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John Dawson Winter III, who has owned a home in Easton, turns 70 on Sunday. The blues guitarist, singer, and producer was born February 23, 1944, in Beaumont, Texas.
His recording career began at the age of fifteen, when his band Johnny and the Jammers released "School Day Blues" on a Houston record label. He is best known for his high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and '70s,
In 1968, he released his first album The Progressive Blues Experiment, on Austin's Sonobeat Records.
He produced three Grammy Award-winning albums by Muddy Waters, "Hard Again" (1977), "I'm Ready" (1978), and "Muddy 'Mississippi' Waters – Live" (1979).
Several of his albums were also nominated for Grammy Awards. In 1980, Winter was on the cover of the first issue of Guitar World and in 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. There was a character in the video game Heavy Rain named after Winter.
In 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
After his time with Blue Sky Records, he began recording for several labels, including Alligator, Point Blank, and Virgin, where he focused on blues-oriented material.
In 2004, he received a Grammy Award nomination for his "I’m a Bluesman" album.
In 2011, Johnny Winter released a new studio album titled Roots on Megaforce Records
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