What's this? Johnny Winter on Imperial? Wasn't it Columbia that signed him up after the albino blues man turned down a $500,000 bid from RCA?

Yep. But while Columbia was stalking the artist himself, enterprising Imperial Records was busy purchasing this LP from Sonobeat, a tiny Texas record company. Sonobeat recorded Winter a couple of years ago (in Austin) but ran off only a few thousand LPs. When all the incredible hype start building up concerning Winter's discovery the Sonobeat LP was virtually unavailable, even in Austin, let alone the rest of Texas, let alone any of the other united states.

So Imperial bought the master (for $25,000, we are told), retained the title and the original cover art—that's Winter mirrored in the back of his shiny National steel-standard guitar—rushed it into production, and here it is.

And it's good but not great. Winter fights an uphill battle against one of the stiffest raggediest rhythm sections this side of the Rio Grande. The drummer mainly sticks with 2 and 4, deviating with disastrous effect from time to time, thumping around his kit and arriving back just off the beat. The bassist sticks with his monomaniacal dum-dum-dum dum-dum-dum figures with scarcely any variations, except that every now and again he gets lost.

Winter generates all the excitement that is to be found on this LP; and happily there is some. Seemingly oblivious to the shortcomings of the band, he gets off several bravado solo flights, his high throaty blues voice shouting along in unison with his guitar: tightrope solos (especially listen to his own "Tribute to Muddy" and "Black Cat Bone") where every note is right out front, and if he were to miss a lick the whole thing would collapse. Winter doesn't miss; and when he's into this kind of thing he's so exciting an improviser as to make all the Winter hype seem justifiable.

The best things about Winter on this record: There's an urgency and bite to every track, even the ones that don't work. As an electric guitarist, Winter is explosive, fluid, percussive and driving.

The worst things about this record are largely the fault of its producers (Sonobeat folks) and partly Winter's choice of musicians and material. The worst is that while the sound of his guitar is very much in the foreground, his voice is in the distant background; he sounds as if he's shouting from across the street, and it's all but impossible to decipher most of the lyrics. Of course, if you're a blues freak you already know the words to the B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, et al, numbers that make up most of the material. And this is another drawback: you are a little too familiar with his stuff, regardless how well it's done.

Two curiosities: On "Bad Luck and Trouble," a multi-tracked Winter blues, with Winter blowing harp, mandolin and his National steel-standard—and singing—it's so busy with overlays of blues on blues on blues as to be unhearable. "Broke Down Engine" is Winter alone, no multi-tracking, singing against his own oddly frantic bottleneck picking on the National.

It's a strange recording, this LP is, with a lot of ups, some downs, some so-so's—Muddy's "Rollin' & Tumblin' " for instance is given a pleasant, but no more than pleasant, ride—and it will be a disappointment of some dimension if Columbia is unable to do better by Winter. Because what you do get here is some raw and convincing blues playing and singing in the face of basically insurmountable handicaps. (RS 31)

JOHN BURKS