We continue our look at the music of 50 years ago….
A good live record, and there were many in the 1970’s, should give you a good idea how the particular band or artist would sound if you coughed up the bucks to see them in concert. Not the same of course. Nothing beats the sound and feel of live music. Especially blues-rock when it’s played with high energy. The bass and drums hit you right in the breast bone while the guitar wails and moans and cuts a path across your cerebelum directly to the portion of your brain that says “have a good time”. So today we visit one of those LP’s. It’s guitarist Johnny Winter and his band with “Live-Johnny Winter And”.
Johnny was the older of the two musical brothers. He and Edgar had played together before the younger started his own band and later went on to musical glory with ‘Frankenstein” and other 70’s classics. A member of Edgar’s Group was toiling away with Johnny in 1971. Rick Derringer started in the business young. He was the driving force behind the 1960’s group The McCoys, which gave us the immortal “Hang On Sloopy and later the classic “Rock & Roll Hoochie Koo”. In 1971 he was playing second guitar with Johnny Winter who had been “discovered” when Mike Bloomfield had him play a few songs with him at a concert at the Fillmore East in December of 1968.
Winter was a Texan who embraced the blues of Muddy Waters and BB King. He recorded three studio LPs in 68, 69 & 70 before the tape machines rolled at his live shows at the Fillmore and at a gig in Florida in the fall of 1970.
The band was anything but tight. The sound was raw and real and Winter’s playing was fast and furious on a number of classic rock & roll songs like Great Balls Of Fire, Long Tall Sally and Johnny B. Goode. He gave us a take on the blues classic Good Morning Little School Girl and also a nice reading of Jumpin Jack Flash.
But it’s the band stretching out on a couple of down and dirty blues tunes that stands out. “It’s My Own Fault” and Winter’s own tune “Mean Town Blues” give you a pretty good idea of what Winter and his band could do. And if you had the blues in 1971, a couple of long-necked bottles of Schlitz and a ticket to a Johnny Winter show , would have solved your problem. Enjoy!
