Still Alive And Well
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Album Summary
Still Alive and Well was laid down and released in 1973 on Columbia Records, and baby, it came at just the right time. Produced by Johnny Winter alongside Bob Sherwood, this album found the Texas-bred slide guitar phenomenon rising back up like a phoenix — a man who had stared down his demons and come out the other side with fire still in his fingers. Recorded during his peak commercial run, the album captured Winter in full command of his powers, blending the raw, muddy soul of Delta blues with a hard-driving rock energy that made speakers rattle and spines tingle. Columbia knew what they had in this man, and Still Alive and Well was the proof in the grooves.
Reception
- Still Alive and Well earned gold certification, a testament to Winter's broad and devoted following during the early 1970s blues-rock boom.
- The album demonstrated that Johnny Winter could hold his own in the mainstream rock marketplace without ever compromising the authenticity that made blues purists love him.
Significance
- Still Alive and Well stood as a defining document of the early 1970s blues-rock fusion movement, threading the raw nerve of traditional blues straight through the amplified heart of hard rock — and doing it with undeniable conviction.
- The album cemented Johnny Winter's standing as one of the most gifted interpreters of the blues tradition, with his slide guitar work on tracks like Rock Me Baby and Let It Bleed reminding the world that this man was not playing around.
- By achieving gold status while staying rooted in blues form, Still Alive and Well helped prove to the record industry that guitar-centered blues albums could command serious real estate in the mainstream rock market.
Tracklist
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A1 Rock Me Baby 190
3:48
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A2 Can't You Feel It 134
3:00
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A3 Cheap Tequila 132
4:04
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A4 All Tore Down 121
4:28
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A5 Rock & Roll 94
4:51
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B1 Silver Train 143
3:37
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B2 Ain't Nothing To Me 122
3:06
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B3 Still Alive And Well —
3:43
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B4 Too Much Seconal 107
4:20
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B5 Let It Bleed 120
4:09
Artist Details
Johnny Winter was a blazing albino guitar gunslinger out of Beaumont, Texas, who burst onto the national scene in the late 1960s with a raw, ferocious blend of Texas blues and hard rock that could peel the paint right off the walls — his 1968 Rolling Stone profile called him one of the hottest new artists in America, and the man delivered on every word of that promise with a slide guitar style so fast and so mean it left audiences standing slack-jawed. He signed one of the biggest recording deals of his era with Columbia Records and went on to breathe new life into the career of his idol Muddy Waters, producing some of the most important late-career blues albums of the 1970s and cementing his place as both a torchbearer and a bridge between the old guard Chicago blues masters and a whole new generation of rock and roll believers.
