Johnny Winter

Johnny Winter came roaring out of Beaumont, born John Dawson Winter III in 1944, and by 1969 he was a white-knuckle blues guitarist, a singer, songwriter and slide player who attacked the strings like he had a train to catch. Guitar was the main weapon, but he could pick up a mandolin or a harmonica too, and his records on Columbia crackled with a live-wire energy that made the old twelve-bar forms feel brand new.

Second Winter, in 1969, shows him at full gallop, tearing into "Highway 61 Revisited" as if the song had insulted him, and "Rock And Roll Hoochie Coo" is pure strut. The high-energy blues rock of his albums and the ferocity of his shows kept him going from the late '60s into the early 2000s.

He had a second life as a producer, too, making three Grammy-winning albums for Muddy Waters, and after his time with Waters he cut several Grammy-nominated blues albums of his own, picking up a Grammy for Best Blues Album along the way, with Alligator and Pointblank among his labels. The Blues Foundation put him in its Hall of Fame in 1988, and in 2003 he was ranked among the greatest guitarists of all time. He died in 2014.

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