The first time I saw Johnny & Edgar was at Pirates World, in Dania, Florida, in 1969 (hitchhiked about 180 miles each way.) I attended both nights and was totally blown away by Leeland Mississippi Blues, Mean Mistreater, and Good Morning Little School Girl. That voice "Oh Yeah, dum dum de dump, Oh Yeah." We saw him a few more times down here in Florida in the early days but I didn't see him again until sometime around 2006 or so when he played a small venue here in East central Florida. I still had my vinyl from the 60's and early 70's and he kindly signed the covers for me. The venue sucked (a Holiday Inn banquet room) but the performance was okay. The next time I saw him perform was at Crossroads 2007. I was surprised he was there (a tribute from Eric, I think, to a great bluesman.) I enjoyed his performance, especially with Derek and group backing him up. When watching the DVD, when it came out, Derek's humbleness and joy to be playing with Johnny was obvious.

Later he played at the HOB in New Orleans and although I had tickets I was unable to go due some unforeseen difficulties. My sister lives near NO so I gave the tickets to her. She said there were no more than 20 people in the place and the staff went ahead and sat up chairs on the floor for them. The record store across the street was giving tickets away. That I found truly sad.

I last saw him, several months ago, two days back to back, here in central east coast Florida at a very small venue, Lue's Blues. The sound was cranked up loud enough for a stadium performance and more or less drowned out Johnny's playing and singing. Johnny mostly played the white Erliwine Lazer guitar and finally brought out the slide for two final licks.The short set ended with Highway 61 and Johnny was led off stage, no encore, no nothing. The second night was an exact repeat of the first; although I repositioned myself in hopes of hearing Johnny sing and play. He was totally over-powered again by the rest of the band. This was a concert where someone was from the school of thought that louder was better and had everything cranked to the max except for Johnny. I frankly am hard of hearing, but the volume was cranked up so much it was hurting my ears. I noticed on both nights that folks were holding their hands over their ears and using cigarette butts to dampen the sound a bit; many left early and I think is was just because it was too loud. Personally, I think Johnny can still play, and should take the lead instead of allowing his band to overpower him.

As anyday above said "Encouraging Johnny Winter to go on appearing, with inept management and poor sound set-ups is sadly just tarnishing an amazing bluesman's legacy." Perhaps if Johnny, or his sound crew, sat down and listened to Jeff Beck --Performing This Week: Live at Ronnie Scott's he would understand how someone used to playing in a large venue can also do a Jazz Club. Beck talks about just that saying "Loud in a small place is not that great."

All that being said there is certainly a new master slide guitarist around these days and that's Derek. God can that boy play and he just gets better each time I see him--which is every chance I get. As Mary Lou writes above "Johnny just loves Derek Trucks and credits him with keeping the blues alive." That's true but another thing to consider is that the bluesmen of old are bringing up the new the same as in the past. Look at the age spread at some of the concerts today'--old guys like me who listened to the Allman Joys on the "Chitlin circuit, and now 20 somethings and younger learning about the blues all the while creating a new sound of their own. There is a whole new generation being introduced to a very old genre; Eric is doing that as is Jeff Beck, Robert Cray, Jimmy Vaughn, Albert Lee, Hubert Sumlin, etc. Just imagine Derek touring with Eric, and Tal with Beck, how good is that?. Life is good and keeps on rocking.