True to the Blues: The Johnny Winter Story

Johnny Winter is a most intense bluesman whose work has been scattered over various labels. This definitive 56-track collection includes music from 27 separate albums released under the imprints Liberty/Imperial, Columbia, Blue Sky/Epic, Alligator, Point Blank/Virgin, Friday Music, Collectors’ Choice, Megaforce, and Columbia/Legacy. It's paced chronologically, with studio and live material that range from his independently recorded and released 1968 release The Progressive Blues Experiment up through 2011’s all-star duets project Roots. Winter plays and sings the blues with a nasty precision. “I’m Yours and I’m Hers” shows his early power. His performance of “Leland Mississippi Blues” at Woodstock is monumental. His take on Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” is definitive. Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Eyesight to the Blind,” The Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and, of course, “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo” (a tune written by Rick Derringer, who recorded it with Winter in 1970 before cutting his hit version 1973) show that Winter was never shy at attacking the material with his whole heart.