Johnny Winter assembled Live in NYC '97 with assistance of his fan club, drawing all of the recordings from an April 1997 performance at the Bottom Line. Produced by Winter's longtime colleague Dick Shurman, the record doesn't follow the predictable pattern of a live album - instead of hits, it offers fan favorites and covers, which makes for a much more interesting listen. Throughout the album, Winter simply rips, tearing through all five songs with blistering energy. This is the live album hardcore fans have been wanting for years, and it doesn't fail to deliver on its promise.

When Willie Dixon left his native Mississippi and traveled north to Chicago, he almost single-handedly dragged the blues with him into the modern era, giving the country blues a hard, new sheen with his deft songwriting, sturdy bass playing, and his considerable talents as a producer and arranger. This two-disc, 47-track set catches Dixon wearing all of his hats, with the first disc featuring him in the studio and in concert (including several live tracks with Johnny Winter) and the second spotlighting his bass playing and production work with the likes of Robert Nighthawk, Eddie Boyd, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lowell Fulson, Bo Diddley, Willie Mabon, and Howlin' Wolf. What emerges is a well-rounded portrait and introduction to one of the major architects of the modern blues sound.

Although it could be argued that, for the most part, Johnny Winter has gotten better and better as a guitarist over the years, his career has had its ups and downs for personal and professional reasons. Especially after involving himself in the latter stages of Muddy Waters' career and helping the veteran bluesman achieve a comeback with 1977's Hard Again, Winter made superior music of his own on the blues-oriented Nothin' But the Blues and White, Hot & Blue. But those albums didn't sell as well as some of his earlier rock-oriented ones, and after his 1980 album Raisin' Cain moved back toward rock, but didn't even make the charts, he left his major label and spent a few years without a record company. Signing to the Chicago-based independent blues label Alligator Records, he staged his own comeback with 1984's Guitar Slinger, and its follow-up, Serious Business, is in the same vein…

The textbook charge usually levelled against Alligator sessions are that they're sanitized. You couldn't lodge that one against this set with a straight face; if anything, somebody turned Sonny Terry loose. It didn't hurt that Johnny Winter was around on guitar and piano, playing gritty blues with a passion. It didn't help that Terry didn't put any amplified muscle behind his harmonica, however. Otherwise, this is a strong session.

Stepping into the role of a whirlwind albino electric blues guitar player from Texas with a brilliant slide style and a roaring voice was the very role Johnny Winter was born to fill. He released nearly 30 albums of blues and blues-rock in his 40-plus-year career, and delivered countless memorable concerts as well. His death in the summer of 2014 at the age of 70 left an unfillable void in the international blues community. Step Back is his final studio album, and it follows his 2011 release Roots in paying tribute to his various blues influences, and, like Roots, it is essentially a series of duets with all-star guests, with Eric Clapton, Ben Harper, Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, Dr. John, Leslie West, Brian Setzer, and Joe Bonnamassa helping out this time around…

Uncle John Turner was born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas. He first played drums with Jerry LaCroix. Unc met the Winter brothers and performed with them a few times as a substitute. In 1968, Unc convinced Johnny to try a full blown blues band and sent for his friend Tommy Shannon to play bass. This group quickly got natonal recognition and began making records and shortly after that played Woodstock, with Edgar Winter as the fourth member. By late 1970, they had split up and Uncle John and Tommy moved to Austin and formed a band called Krackerjack, which had Stevie Ray Vaughan as one of the major guitarists, along with Jesse Taylor, John Stahely, and Robin Syler. But later in the seventies he was playing with the legendary Johnny Winter again, and this record is testament to the blues magick these two great bluesmen could produce when they put their mind to it.

A previously unissued album recorded in 1967 at Gold Star studios, Houston, Texas. This session teams up Johnny Winter with local Dallas bluesman Calvin "Loudmouth" Johnson on 13 loose blues jams. This record presents a real blues band playing exactly the way they played - raw and to the bone.

Culled from Johnny's 3 '80s Alligator albums (Guitar Slinger-Serious Business-Third Degree) these 12 tracks prove that after the guitar slingers CBS years he still had the fire to burn the fingerboard! Back by top notch Chicago blues players and the occassional guest's Dr. John & Tommy Shannon (ex Stevie Ray Vaughan bassist) during his Alligator years, these recordings show Johnny at his best with no confetti or studio razzle dazzle. These raw to the bone blues tracks boil red hot. If you don't own any of the guitar legends Alligator albums, you must get this one.

Alligator Records shows a different side of its house-rocking face on this 13-cut collection of acoustic blues. While Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Bukka White don't appear here, other performers – some of whom one normally associates with overdriven electricity – are. Buddy Guy is present, as is Stevie Ray Vaughan. Koko Taylor's "The Man Next Door" is here and it's one of her greatest performances on record. In addition, Johnny Winter, who was no stranger to a National Steel string bottleneck earlier in his career, returns to give it another go, and the true roots doctor Corey Harris is here with "God Don't Ever Change," and Carey and Lurrie Bell with "Stop Running Around." Guy's "Hi Heel Sneakers" is terrific as is Winter's "Evil on My Mind." But it's those that are normally associated with the acoustic blues like Harris, Saffire – The Uppity Blues Women, Cephas & Wiggins, John Jackson and the legendary Sonny Terry who come off best, bringing the true rhythm and mystery with them into their songs.

A two-CD survey of Winter's recordings for Columbia between 1969 and 1979, the era of his greatest commercial success. This collects many of his most popular tracks, though it doesn't do much to argue a case for artistic diversity. Includes two otherwise unavailable songs: an alternate take of "30 Days," and a previously unreleased 1973 cover of Robert Johnson's "Come on in My Kitchen."

Scorchin' Blues marries tracks from Johnny Winter's early Columbia albums - including the classic National steel-driven "Dallas" from his 1969 debut - with material from his return-to-roots Blue Sky period in the late '70s. The aggressive playing and raunchy vocals will appeal to both blues and rock fans, and Ben Sandmel crams an authoritative biography into seven pages, complete with interesting Winter quotes. The one downside: a miserly ten tracks spread over only 43 minutes of playing time.

Johnny Winter's sixth Columbia album was also his second since his comeback from drug addiction. Its predecessor, Still Alive and Well, had been his highest charting effort. Saints & Sinners was just as energetically played, but its mixture of material, including '50s rock & roll oldies like Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days," Larry Williams' "Bony Moronie," and Leiber & Stoller's "Riot in Cell Block #9," recent covers like the Rolling Stones' "Stray Cat Blues," and a couple of originals, was more eclectic than inspired. (Van Morrison completists should note that the album also contains Winter's cover of Morrison's "Feedback on Highway 101," a typical bluesy groove song that Morrison recorded for his 1973 Hard Nose the Highway album but dropped. Winter's is the only released recording of the song)…

Still Alive and Well proved to the record-buying public that Johnny Winter was both. This is a truly enjoyable album, chock-full of great tunes played well. Johnny's version of the Rolling Stones' "Silver Train" revealed the potential of this song and what the Stones failed to capture. Everything here is good, so get it and dig in.

After two late-'60s albums on Columbia, Johnny Winter hit his stride in 1970 working with Rick Derringer and the McCoys, now recruited as his sidemen and collaborators (and proving with just about every note here how far they'd gotten past "Hang on Sloopy"). In place of the bluesy focus on his first two albums, Winter extended himself into more of a rock-oriented mode here, in both his singing and his selection of material. This was hard rock with a blues edge, and had a certain commercial smoothness lacking in his earlier work. Derringer's presence on guitar and as a songwriter saw to it that Winter's blues virtuosity was balanced by perfectly placed guitar hooks, and the two guitarists complemented each other perfectly throughout as well…