Chamblee54

Johnny Winter died Wednesday, July 16, 2014. He was born John Dawson Winter III, on Feb. 23, 1944, in Beaumont TX, which makes him 70. He was an skinny albino, and played guitar.
In 1971, the rock concert phenomenon was a snowball rolling down a mountain, getting bigger every inch of the way. The combination of loud music, theatrics, and public dope smoking had a lot of appeal. Johnny Winter was one of the hottest performers.
In Atlanta, the number one venue was the Municipal Auditorium. It was a sturdy concrete building on Courtland Avenue, in the middle of Georgia State University. The front of the building is still there, but the guts are long gone. When a Johnny Winter concert was announced for May 1971, 6,000 tickets went fast. The Omni would open in 17 months.
At this time, PG wasn’t quite into the concert thing. The first show he saw at the Auditorium was in March 1972. The second act was Edgar Winter, Johnny’s younger brother. The headliner, Humble Pie, might as well have not shown up.
At some point in the proceedings, Johnny Winter began using heroin. He took some time off to recover. When the comeback tour was announced in 1973, PG was ready. On the morning tickets went on sale, he was at the Sears in Athens GA, and copped front row seats. The show was scheduled for the Fox Theater, which had not been used for concerts long. Until then, it was mostly a movie house.
The opening act was Foghat. They were amazing. Foghat built a career by opening for acts that somehow didn’t quite measure up.
Johnny Winter just wasn’t very good that night. He didn’t have Rick Derringer, or a second guitar of any sort, to play with. It was him, a bass, and drummer, and his girlfriend. The lady beat a cowbell with a drumstick, and did some backing vocals.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.