Johnny Winter at Woodstock: Mean Town Blues

[Dan Gould]

Allen,

Your comment "Everything you need to know about the post-1960s blues is there" encapsulates my lack of interest in this sort of thing. Yeah you could call me the blues police, but we are talking about (in part) the way blues influenced rock and rock came back around and influenced blues, right? As skilled as it may be (and I'd never say he's a wanker or a poser or anything like that), its not all blues and of the genres you can add to the blues, rock is the last one I want to hear. Soul Blues (yeah, MG on Little Milton!) the Blue Jazz of Gene Harris is all stuff I love. But blues rock sucks and I hear that performance as an early influence toward the way that style went. And, finally, its really telling - as far as my reaction goes - that you say "Thank goodness I heard it before I finished editing my 1960s rock history." (My emphasis)

Also have to second the comment by John about "in your face" vs letting the music breathe more.

[AllenLowe]

I still think that 1960s rock blues woke up the older blues guys, who were getting old and complacent - I'll tell you a little story - when I was trying to sell my rock and roll history to Duke University Press, I explained, to the editor. about one thing in my book which I thought was unique in terms of historical perspective -

in American music, the usual paradigm is that of White musicians saved, stylistically, by black musicians, in terms of impact and influence - in Jimi Hendrix's case we have something of the the opposite, a black musician who is facing the growing conservatism of the black bar circuit in the 1960s, who is slowly drowning in the disapproval of bandleaders like Little RIchard for his daring musical ideas - and what happens? He goes to England and gets rescued by WHITE KIDS, as part of those who, in the middle 1960s, were growing intellectually and musically. He finds acceptance and fame under the wing of white guys like Chas Chandler, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, et al who, unlike black audiences, recognize the importance of what he is doing. (and read Greg Tate on Hendrix; Tate acknowledges how out of it African American audiences were when it came to Jimi). The opposite of our usual historical experience.

well, in that explanation I managed to convince Duke University to NOT publish my book, which is politically incorrect. So what happens? A few years later I'm reading a book which includes an interview with George CLinton, who started out as basically a soul musician but who ended up on the avant garde side - and what does George say? He thanks those "white kids" who allowed him to do what he wanted to do musically.

And guess who published that book? Duke University Press.

and that's how I feel about '60s rock, which had far-reaching musical impact, and which woke up the sleeping giant of the blues.

And once again, listen to Winter CLOSELY, listen to Bloodwyn Pig, Bloomfield, Peter Green - these guys were all engaged in taking a tired old form and bringing new life into it - for that matter,listen to Buddy Guy in the film Festival Express. This was a new man, post '60s rock. This was an entirely new aesthetic.

Edited February 27, 2010 by AllenLowe

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Johnny Winter = Wynton Marsalis

Each to his own. I'm no fan of either, but this strikes me as both absurd - and inaccurate, in the sense that the cultural landscape was so different. Even if you consider Winter a "white boy playing (at) the blues", he nevertheless came up in era quite different from navel-gazing that attended WM's career.

Each is concerned with only a small fraction of the past of the music that they love, which they believe to be the crucial bits of those kinds of music.

For example, has Johnny Winter ever shown any interest in Joe Liggins, Charles Brown, Roy Milton, Harmonica Fats, Esther Phillips, Big Maybelle? (I don't know the answer to that question, by the way, so it isn't rhetorical.)

MG

[Dan Gould]

I still think that 1960s rock blues woke up the older blues guys, who were getting old and complacent ...

... these guys were all engaged in taking a tired old form and bringing new life into it - for that matter,listen to Buddy Guy in the film Festival Express. This was a new man, post '60s rock. This was an entirely new aesthetic.

And an aesthetic that I could care less about. I regard that "old" form as eternal and its practitioners as not remotely old or complacent.

I'm not going to say that the people you mention were corrupting or destroying the blues, or that their "new aesthetic" was some abomination. But I will ask, where that new aesthetic go? Can't you draw a fairly direct line from it to the masturbatory guitar gods and bad-hair heavy metal guys?

Perhaps if I had lived through the musical era we're discussing (as you and Lon did) I'd derive more pleasure out of it, but I didn't, and I can't.

[Brad]

Perhaps if I had lived through the musical era we're discussing (as you and Lon did) I'd derive more pleasure out of it, but I didn't, and I can't.

Maybe that is the essence of the question. I did and am finding this conversation fascinating. I do think, from what I've read, that these British rockers discovering the blues, did inject some vitality into the music. I think they each influenced the other. Unfortuanately, later on this symbiotic relationship may have ended as rockers turned a little inwards (i.e., Sergeant Peppers) and took rock in another direction.

I think that's also the underlying theme of the book "How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n Roll," which I read a while ago.

Edited February 27, 2010 by Brad

[Joe]

Seeing this particular performance several years convinced me that I had made a grave error in overlooking / dismissing Johnny Winter as just another white dude infatuated with the blues.

For the curious...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFAEw_Foqw

I'm confused (as is often the case). Is this the actual performance Allen's taking about? (One of the comments suggests that a performance from Woodstock was deleted form Youtube.) If not, id it on an available cd?

(My wife heard this and just mentioned that she saw Johnny Winter at Massey Hall.)

To the best of my knowledge and recollection, yes, this is the Woodstock performance.

[7/4]

So would the recomendations be the ones mentioned above?

The first two Columbia albums (1st 'n' 2nd Winter) + Progressive Blues Exp., then the Blue Sky albums (his vanity label) are an excellent place to start.

Seems to me like the Firebirds have a trashier sound than the Fender 12, but I'd have to go back and listen to everything to make sure. I think that was part his move to the headless Lazer guitars.

Highway 61 Revisited later became his showcase slide tune (to this day even, I wish he'd come up with another one).

JW is quite a blues historian, he has a huge collection of 78 records. A look at the song credits on his official releases tells us a lot more than casual observation. So does a look at his un-offocial discography, the pre-Columbia albums he doesnt own tells us even more.

[JSngry]

I do think, from what I've read, that these British rockers discovering the blues, did inject some vitality into the music. I think they each influenced the other.

Sonny Boy Williams famous quote (approximated) - Those English boys want to play the blues so bad. And they do...

My question is this - how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if the wood was particleboard?

[Brad]

In my pedestrian way, are you saying that there is only so much that these rockers or any other person could absorb without having lived the experiences that brought about the blues?

[Big Beat Steve]

Sonny Boy Williams famous quote (approximated) - Those English boys want to play the blues so bad. And they do...

Personal preferences aside, they DID inject some new life into the blues (and their older exponents) and created some new awareness in those days - more so than in the States, and those who did it in the States had to come in from the heart of Europe to show how it's done. :D

Edited February 27, 2010 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

In my pedestrian way, are you saying that there is only so much that these rockers or any other person could absorb without having lived the experiences that brought about the blues?

Not pedestrian at all, and not just the blues either, and not just African-American forms either...

Muddy Waters' famous quote (approximated) - White boy can maybe play the blues better than me, sure. But ain't no way he can sing the blues better than me.

Of course, assimilation is inevitable, as is the (de?)volution of any music springing from a deeply specific personal non-verbal (even when it involves speaking and/or singing) language full of "inside" gestures, signifiers, etc. that eventually become just a "part of the style", all these things are natural and not to be feared, I'm just saying that recordings allow us to hear the language at various stages of evolution/assimilation and at some point "speaking the language" becomes less a matter of creating it than it does learning it phonetically, after which of course it then takes on its own "inside" gestures, signifiers, etc., but what it's actually saying is not always/often not what was being said "once upon a time", and I think it's just as important to recognize that as it is anything, otherwise people get to thinking that one guy is the same as the other, and that's "dangerous" enough an attitude when applied within a single time-frame, even more so when applied across them.

Some things are indeed eternal, but by no means is everything that comes along with those things.

[AllenLowe]

the white boys did more than popularize the blues, they revived in every way - and I saw Mike Bloomfield one night outplay BB King, and BB knew it - and Jimi Hendrix would have gotten nowhere but for the path blazed by people like Bloomfield and even Roy Buchanan in the 1950s, and but for the fearlessness of the new white guy guitarists, rock AND blues - and if you want to hear the future of the blues, listen to James Gurley's work on Ball and Chain with Janis Joplin on a SF television show - this was new and this was important. And Winter just gave it his own personal spin, which was not only unlike anyone else's but which was completely idiomatic at the same time that it was brand new - like with any great avant gardist.

And yes, the recording I was referring to was the Woodstock Mean Town Blues -

and also, btw, there are plenty of good white blues singers, from Frank Hutchison to Dave Van Ronk to Al Kooper.

Edited February 27, 2010 by AllenLowe

[Big Beat Steve]

Suggested reading:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Britain-Got-Blues-Transmission/dp/0754655806/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267298780&sr=8-2

(Search me why its price has become so inflated. My copy bought last fall wasn't cheap but certainly nothing like THIS ... Still it's an interesting book)

[JSngry]

Particleboard is very important. The modern furniture industry could not exist without it.

[AllenLowe]

the British mods were an interesting bunch, taking as much from Mingus as Ray Charles - and than moving toward the "pure" blues. Graham Bond's group with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker was probably the best of these hybrids.

Edited February 27, 2010 by AllenLowe

[7/4]

Particleboard is very important. The modern furniture industry could not exist without it.

profound.

[JSngry]

if you want to hear the future of the blues, listen to James Gurley's work on Ball and Chain with Janis Joplin on a SF television show - this was new and this was important.

No doubt, but without looking at the "to who" and "why?", this is sort of an incomplete thought... like anything else, it's only going to be "important" to you if you want/need it to be at some level, and if you don't, then...life goes on, right? Sometimes even forward!

[Brad]

I guess I'd label this coincidence but I was just over at our local library and I borrowed the following Cd: Muddy Waters The Johnny Winter Sessions 1976-1981, an amalgam or best of the music they made together. One of the tunes, which made me laugh out loud, is The Blues Had a Baby and They Named it Rock and Roll

[AllenLowe]

I've always felt that the "blues had a baby" lineage was oversimplified. More reasonably, in a true analogy to Darwin - whose theory of evolution says NOT that men evolved from apes but that they had related ancestry - rock and the blues had related ancestry. But there was lots more to it.

It's like what an African American friend said to me years ago (and this was a guy, a former Black Panther, with an intense racial consciousness), "I never understood why people thought Elvis had stolen everything from black people, Because what he did was so completely different. "

Edited February 27, 2010 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

I guess I'd label this coincidence but I was just over at our local library and I borrowed the following Cd: Muddy Waters The Johnny Winter Sessions 1976-1981, an amalgam or best of the music they made together. One of the tunes, which made me laugh out loud, is The Blues Had a Baby and They Named it Rock and Roll

That's good stuff...I remember when Hard Again, the first of the bunch was released...it created a bit of a sensation! I didn't like, and still don't, Winter's "cheerleading" exhortations, but Muddy was in great form for those sets, and Muddy in great form is one of those things not to trifle with or about.

I've always felt that the "blues had a baby" lineage was oversimplified. More reasonably, in a true analogy to Darwin - whose theory of evolution says NOT that men evolved from apes but that they had related ancestry - rock and the blues had related ancestry. But there was lots more to it.

Yeah, I mean, babies come from sex, period, including rape & incest, not just from love.

I also think that the notion of "the blues" is an oversimplified one too, but that's another matter entirely...

[A Lark Ascending]

Why when Coltrane plays 'My Favourite Things' for an hour is it a artistic and spiritual high; but when a white guitarist plays a 13 minute guitar solo it becomes a 'wankfest'?

No particular axe to grind...I've never really listened to Johnny Winters and was never one for the blues-rock of the 70s. But one thing I do agree with Allen Lowe on is his frequent references to the 'received wisdom' that gets stated as fact.

I like long solos in all sorts of situations - blues, rock, jazz, folk-rock (thank you Mr. Thompson..and not a blues-lick in sight!); by black, white, Asian or Saturnalian players. Yet I'm forever seeing them written off as as 'self-indulgent'. It's always struck me as a perfectly legitimate way of making music. Sometimes it can be dull; sometimes mesmerising.

The inability or unwillingness of contemporary rock musicians to take off like Thompson or Hendrix or Emerson or McLaughlin is one of the reasons I'm not that interested in post-76 rock music.

[7/4]

"Basically, it’s all Southern rock. Southern rock is what happens when crazy white boys try to play the blues, because they can’t do it. But what comes out . . . well, you gotta call it something." - Luther Dickinson.

Thing is...I never really thought of JW or ZZ Top as Southern Rock. Maybe someone from Texas can let me know what they think.

[JSngry]

Well, since Texas is not really part of the "South", I mean, it is in some crucial ways but not in others, I think you have your answer!

Edited February 27, 2010 by JSngry

[7/4]

Well, since Texas is not really part of the "South", I mean, it is in some crucial ways but not in others, I think you have your answer!

I thought so. As a kid I could hear that in the music anyways.

[AllenLowe]

well, there's a few crazy white boys, who could/can play the blues - Bloomfield, Peter Green, Winter, et al.

Bev's point about post-'76 rock is interesting because the Punkers, with some exceptions (Quine was one) tended to look at guitar virtuosity/solo skill as a dead issue. Of course things changed during No Wave, as with Arto Lindsay, et al, but rockers like the Ramones had little interest in the old-fashioned concept of the guitar solo.,

Edited February 27, 2010 by AllenLowe