Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 9: Johnny Winter

Here's the ninth out of ten albums for the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. It features blues guitarist Johnny Winter.

Johnny Winter's music career began back around 1960, when he released his first single. But he became a star in 1969, when he was signed to a major record label and released two albums that went into the charts. He also performed at the Woodstock festival prior to this festival.

However, he was not happy to perform at this festival. Like Janis Joplin, who also performed at the festival, he was born and raised in Texas. But he wasn't keen on going back. He later was quoted in a book, "Neither me nor Janis Joplin wanted to go back to Texas, man. That place was a thing of our past." There was some hoopla in the media about the festival being a "homecoming" for him and Joplin, but he called that "a bunch of crap the promoters rigged up." Furthermore, he didn't like the heavy drug use in the audience, saying that by the time he went on stage, it "seemed like everyone was blown away on acid." He personally vowed to stay clear of any drugs. But some time before going onstage, a pretty young woman run up to him and gave him a deep kiss, slipping some tabs of acid down his throat. He was not pleased by this, to say the least. "I was blown away for two days. I didn't even know my name. People like that girl thought she was doin' me a favor."

Despite all that, he played an excellent set. Even he personally declared the music of festival "unbelievable." The next day, a review in the Dallas Morning News commented, "Although its his voice that he is primarily noted for, he is a guitarist par excellence."

This recording came from a soundboard source, I think. However, there were issues. Three of the songs had missing parts. Since that includes the end of the last one, it's possible there was more music after that. I found other live recordings he did from 1969, and used them to fill in the missing sections. That's why those three songs have "[Edit]" in their names. Also, the lead vocals were low in the mix, so I boosted them using the MVSEP program. That makes me wonder if it might be an audience bootleg instead. But either way, the sound quality is pretty good, but not great.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 talk (Johnny Winter)
02 Mean Town Blues (Johnny Winter)
03 Black Cat Bone (Johnny Winter)
04 Mean Mistreater (Johnny Winter)
05 Mama, Talk to Your Daughter [Edit] (Johnny Winter)
06 talk (Johnny Winter)
07 Leland Mississippi Blues (Johnny Winter)
08 talk (Johnny Winter)
09 I'm Not Sure (Johnny Winter)
10 You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now [Edit] (Johnny Winter)
11 Johnny B. Goode [Edit] (Johnny Winter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rt6Lnk4E

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ae1dKPM4dkOB2ni/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Muddy Waters & Friends - Blues Summit, PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 7-18-1974

Pretty much since I started this blog in 2018, I've wanted to post an album by blues legend Muddy Waters, but I couldn't find anything worthy. Now I have. This was the very first episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show (after they changed their name from "Made in Chicago" and became a national program, that is), and no doubt they wanted this to be first so they could start with a bang. The episode was titled "Blues Summit," and for good reason. Waters led the show and sang most of the song, but good portion of the biggest names in blues music still alive and active at that time joined him on stage: Junior Wells, Johnny Winter, Dr. John, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Pinetop Perkins, Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Miles, and Nick Gravenites. Wow, what a collection of talent!

This is a must-have for any serious blues fan. It's a great performance with excellent sound quality. So I was surprised how hard it is to find. It had eluded all my previous searches for this sort of thing until a couple of days ago, when I started to hone in on finding Soundstage episodes. I discovered that it was released on DVD (but not on CD) in 2015. However, I had great trouble finding this. For instance, it wasn't on YouTube, other than a lower quality version recorded off the TV that was missing the last two and a half songs. I couldn't even find it on SoulseekQT, and they generally immediately have what I want 99 percent of the time, or, very rarely, it isn't there at all. But luckily, after a couple of days, I finally got a Soulseek hit on someone who had the DVD. I promptly converted that to mp3s, and here you are.

I only had a couple of issues with the recording. There was a voiceover on an instrumental section of the first song, "Blow Wind Blow." That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title, because I removed that talking while keeping the underlying music, thanks to the UVR5 program. The next track was several minutes of people milling backstage and talking to each other. It's a lot more interesting to see the video of blues legends interacting than what can be heard here, so I deleted that track. If interested, check out the YouTube video of it.

The list of artist names per song is woefully incomplete. It would have taken me a long time to figure out exactly who played on what, and then I would have had some very long file names. So instead of that, I generally stuck to mentioning Muddy Waters (since he stayed on stage the entire concert), plus whoever happened to sing lead vocals on any given song, if it was someone instead of, or in addition to, him. That leaves a lot of people unmentioned. For instance, Buddy Miles, a star in his own right, played drums for most of the show, but he isn't mentioned in any of the song credits because he didn't sing lead vocals. 

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Blow Wind Blow [Edit] (Muddy Waters)
02 talk (Muddy Waters)
03 Long Distance Call (Muddy Waters)
04 talk (Muddy Waters)
05 Messin' with the Kid (Muddy Waters with Junior Wells & Nick Gravenites)
06 talk (Muddy Waters)
07 Stop Breaking Down (Muddy Waters with Junior Wells)
08 talk (Muddy Waters)
09 Mannish Boy (Muddy Waters)
10 talk (Muddy Waters)
11 Wang Dang Doodle (Muddy Waters with Willie Dixon & Koko Taylor)
12 talk (Muddy Waters with Johnny Winter)
13 Walking through the Park (Muddy Waters with Johnny Winter)
14 Hoochie Coochie Man (Muddy Waters with Willie Dixon)
15 talk (Muddy Waters)
16 Sugar Sweet (Muddy Waters with Dr. John)
17 I Got My Mojo Working (Muddy Waters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/U8RWbQui

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bPTOCcglRs8dIOc/file

As I watched the video of this concert, I kept an eye out for a spot where I could take a good screenshot for the cover image. But the quality was low-res, and it was rare to get more than one person on screen at the same time, since long distance shots were ruined by the low picture quality. Luckily, I found an image of the DVD cover. That had pictures of four of the stars, taken from the concert, so I used those. That's Muddy Waters at the top left, Johnny Winter at the top right, Dr. John at the bottom left, and Junior Wells at the bottom right. I was able to improve the image quality somewhat with the Krea AI program.

Foghat and Friends - New York Library Benefit Concert, The Palladium, New York City, 9-30-1977

Here's a very unique concert. It has less to do with Foghat and more their special guests, who were blues and R&B legends like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Winter, and Otis Blackwell.

Foghat is a rock band best known for their 1970s hits "Slow Ride" and "I Just Want to Make Love to You." But the band members were students of the blues. So when the band put together this benefit concert to be broadcast on national TV, they used it as kind of a way to educate the public about blues music. Only the first two songs were performed just by Foghat. After that, the guest stars generally took over, with Foghat only being the backing band. 

All we have of this concert is what made it onto the hour-long TV broadcast. That included some short voice-overs that introduced the guest stars. I just wanted to hear the concert with that, so I cut those bits out whenever possible. When the voice-overs went over the music, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to remove the talking while keeping the underlying music. That's why a few songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

As the show went on, some of the guests stayed on stage. By the last song, "I Just Want to Make Love to You," pretty much everyone was on stage. The song was originally performed by Muddy Waters, and he dominated the performance. But John Lee Hooker, Foghat, and some others had turns singing some of the lead vocals.

I believe everything from this concert remains officially unreleased. But if you want to see it was well as heard it, you should be able to find the video of it on YouTube.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Sweet Home Chicago (Foghat)
02 talk (Foghat)
03 It Hurts Me Too (Foghat)
04 My Baby's Gone [Edit] (Foghat & David 'Honeyboy' Edwards)
05 talk (Foghat)
06 Done Somebody Wrong [Edit] (Foghat & Eddie Kirkland)
07 Love Light [Instrumental] (Foghat & Eddie Kirkland)
08 talk (Foghat)
09 Shake Your Money Maker [Edit] (Foghat & Paul Butterfield)
10 Crawling King Snake (Foghat & John Lee Hooker)
11 talk (Foghat)
12 All Shook Up [Edit] (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
13 talk (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
14 Don't Be Cruel (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
15 talk (Foghat & Johnny Winter)
16 Last Night (Foghat & Johnny Winter)
17 talk (Foghat & Muddy Waters)
18 Hoochie Coochie Man (Foghat & Muddy Waters)
19 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Foghat, Muddy Waters & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/etpduLpH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5biynw2DBpUZmMR/file

The cover comes from this exact concert. I believe that's Dave Peverett, lead vocalist of Foghat, with Muddy Waters looking at him.