Song of the Day 5/3: Johnny Winter And, “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”
Everybody knows the various Rick Derringer versions of his rock standard, but its first appearance on vinyl (that’s all we had back then, kids) came on “Johnny Winter And,” the original name of which was “Johnny Winter and the McCoys,” the band Derringer (then Rick Zehringer, his birth name) fronted in its “Hang on Sloopy” days.
This original version lacks the backing vocals Derringer later added. Instead he and Winter launch a killer twin-guitar assault — check how tight they are on those fills after each line of the verse — that they expanded into dueling solos in live performances, like the one captured on Edgar Winter’s “Roadwork” live album below. Derringer was playing with Edgar by then, but Johnny stopped by for a guest appearance.
By 1973, with the Edgar Winter Group, Derringer — a good enough guitarist that he features on a couple of Steely Dan tunes — had added the background vocals (and his hokey “keep on rockin'” line) but in this live version at least tears off a nice solo.
Also should recognize the great Pete Seeger. Today is the 100th anniversary of his born day.
Did somebody say keep on folkin’?
Ah, hearing Hoochie Koo (Eight Track) was the typical backdrop to us Brandywine HS teens piling into cars, lighting up funny ciggs and heading out to the Beaver Valley to meet up at the riverside.
In college, Vic Sadot sent me and another girl up to NY to meet up with Pete Seeger to conduct an interview for his Alternative Press newspaper. I got writer’s block and never handed anything in. Maybe too many funny ciggs?
http://brokenturtleblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/eulogy-for-vic-sadot-presented-at-his.html
More like not enough funny ciggs.
Thanks, Nancy. I didn’t know Vic had died.
@Nancy: To have an 8-track you had to have a car. And sound quality was worse than the AM radio. I guess down here people listened to WAMS. Up in Pennsylvania it was WIBG.
When I was ten-ish my younger sister and I got transistor radios for Christmas and so listened day and night to WAMS. A few years later, the kids were all tuning into WMMR which had switched to progressive rock and the car radios were AM FM by then.