Johnny Winter - Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo

   In 1970, it seemed the blues boom had run its course.  In England, the top practitioners of blues rock were starting to move away from the form.  Fleetwood Mac lost its leader in 1970, and just a few years later, their albums bore little resemblance to their hard edged blues records from the late 60’s.  Eric Clapton has said that after he heard The Band’s Music From Big Pink, he felt that the heavy blues rock he was producing with Cream was now outdated.  He soon left Cream and formed Blind Faith with Steve Winwood, and after that short lived project collapsed, he hooked up with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends.  It was with from their backing band that he put together the band for his first solo record, which featured the more countrified, down-home blues sound he had been pursuing.  He soon toured and recorded with them under the name Derek and the Dominos.  While artists like Fleetwood Mac and Clapton pursued a more middle of the road sound, others turned their amps up and pursued a more riff-oriented hard rock sound.  Among the latter group was Johnny Winter.  In 1970, after putting out two blues- oriented albums, he put together a new backing band, and recorded Johnny Winter and… which took him in a deucedly more rock-oriented direction, although still bluesy.

  Johnny Winter had established his career first and foremost as a blues man.   It was as a blues player that he got the attention of Rolling Stone magazine, who did a feature on Texas music that included him.  It was that article that got the attention of an entrepreneur named Steve Paul, who had Winter perform at his club, and eventually took on managerial duties for him.  A contract with Columbia Records soon followed.  His first album was largely straight blues, with his second album edging more toward rock.  When his third album came out, his music had definitely crossed the line into rock.  This transition would continue for the next several years until around 1977, when he released Nothing But the Blues, which brought him back to his first love.

  However, in 1970, Johnny Winter and... continued on this early detour.  Since the line between rock and blues is thin, and the second album was already starting in that direction, it may seem more like a natural progression.  Add to that the fact that he now had a new three-piece backing band formerly known as the McCoys, who struck it big in 1965 with Hang on Sloopy.  This new band, of course, featured second guitarist Rick Derringer, who, like Winter, is now a legend.  Several of the songs on Johnny Winter and… were penned by Derringer, including Rock and Roll Hootchie Koo, which Derringer made a hit of his own in 1973.  I have embedded the YouTube link to that song here.  To me, it sounds more raw than Derringer’s, version, which was probably polished to be a rock radio hit.  Also, the second and third verses are switched in Winter’s version.

  The idea I get from the various Johnny Winter interviews I’ve read is that while he doesn’t regret making his third album, he still would have preferred playing the blues.  That is always where his heart was at.  I am not an expert on Johnny Winter, but it seems that from 1977 on, he has played strictly blues for the most part.  Through the late 70’s playing with Muddy Waters and his band, and the 80’s on the Alligator label, and what I have heard since then, he was and always will be a blues player.  He may have crossed back over into rock, or gone into country of jazz at different times, I don’t know.  But if his hard rock records of the early 70’s were an aberration, I’m glad he did detour for a while, at least to make Johnny Winter and…

Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton - Hideaway

Eric Clapton was probably the first major star of the Blues Rock genre, with a love of blues that went back to his youth.  He developed an encyclopedic knowledge not just of the records, but the musicians and geography of the blues as well.  Although he later moved onto other forms of music, in his early days Clapton was a blues purist, and shunned other forms of music.  When he got his first break with the Yardbirds, he resented the pop songs they recorded once they landed a contract.  After finishing their breakthrough single “For Your Love”, Clapton decided that was enough, and didn’t want to be a part of the new direction his band was taking.  So he left the Yardbirds as they were on the brink of international stardom.  A short time later, he would find another opportunity, and this time he felt he had a home where he could pursue the blues music he loved.

  He only stayed with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers for about a year and recorded only one album before leaving to form Cream with Jack Bruce and Peter “Ginger” Baker.  However, during his stint in Mayall’s band, his playing inspired such zeal among his fans that the words “Clapton is God” were spray painted all over London.  At the time, the average person who saw the graffiti probably had no idea who it was referring to, but his playing had so mesmerized his audience that they had to get their message out.  After that year with Mayall, he decided to move on and form Cream. That didn’t last long, either, but it was long enough to establish Clapton’s reputation and pave the way for the mega stardom he achieved in the 1970s.

  I decided to post a link to the Bluesbreaker’s cover of Freddy King’s “Hideaway”.  This album, as far as I know, was the first in which Clapton used a Gibson Les Paul played through a Marshall amp, which became the signature tone of the British Blues Rock movement.  Although British blues guitarists played several different guitars, the Les Paul became the model of choice, with Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Peter Green all using it as their main instrument.  Eventually, Clapton switched to the Fender Stratocaster, but the heavy Gibson sound is what the standard became after the Bluesbreakers album.  This was also probably the closest thing to a pure blues album that Clapton put out until 1994’s From the Cradle.

http://youtu.be/UvI0P6o_H8k

B.B.King The Thrill is Gone

http://youtu.be/jrFChQUQihE

     Since this is the first entry in a blog about blues and rock music, I figured that it would be fitting to start with B.B. King.  And I also figured it would be fitting to start with his most famous song.  I don’t need to get into a lot of detail about his life and career, as there are many sources on the internet and books that can give a much more exhaustive and knowledgeable account than I can here.  I’m glad to see that he is still fairly active at 85, despite both his age and his diabetes.  He performs sitting down now, and I’m assuming he doesn’t tour or record as much today, but he is still out there, and still the premier blues artist in the world.  His name is synonymous with the form.

      It was over a period of several decades that King built his career and his reputation.  The pivotal time was during the 1960’s, when blues music in general crossed over to a new white audience.  From there, King’s influence expanded and grew to what it is today.  There was a blues boom in England that spawned a whole new genre of guitarists such as Eric Clapton and Peter Green, all of whom made no secret of their debt to King.  While that was happening in England, something else was happening simultaneously in America. Mike Bloomfield and Johnny Winter rose to the forefront, and like Clapton and Green, sold millions of records along the way.  King and many other blues artists now had their sound taken to the masses.  It was during that time, in 1969, when King released “The Thrill is Gone”, which became his signature song.      

  Of course, the above two paragraphs are far too little to explain King’s life or influence even in a nutshell.  I didn’t even try to do that.  But I do want to find something that will epitomize what this blog is about, which is sharing and discussing blues and rock music.  I think it’s a good way to begin.