![]() ![]() The surviving Winter brother kept being asked to pay tribute to Johnny on record and elsewhere. While Johnny played the blues Edgar supposedly favoured jazz, in fact his wings spread further as the hit singles ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Free Ride’ proved a multi-instrumentalist including saxophones and keyboards, as a vocalist he’s been said to influence singers as diverse as Dave Lee Roth and Ian Gillan. A fellow albino, prejudices drew the siblings closer, as did a love of music. His brother Edgar took it hard, naturally. While it’s true, white-haired albino and ultra-thin whizz-kid Johnny Winter, put in some European-time and made fans, a hellfire lifestyle curtailed productive activity here for many a year, then just as his career was gaining traction once more, he passed away while on tour in France, back in 2014. Maybe they preferred the land of the brave to catching a plane and playing over here and gaining a larger audience. Possibly, it was because they played a purer form of the blues that didn’t translate as well to British dance halls. ![]() ![]() Geils and Johnny Winter perhaps never truly translated internationally in the way they should. Their reputation held high for a while, but lacking cosmopolitan panache, the likes of Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfeld, Elvin Bishop, J. Somehow, lost in the mix, was America’s homegrown white boys. That holy trinity of guitarists that sprang from The Yardbirds led to nearly every scruffy kid who played a six-string gaining notoriety over there, some still being revered to this day. The British Invasion of the USA was not only a prolific and creative time for post-war pale-skinned white boys from Surrey, it also helped reinvigorate interest in America’s homegrown musicians, with due respect given to the likes of the mighty Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy and the Kings, leading to some of them earning a decent living, and when royalties went their way, possibly a pension. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |