Customer Reviews

Live Bootleg Series Volume Three

5 star:		(12)
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This latest edition of Johnny's Bootleg series is the best to date. Mostly taken from the 80's, vol.3 has plenty of masterful slide playing. Band members were Jon Paris on bass and Tom Compton on drums. Hightlight for me is "Stones in my pass way", a very rare live national steel guitar performance. Buy it now.

Put on your sunglasses, sunscreen and asbestos underwear
before pushing play on this CD.

Raw, pure, wrenching, honest,and rocking.
Play it loud.

The sound is more than acceptable to excellent....
Those who care more about pristeen,sonic purity than being bathed
in a lake of fire and emotion..... should look elsewhere.

Go Johnnny go !!!!!

Five BLAZING Stars!! WOW! A rockin' live blues compilation that is not to be missed! Virtuoso guitarist and blues-belter Johnny Winter has cranked up another scorcher with Volume 3 of his Bootleg series. Don't let the "Bootleg" title fool you, this, along with Live Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 and Live Bootleg Series, Volume Two, is a Johnny Winter-project from beginning to end with high production values, great liner notes, and excellent sound for the most part. Everything you hear is rare stuff from the personal archives of Johnny Winter that he wanted the fans to hear. Over five decades into his very imposing musical career, which has also seen him play with and produce some of the world's greatest blues legends while becoming a blues legend himself, with this CD compilation Mr Winter has 'cranked it up a notch' with these rare recordings. His vital vocals are especially raw and his slide-friendly Firebird & potent Lazer guitar solos are as awe-inspiring and mind-boggling as ever. Backed by solid groups, there are no 'slick' songs to be heard as Mr Winters and his groups keep one foot in the 'gut-bucket' at all times. BTW, the CD cover features one of the coolest Winter photos ever.

The 'best of the best' begins with an amazing 15-minute version of the Bobby "Blue" Bland-associated "I Smell Trouble' and it is breathtaking to hear from the standpoint of the group interplay, urgent vocal delivery, and the guitar wizardry which are on full display: add this to your list of very special Johnny Winter performances. For many of us, Johnny has just taken over ownership of Bob Dylan's classic "Highway 61 Revisted" and any Winter live appearance is automatically amped up when it's included. Here he serves it up again BIG TIME, adding in some blazing Firebird guitar licks along with his trademark slide-guitar chordings and echo tremolos. The appearance of the legendary but under-appreciated guitarist and composer Pat Hare's star-crossed song "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" should attract the interest of any blues fan to 'this song with a true life twist' (unfortunately Hare did just that and died in prison) and Mr Winter's performance is AWESOME. Then Robert Johnson's venerable "Stones In My Pass Way" is Johnny and his steel guitar alone in a mesmerizing, heartfelt performance that seems to stun the audience. One of the best CDs of 2008, "Johnny Winter, Live Bootleg Series, Vol. 3" gets My Highest Recommendation. Bravo, Johnny Winter! Five HUGE Stars
(Audio CD-54:31, 7 tracks)

Number three in a fantastic series. I can't wait for the next! And guess what-not a single fade out (of course being live)! Hopefully many more yet to come. I wonder how many unreleased tracks etc lie in the vaults from previous CDs over the years?

Tremendous guitar work and a lot of music for 3 people. Boothill and I Smell Trouble are just amazing. That's the only word that comes to mind.
The slide work is also fantastic and I'm talking, all of it. Especially Highway 61 Revisited. However, Mojo Boogie and Stranger Blues aren't anything to laugh at and, the Robert Johnson acoustic blues, Stones In My Pathway is extremely unique for this day and age. How any blues guitarists do you know play a National Standard Steel??? And, with such proficiency. On a scale of one to ten, this CD is a twelve!!!

Not a bootleg in the usual sense of the word, this album is of course an official release, produced by Johnny Winter himself. And guess what? In many ways the four "Bootleg" albums which have come out so far are better than any of Winter's previous live albums, and better than almost all of his studio albums as well. Nowhere else are the talents of Mr John Dawson Winter III so well displayed (except, perhaps, on the phenomenal, underexposed "White, Hot and Blue" album), and nowhere else can his prowess on the guitar be better appreciated.

This third volume in the series opens with a driving, eight-minute rendition of J.B. Lenoir's "Mojo Boogie", a study in blues n' boogie guitar, terrific vocals, and some gritty harmonica playing by bassist Jon Paris. And then comes a fiery "Stranger Blues", which everybody from Elmore James to Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee has had a crack at, all howling slide guitar and thundering drums. The slow, fifteen-minute "I Smell Trouble" opens with a 2 1/2-minute guitar intro (and a little bit of harmonica), and has two lenghty guitar solos in the middle, and guess what? It's not a minute too long. Rarely have I heard a guitarist soloing for so long without ever sounding repetitive or resorting to meaningless finger-tapping or other nonsense.

The fidelity on "Boot Hill" is a bit below par, but it's still a great, great performance...imagine a cross between Stevie Ray Vaughan and Elmore James, powerful drumming and a dominant display by Winter on the guitar.
Robert Johnson's "Stones in my Passway" (or did Johnson mean "Pathway"?) is just Winter playing slide on his acoustic National steel guitar. Perhaps the highlight of the album, if it makes sense at all to talk about highlights on a record which is more or less 54 minutes of highlights.

You may know "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" from Robert Night Hawk's gritty performance of that song (titled "Cheating and Lying Blues", I believe) on the classic "Maxwell St" soundtrack...it's credited to blues and R&B guitarist Auburn "Pat" Hare, who didn't actually write it, but he did record it sometime in the mid-50s, and later, tragically, murdered his girlfriend and died in prison.
Johnny Winter does very well by Peter "Doctor" Clayton's classic tune, and then the album finally winds down with the only semi-disappointing track in sight, a slightly tuneless take on Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited". It's as if Winter tries to do something other than just cover the song note for note, but it would have been better if he had stuck closer to Dylan's original melody, like he does on the "Second Winter" album where he originally recorded it.

Still, that one number is far from enough to pull this wonderful blues record down to "only" four stars. This is some of the most impressive blues guitar playing you'll ever hear, and if you've never heard Johnny Winter live before, you may be surprised at how good he actually is!
I much prefer Johnny Winter at his bluesiest, so bonus for me that he has decided "not to play no rock n' roll", as Fred McDowell would have put it, on his latest tour. And this is pretty much a pure blues record as well, if you can overlook the presence of the aforementioned "Highway 61 Revisited"...a few rock n' roll numbers do show up on the "Bootleg" albums, but they are just that, few, and that's the way I like it. This is what Johnny Winter does best, and on this particular album he does it very, very well indeed.
Fans of Johnny Winter need this album. Hell, fans of electric blues guitar need this album.
Go, Johnny, go...!

Being a fan of Johnny's and seeing him live many times from the 70's on, this bootleg volume 3 cd is typical of the virtuosity of the man. His playing is some of the best and the choice of songs on this cd are some of my favorites that he's done. This is definitely some of his best work. If you've never heard Johnny play before you're in for a real treat. He's also one of the top slide guitar players of all time and it shows on this cd. Buy it, you won't be dissapointed

Johnny winter is 3 for 3 on the bootleg series, great playing again and again by a true master. It stand right up with 1 and 2.

If you're on this page, then you already know this is one smokin bluesman. I bought it without a listen or 2nd thought & have not been disappointed. Then again, you can't really go wrong with Johnny Winter or Stevie Ray Vaughn, if you want some white, hot Texas guitar blues. My advice: buy it & play it LOUD.

YOU WILL NEVER BE DISSAPOINTED WITH A JOHNNY WINTER CD.THE LIVE BOOTLEG SERIES IS PERFECT FOR LONG TIME FANS,BECAUSE IT HELPS YOU RELIVE ALL THE GREAT CONCERTS YOU'VE SEEN OVER THE YEARS.IT ALSO HELPS NEWER FANS,BY LETTING THEM GET A TASTE OF WHAT IT WAS LIKE IN THE OLD DAYS.ALL AND ALL A GREAT CD..