from that, Johnny is not for me.

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Milan
Johnny was the man. I saw him in 2008 and 2009. How I envy those who saw him in 1969-1993.

one of the very 1st rock shows I ever saw - and I was literally not much more than 11 years old, but a rocker since I heard Satisfaction at the age of 5 - was around 1970 at the infamous Boston Tea Party. My older brother brought me to see Johnny Winter And (the lineup with a yet unknown Rick Derringer). Opening act was an also as yet unknown band called at the time The J. Geils Blues Band. I remember they both blew the roof off.
Much air guitar in the following years to both Johnny Winter And Live, and J. Geils Full House.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-04-30 17:15 by DEmerson.

I have been a huge fan of Johnny Winter for at least 40+ years.

In the late 1970's he was doing New York State and New York City a lot.

I saw him twice at a night club outside of Newburgh, NY on Route 9W in 1978, and
I saw him live in Central Park in NYC in either 1979 or 1980. Fantastic!

I also saw him when he played one of the piers on the Hudson in NYC. Not sure of the year on this one but maybe 1983.

Few people or groups are in the same league as The Rolling Stones, but Johnny Winter surely was.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2020-04-30 17:44 by Chacho.

"Few people or groups are in the same league as The Rolling Stones, but Johnny Winter surely was"

Agree!

One of my all time favorite albums from my high school days was Johnny Winter And, Live.

Check out the slide on "Mean Town Blues"

[www.youtube.com]

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Palace Revolution 2000
I will be in the minority here but Johnny Winter has never done anything for me. he is one of those names (like Radiohead) where I keep coming back to them, thinking "It must be me, I am missing something that everyone else is seeing". But it never grabs me. He had a great image.
Jagger has said that at the end of the day you also got to have some luck. JW did not get the exposure in the Woodstock movie that helped other artists from his class.
I have his albums. I met him twice. (nice guy), but I got to say I have seen many unknowns in bars who I'd prefer over him.

Really? He was one of the greatest guitarists in rock and blues history

To me Johnny Winter was always belonging to a great series of three big white American singer/guitar players 'modernizing the blues', that is, giving it a certain recent personal rock twist. First came Winter, then George Thorogood and finally Stevie Ray Vaughan. That it looked like in the middle 80's. That was the scene I located Stevie Ray when he appeared to my consciusness (TEXAS FLOOD simply blew my mind), following those guys, and I always thought that the comparisons of him to Jimi Hendrix were out of place (Jimi was something else, a Dylan/Stones/Beatles-like much bigger phenomenon musically).

Among others, with Winter I think it is important to remember his job with Muddy Waters. HARD AGAIN is one of the greatest blues albums ever done. I think it is one of those albums that especially applies as a great introduction to the world of electric blues for fresh ears. Now to think of that: BLUE & LONESOME is another!

- Doxa



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2020-04-30 19:29 by Doxa.

Hmm.. It looks like I was talking in past form. Well, the truth is that I haven't really much listened Johnny Winter for ages. I had all his albums to GUITAR SLINGER but then, for some reason, I just lost the interest and stopped following or even listening him. I used to like him very much, but I don't really know what I do think of him now. I recall STILL ALIVE AND WELL being my favourite album. I should check it out!

- Doxa

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Doxa
Hmm.. It looks like I was talking in past form. Well, the truth is that I haven't really much listened Johnny Winter for ages. I had all his albums to GUITAR SLINGER but then, for some reason, I just lost the interest and stopped following or even listening him. I used to like him very much, but I don't really know what I do think of him now. I recall STILL ALIVE AND WELL being my favourite album. I should check it out!

- Doxa

Ha! I haven't really changed. That's what I wrote here 8 years ago (then I seemingly still recalled more things...):

"Damn, I have all Winter's albums up to GUITAR SLINGER or whatever it is called in my archives but I haven't listened them for 25 years or something. Now when I looked at the titles mentioned here - JOHNNY WINTER, SECOND WINTER, JW AND, JW AND LIVE, STILL ALIVE AND WELL (my first and favourite actually), RED, HOT & BLUE, CAPTURED LIVE... it was very hard to remeber what do they contain. I was a huge fan first, but somehow lost the interest. Winter's sound was way too hard during his "rock period" to my taste eventually. The same fuzz guitar sound and that endless soloing and screaming. The need to fill the space with noise and notes. Especially the live stuff was too hard (boring) to listen. Is SECOND WINTER the album with three sides (1.5 album))? I remember it reviewed as a masterpiece, but honestly, I couldn't ever listen that album all the way through. Yeah, the stuff he did with Muddy was excellent though, HARD AGAIN is one of the best blues albums ever. If not the best."

- Doxa

I saw him a dozen times or so from the late '70s, the '80's, and last time in the '90's. First time in '79 when I was 16 at the Santa Monica Civic front row/center...I was awestruck.
Prior to that, his Captured Live was one of the Gospels of blazing/virtuoso guitar albums (w/great version of It's All Over Now), and always loved Live Johnny Winter And as well as the studio album Still Alive and Well.
Fast forward and I loved all his albums on the Blue Sky label, then Alligator, and the Point Blank label which were all bluesier and rootsier than his early '70's hard rock albums.
His first album The Progressive Blues Experiment was also fantatsic - raw and on the edge rock and blues. Last time I saw him was some time in the '90's, but sadly he was a shadow...
near comatose due to drug abuse...could barely walk or hold his guitar, and had to sit the entire show...really, really sad. Evidently he was able to clean up and have somewhat of a comeback in the years before he passed,
but by then he was still quite frail and he was never as good as he once was back in the glory days. He'll always have a place in my heart though, and I was very sad when he passed away back in 2014.
I remember it well being up at a cabin in the hills of Kern River north of Bakersfield for our annual family reunion, and my cousins and I played a marathon of Johnny videos on youtube as we partied the night away...

Thinking of that, reminded of these two favorites....

Johnny with Dr. John in '86:





And this one from '91:





_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-04-30 19:56 by Hairball.

I just listened to my very first Johnny Winter And Live Vinyl and it still sounds great!

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runaway
I just listened to my very first Johnny Winter And Live Vinyl and it still sounds great!

Great album, love his version of JJF on it.

Have always liked Johnny a lot!! Love silver train. Saw him with Edgar in 75 oakland coliseum-great show. Also stone pony NJ 1991. Also johnny winter and Fillmore East 1971. Still have the program-orchestra seats $5.50!!! would see him whenever I could. Had tickets to see him but he passed-sad. Have seen Edgar since.One of the all-time greats.

I was lucky enough to see him at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, a venue primarily for boxing and roller derby, in March of 1970. Also on the bill were Mountain and Frank Zappa's Hot Rats, their live debut. Johnny was cookin' at that show. I never understood why he never seemed to get the recognition I think he deserved. As someone pointed out earlier, had he been included in the Woodstock film, it most likely would have been a huge boost to his career.

Incidentally, there are bootlegs available of each of the bands from that evening in L.A.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-01 00:26 by DaveG.

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Paddy

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runaway
I just listened to my very first Johnny Winter And Live Vinyl and it still sounds great!

Great album, love his version of JJF on it.

JJF is one of the best Stones covers

Saw Johnny several times over the years. The first time was at the Fillmore East. Lights went down and the crowd went crazy as Johnny's head of white hair glided on stage. He really tore it up. Lots of weaving with Rick Derringer. Opening bands were Elvin Bishop and some new group called The Allman Brothers, who were recording a live album.

I think Second Winter is amongst the best rock records ever released, but only if you exclude a good portion of it (being 3 sides that still leaves pretty much a full LPs worth).

Start at the Little Richard cover, Slippin and Sliding, track 4, on through the next seven tracks, up to and including Fast Life Rider, and there you have it. Some of the most killer guitar rock ever. And a fantastic backing band made up of the ex-McCoys (Hang On Sloopy, opened for the Stones in 66).

I can't find a complete album set on youtube to link, but go check out the individual cuts:

Slippin' And Slidin'
Miss Ann
Johnny B. Goode
Highway 61 Revisited
I Love Everybody
Hustled Down In Texas
I Hate Everybody
Fast Life Rider


Half covers, and the originals are right up to the best of them.

Original was two LPs, one had one side of cut grooves and another smooth side. Used to adjust my anti-skating setting using the fourth side. Total bonus.

jb

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Palace Revolution 2000

I will be in the minority here but Johnny Winter has never done anything for me.

Me neither. While I have tremendous respect for the albums he managed to coax out of Muddy Waters during the last years of Muddy's life, I walked out on JW when I saw him play an intimate club date in the early 80s. In fact, I think I may actually have left while he was playing JJF. I found his sound to be extremely harsh and overly amplified. I just wasn't enjoying it. I know it wasn't a fluke because I had the same reaction when I saw him several years later at a big John Lee Hooker tribute concert at Madison Square Garden.

Saw him live ... Bought the early albums
Stuff with Muddy but hes a tad too busy for this kid...

But Memory Pain .. shit i could live with that one everyday ....



ROCKMAN

His second live album, Captured Live, is also
quite good. That one includes Bony Maronie, his epic Highway 61 Revisited, and It's All Over Now.

But his best work was when he quit being a rock star (his rock star period being between Johnny Winter And and Saints And Sinners) and just played the hell out of the blues. Those records he did with Muddy Waters ring true.

When I was about 17 and knew something about the Stones and loved Jumping Jack Flash among many others of theirs, the live Johnny Winter And album really impressed me. He took complete control in the right way of JJF ... that was a very hot cover.

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Mongoose
One of my all time favorite albums from my high school days was Johnny Winter And, Live.

Check out the slide on "Mean Town Blues"

[www.youtube.com]

Also one of my favorite albums when it came out...yet the only one of his that I owned. While Johnny is highly regarded in many circles, he just didn't grab me like SRV did.

Johnny is my fav guitar player of all time. I saw him 2012 in Gelsenkirchen in his last weeks. Seriously ill, he couldn't play his instrument in this perfect manner as he used to. Johnny (in his best days, that last till the nineties, anyway) was one of the few players who blended an incredibly fast and fluid guitar style into a unique blues feeling. So sad that he isn't among us.

The last great Johnny Winter show for me was at Jazz Fest in NOLA at the Fairgrounds on a hot and muggy Thursday afternoon in 1992 . Johnny was tearing it up and blazing away on the fret board and howling and screaming in his Beaumont Texas drawl and get this he had a window room air conditioner at his feet by his mic stand with a big tube that was taped to the front of the air conditioner to push the ac up towards his face to keep him refreshed and comfortable , which was the one and only time I have ever seen this done at an outdoor venue . This show was the last masterpiece performance for me even though I seen him many times before and after . Johnny Winters slide playing was phenomenal and his Texas blues was as good as it gets for me . From the first time in the 70's when I seen him to the last show I went to see him at which I believe was in 2010 he was always frail and had to be helped out by a roadie and more often than not he was seated and he probably was wasted as well , but he could play the blues like he invented the genre . I know some don't care for his interpretation of the blues with his speed work up and down the fretboard for 12 bar blues , but he just took my breathe away at how he delivered the blues including his vocal work which if his voice didn't sound like the delta blues nothing did for me . Also Muddy Water recorded and toured along with James Cotton with Johnny Winter and for me there is no bigger endorsement than Muddy Waters .