Johnny Winter - JOHNNY WINTER****

I’m Yours & I’m Hers/Be Careful With A Fool/Dallas/Mean Mistreater/Leland Mississippi Blues/Good Morning Little School Girl/When You Got A Good Friend/I’ll Drown In My Tears/Back Down Friend

Self titled follow up album from blues guitarist Johnny Winter after he was snapped up by the Columbia label. He avoided toning down his performance to make concessions to pop sensibilities. (US:24)

“Johnny Winters first LP for the Columbia label, contains a surprisingly broad variety of blues styles. Here is the hard driven Mean Mistreater with Willie Dixon on acoustic bass and Walter 'Shakey' Horton on blues harp, the self-penned Dallas where Johnny gives us a fine demonstration of his abilities on the dobro, or the Ray Charles influenced I'll Drown In My Tears, with his brother Edgar on piano, some fellows on the brass section and a female background vocal trio.”

“Mr Winter is not reinventing the blues here, but he definitely adds a unique voice and some raw performances to the canon. The opener is excellent and I'll Drown In My Tears is an interesting side to him, though it runs a little slack in places.”

"Of Johnny Winter's first three albums, this one is the most consistently enjoyable There are a couple of real nice acoustic blues tracks here that give a nice balance with the electric tracks. Johnny Winter really is a wizard with a slide and hearing him use it on the acoustic is a nice treat.”

“Johnny Winter's debut on Columbia records is a very solid blues album, but certainly not in the realm of his previous release, The Progressive Blues Experiment. The two albums are similar in structure; Winter performs three of his own creations and fills the rest of the album with covers. He also splits the guitar duties between acoustic slide and electric. Although I do not find that the tracks on Johnny Winter are as hard or as heavy as some on his previous release, the intensity is still there. His guitar work is just as fast and in control, and his vocals are every bit as gritty.”

“While white blues singers in the late 60s were trying to make the blues more palatable to mainstream pop audiences by toning them down a little, Winter makes no concessions to pop sensibility at all. His guitar playing is pure and savage, yet he never resorts to meaningless shredding, and his prowess on the acoustic slide guitar is impressive. I simply never tire of listening to this visceral, heartfelt rendition of the blues.”