![]() ![]() It seemed like exploitation, using Johnny’s name and memory for other purposes…”Īs the years softened the blow of his brother’s death, however, Edgar writes “as time has passed, I have started to reconsider,” and as he spoke with other people he came to the conclusion that “it was Johnny’s true, loyal, and devoted fans who wanted to see this happen as well.”īrother Johnny is a seventeen-song, 75-minute collection of some of the guitarist’s best-known and best-loved songs, performed by a band that includes Winter on sax and keyboards, bassist Sean Hurley, and drummer Gregg Bissonette, a journeyman timekeeper who has played with everybody, from Steve Vai and Joe Satriani to Andy Summers (The Police) and David Lee Roth. Somehow, this just didn’t feel right to me. Īs Winter explains his extensive liner notes to Brother Johnny, the time was right to honor his brother, writing “now after his passing, many people immediately started trying to convince me to do a Johnny Winter tribute album. Winter has recently been touring as part of Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, but took some time to record a fitting tribute to his late brother with the recently-released Brother Johnny. Whereas Johnny stayed true to the blues over the years, Edgar’s career has careened from blue-eyed soul and rock ‘n’ roll to jazz and New Age music over the course of a couple dozen albums since he began his solo career in 1970. The Winter brothers often played on each other’s recordings, but only released a single album credited to both of them, 1976’s appropriately-tagged Together, a live set of rock, blues, and soul covers. Both brothers enjoyed lengthy, moderately-successful, and critically-acclaimed careers and although Johnny passed away in 2014 at 70 years old while touring in support of his then-current album Step Back, Edgar is still rocking to this day at 75 years young. In other words, the entire region was steeped in R&B, country, and blues music and that’s the creative environment that Johnny and Edgar Winter grew up in, and were influenced by. ![]() Country music stars George Jones, Clay Walker, and Tracy Byrd were all born down the road a piece in Vidor, Texas.īluesman Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown hailed from nearby Orange, and sister city Port Arthur can boast of talents like Janis Joplin and zydeco bandleader C.J. Richardson (“The Big Bopper”), and R&B crooner Barbara Lynn. Gospel-blues giant Blind Willie Johnson once roamed the city’s streets bassist Larry Graham (Sly & the Family Stone) was born there, as was early rocker J.P. The city rapidly became an oil industry boomtown (ExxonMobil remains one of Beaumont’s largest employers) and one of America’s major petrochemical refining hubs.Īlthough its population has never really topped 120,000 residents (and it was half that when the Winter brothers came into this world), Beaumont has surprisingly produced an impressive number of great musicians. Here are all of Johnny Winter albums ranked.Edgar Winter 2022 (Image: Quarto Valley Records)Įdgar Winter, along with his older brother Johnny, were born in Beaumont, Texas in the 1940s, close enough to the Louisiana state line that you can practically smell the gumbo pot bubbling over.Ī port city on the Gulf of Mexico, Beaumont’s economy was based on agriculture (rice, notably) and shipbuilding until oil was discovered in the area in 1901. In 1968, he released his first album The Progressive Blues Experiment, on Austin’s Sonobeat Records. In the early days, Winter would sometimes sit in with Roy Head and the Traits when they performed in the Beaumont area, and in 1967, Winter recorded a single with the Traits: “Tramp” backed with “Parchman Farm” (Universal Records 30496). During this same period, he was able to see performances by classic blues artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. His recording career began at the age of fifteen when his band Johnny and the Jammers released “School Day Blues” on a Houston record label. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. Best known for his high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. John Dawson Winter III (Febru– July 16, 2014), known as Johnny Winter, was an American blues singer and guitarist. ![]()
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