Rest in Peace, Johnny Winter, 1944-2014, phenomenal blues rock guitarist. He had been in poor health for awhile, and as I recall had back problems and never fully recovered from a fall that broke his hip, so he played sitting down in latter years, playing a cut-down Erlewine Lazer guitar. I never saw him live, because the opportunities in my youth were rather limited, by location and other things. I have a clear memory of being bowled over by hearing Johnny play “Johnny B. Goode” in a live recording that was on the local (Binghamton) FM rock station, so it must have been the summer of 1972.
I had got the FM radio as a college graduation present in May of that year, and it opened up a huge window into rock and other music for me. Up till that time I had only limited avenues for hearing new music: AM radio (Top 40), the very few times each year that a major act played at the University, and actually buying an album, usually without having heard it previously, with what little money I had. Even if I’d had an FM radio, the college radio station had too weak a signal to reach our house, and I don’t think the Binghamton rock station (then WKOP-FM) started up very long before I got the radio. I lived at home, so with very rare exceptions I wasn’t hanging around with people and hearing music they played.
The handful of album purchases (sight unseen, or sound unheard)were carefully chosen, but among them was Delaney & Bonnie & Friends On the Road with Eric Clapton, which I still treasure. I had never heard of them before so I was taking a bit of a chance, but it was a live album(a great plus) and it had Clapton, and it was great. In 1972 I did get to see Delaney & Bonnie when they played at the university shortly before I graduated, but they had different Friends and no Eric Clapton. I have since seen Clapton twice, in 1990 and again in about 2006. While we were in college Martha gave me a couple of albums which introduced me to the Moody Blues (On the Threshold of a Dream) and the James Gang.
It was that same radio that finally, in 1979, allowed me to hear the entirety of The Who’s Tommy when it was played on a DC station. The album came out in May 1969, right about the time I left Hartwick College and moved back home, so although I saw the album cover in stores I never heard it—not a note, really, from Townshend & co.—until ten years later. There were a few bits that I heard (again, on the radio) from an orchestral version that came out in late 1972 and a cover version of a couple of songs from a band called Mud. I bought the single 45. It was… okay. But not the actual Tommy, not even “Pinball Wizard,” until a Saturday evening in1979 when a DC rock station played the whole thing, and I recorded it on the cassette recorder that was happily included in the radio. Ten years. As time went on and I eventually had more disposable income, I got the album on cassette, and then on CD. And I learned to play “Pinball Wizard.”
The radio doesn’t work anymore, but I still keep it. It gave me too many gifts that will always stay with me. Including Johnny Winter ripping it up on “Johnny B. Goode.”
It looked much like this, but in black.
Correction and addition: I have determined that the cover version I referred to came out in 1970, and was by a band called Assembled Multitude, which was basically a bunch of studio musicians doing covers, and it was of the "Overture" to Tommy b/w a tune called "Mud." I should also mention seeing the 1975 film version of Tommy, in which the member of The Who do appear (a bit). It was an over-the-top spectacle directed by Ken Russell, with Ann-Margret rolling about in an ocean of baked beans. This is just for the benefit of anyone who's interested, which I do not imagine anyone is.
W.J. Smith
Dr Swerdloc, OBF
'Ars longa, vita brevis'
