Winter, Johnny ‎– Texas '63 -'68 [WHITE VINYL] – New LP

Winter was huge in the 1970s, performing arenas...(in the latter part of the 1970s, his popularity declined as he stuck with his blues and most folks had moved on...I snuck into mid-sized venue to see him, and he pissed everyone off...except me--I loved the set--he was probably ripped, and just ripped through 10 songs in about 20 minutes, no more than one second between songs, more max. rhythm and blues than blues, and then just walked off, no encore...I was the only happy camper in the audience...I loved everything about it)...anyway I really only knew Winter from these beat up 8-tracks I'd gotten out of a junked car...while it offered some ripping moments that cut into your skull, it wasn't exactly my bag...maybe reminded me too much of dark apartments of bikers who sold drugs (I loved those places when I was 14, but the charm wore off at some point)...and if I needed a fix of blistering blues, I'd rather go to Hendrix...but to capitalized his huge success in the early 1970s, labels released a bunch of Johnny Winter material from the 1960s, that (like this release) featured a longhaired picture on front that really didn't match the music or era of the tunes in the release...his 1960s stuff is much more song based and while clearly coming from Texas, this early stuff more on the Texas rhythm & blues we'd come to expect from artists like Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Roy Head...  Winter never really let go of these roots, but fans of Winter's blistering electric blues might look elsewhere. While side two of this album is called "Blues Side," that's a bit misleading as they seem to run out of the "blues" songs and go into a twist song.   While for some, this mid-1960s materials might be too old-timey or too downhome, but for me, I was pleasantly surprised to find his early music.  Check it out. -- winch

"First time on LP, a previously unreleased, remastered collection limited to 1000 units / white vinyl. Johnny Winter had a unique career plan: to make music. The lightning-fast guitarist fulfilled this wish magnificently, decade after decade., becoming one of the most respected singers and guitarists in rock. From the Sixties onwards, Winter was the unofficial torchbearer of the blues, standing up for his idols like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and promoting their careers. A musical prodigy, he grew up in Beaumont, Texas, on a diet of blues and rock'n'roll. As a teenager he hitchhiked to Louisiana almost every weekend to play in small nightclubs. After a short stay in college, he gave up his academic career and devoted himself to making music. This is the first collection of the "early years" to distinguish between the formative blues roots and the advance to the rock idiom. It is the best forerunner of his breakout record "The Progressive Blues Experiment" and the "Johnny Winter" album. Curated By Blues Historian Bill Dahl