Son Seals - Bottom Line 1978

So way back in 1978 this then youngin' was living in San Francisco. One evening shortly after the holidays my crazy next door neighbor showed up at my front door sporting a bleeding head wound. In the course of cleaning him up and bandaging said wound he explained that his somewhat volatile girlfriend had clocked him with a frying pan and ejected him from the apartment. Knowing him she likely had considerable provocation.

This event lead to a couple weeks on my couch while he contemplated his next move. One night while toking up some fine green bud he asked if I might like to fly to New York for a few days, seems he and the girlfriend had planned the trip prior to the event described above and he had the tickets and room already paid for (he had to sneak back into the apartment to acquire them). The following Friday night we boarded a jet at SFO and went for a long weekend in The Big Apple. I seem to recall we saw something Saturday that clearly didn't impress me much since I have no recollection of who it was, but on Sunday I found a listing for a Blues show at the Bottom Line for a guy who I'd recently discovered, Son Seals.

The club was in The Village on West 4th so it was in walking distance of our rather seedy hotel and we had some pizza slices on the way over and arrived a bit early and set to some serious preparatory drinking and toking. I was aware that Seals was still new to the bizz and played some fairly primitive equipment (like a Montgomery Wards guitar) and the setup on the stage seemed to reflect that...except for the shinny new Traynor top and bottom over on the right side of the stage. The band came out and started rockin' hard, fully justifying my excitement about seeing them, but that shinny Traynor set remained alone and vacant thru the first part of the show.

I wish I could recall when it was in the show that that equipment came into use, but I must plead ancient memory and significantly altered condition. What I do recall is at some point my eyes left the stage to accomplish a somewhat less than stealthy passing of a joint when a gasp from the crowd snapped my eyes back to the stage. A tall, thin white wraith had appeared in front of the unused equipment and in a nano second my brain exploded...there stood Johnny Winter!

The rest of the show was a blur of scorching guitar and soulful singing that I will never forget! Flash forward to a week ago and on the plixid site I find this cd! Almost wet my pants!

Johnny Winter - Winter Essentials 1960 - 1967

OKAY...I've been a JW fan since I was 14 and I've never heard even the slightest hint that THIS stuff even ever happened, much less that there were recordings! Don't be looking for flaming guitar solos on every tune, there are actually very few. To me, the jaw dropping aspect of hearing this is that J-dub was every bit as cool a singer as little bro Edgar ever was when he wanted to be. I'd say he was more soulful and had better timing than Edgar ever did...listen to his rendition of Lowell Fulson's "Tramp" and THEN talk to me.

These two discs are a revelation!  Johnny had the chops to do ANYTHING! Kind of like Jimi in that regard, eh? The scariest thing is that this music was made, primarily, when he was a teenager!