55 Years Later: Johnny Winter’s Trademark Trebly Sound Fires Alive On ‘Second Winter’

Released less than six months after his eponymous Columbia Records debut, Johnny Winter’s sophomore album for the label (and third solo overall) put to rest the naysaying that arose after the prior title’s emergence. 

In the aftermath of all the fanfare around the Texan’s mammoth signing bonus, the textbook takes on multiple blues styles comprising Johnny Winter was markedly less attractive than his appropriately-titled previous work The Progressive Blues Experiment (released in ’68 without the artist’s consent and from which he earned no royalties).

But Second Winter demolished preconceptions in more ways than one. Influential photographer Richard Avedon’s double-image photos filling the expanse of the fold-out outer cover are fully redolent of the kinetic goings-on inside, so then as now, this effort meets the definition of the concept of the ‘complete package’. 

The breadth of material is true to the albino’s roots as laid out in all forms on The Johnny Winter Story – The GRT / Janus Recordings (unfortunately withdrawn soon after issue in late 2023). And not to disparage the tightly-knit musicianship of the core foursome–along with the frontman guitarist/vocalist, bassist Tommy Shannon, drummer ‘Uncle’ John Turner plus brother Edgar on keyboards and sax–the brilliance of Second Winter lies in the mix of material as it is sequenced under the production supervision of Johnny and his consultant sibling. 

“Memory Pain” and “I’m Not Sure” depict how Winter and his accompanists excelled at the blue-derived riff rocking of the era (a la Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”). “The Good Love” reaffirms this point while at the same time depicting Winter’s mastery of guitar effects: the cacophony offsets antique tones of harpsichord on the latter of the two aforementioned tracks.

Those cuts of around five minutes duration each allows Winter and company to make their points about the modernity of their style substantively. The participants are comparatively savvy in their homages to roots: two tunes from Little Richard, “Slippin’ and Slidin” and “Miss Ann” each radiate an authentic grasp of influences in approximately three minutes, as does the cover of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” (eventually to become a self-referential showpiece for Winter in concert).

The latter number documents the ensemble extending itself somewhat–one more illustration of the speedy precision of the leader’s fretboard work–almost as if to prepare (themselves and the listener) for a hell-bent-for-leather interpretation of another great poet/storyteller: on Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Johnny and his bandmates capture the surrealism of the lyrics and solidify their grasp of that atmosphere even as they plunge headlong into yet another variation on a blues shuffle.

The original material of Winter comprises the remainder of the Second Winter. There’s nothing profound in the lyrics of “I Love Everybody” and “I Hate Everybody.” Still, the plain-spoken, earthy tenor of the words accurately encompasses the author’s lifestyle, as does the jumpy playing. And in all its speedy boogie, “Hustled Down In Texas” also broadens that autobiographical perspective, if not the album’s eclectic reach, while offering an opportunity for the musicians to revel in their well-honed instrumental mechanics. 

The concluding seven-minute-plus of “Fast Life Rider” (further hints of the self-indulgence that would wreak havoc on Johnny’s career) begins with disorienting distortion that sets the track’s tone. Johnny then unfurls layer upon layer of noisy guitar around his caterwauling vocals, all of which buffet each other above upon the martial-like drumbeat of a New Orleans parade march.

A call-and-response recapitulation of Johnny Winter’s identifiable trademark guitar, this conclusion emphatically renders redundant the two tracks left unfinished from the Nashville recording sessions. “Tell the Truth” and “Early in the Morning” were released on a 2004 two-CD Legacy Edition. Still, their superfluous appearance at the end of the original eleven tracks on the aforementioned compact disc reissue only ratifies the wisdom of half-century-plus packaging.

The initial two-LP set of vinyl arrived with only three sides of music and one left blank (no graphics were applied, as is so often the case these days). In retrospect, pondering that void allows the significance of the fifty-five-year-old album to sink in, particularly when placed in the context of Johnny Winter’s eventual return to the blues in the 2000s.

After a hiatus brought to a fitting close with the barebones Still Alive And Well of ’73, some less ingenious exercises in eclectics like the following year’s Saints & Sinners clarify how Second Winter stands not just as a watershed in Johnny Winter’s discography, but also a landmark of the musical era in which it was so dramatically unveiled.