George Winston

George Winston, best known for his melodic rural folk piano style, has made no secret of the debt his playing owes to the musicians of New Orleans. GULF COAST BLUES & IMPRESSIONS–A HURRICANE RELIEF BENEFIT was inspired by Winston’s desire to support the Gulf Coast after the recent hurricane related devastation. This beautiful and vast region has a mystique all its own and he has been to it many times, from Corpus Christi, to Galveston, to Lake Charles, to New Orleans, to Gulfport/Biloxi/Bay St. Louis, to Mobile, to Pensacola, to Panama City, to the Tampa Bay, to Ft. Myers, to Naples.
Winston cites the pianists of New Orleans as the biggest influences on his own piano playing. He will donate all of his artist royalties from the album to organizations involved in helping those on the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans to rebuild and return – organizations such as Common Ground (www.commongroundrelief.org), ACORN (www.acorn.org), and others. He has also donated all the proceeds of his September and October 2005 concerts to the same causes. In unity with the artist, RCA Records will be donating the bulk of its net profits to benefit musicians in the New Orleans area.
Gulf Coast Blues & Impressions features six Winston compositions inspired by the Gulf Coast as well as pieces written by or influenced by six of the greatest New Orleans pianists: Henry Butler, James Booker, Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, and Jon Cleary. “Much of my work on the piano is studying the musical languages of the great New Orleans R&B pianists,” Winston says. “Especially Professor Longhair, the founder of the New Orleans R&B piano scene in the late 1940s who inspired so many; James Booker, whose language most influences the way I think of playing; and Henry Butler, who is the pianist I have studied the most since 1985. I’m also indebted to New Orleans pianists Dr. John, Jon Cleary, and the eminent composer/pianist Allen Toussaint.”
James Booker’s Pixie lives up to its title with a treatment that features syncopated phrases in the right hand and Booker’s trademark left hand with a moving bass line and partial chords. “James Booker was the first one to take R&B, soul music, the Blues, New Orleans music, and more, to make a solo piano style which encompassed seven different ways of playing,” Winston says.
Henry Butler’s complex composition The Breaks is full of dramatic chords and flurries. Says Winston: “Henry is the pianist I have been studying the most since I first heard him in 1985. In my view he has taken R&B piano to its pinnacle, and he is the only pianist I know of who plays the deep Blues and R&B and mainstream jazz. You need to see him live to fully experience his music.”
Creole Moon, a pensive version of the title tune from Dr. John’s 2001 album, is full of emotions that residents of The Crescent City might have felt in the aftermath of the storm.
Winston’s own compositions for Gulf Coast Blues & Impressions run the gamut from up tempo to melancholy. New Orleans Shall Rise Again, delivered in a style that is inspired by Allen Toussaint, James Booker, and Dr. John, is an ode to The City and its music, a buoyant salute to the rhythms of jazz, blues, and R&B that also tips its musical hat to Henry Butler, and Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton.
Pixie 3 (Gobajie) borrows its form from James Booker’s Pixie, but is delivered in a more stately tempo, marked by dancing rippling runs on the high keys. “Gobajie was a kitty who loved music,” Winston explains. “She would listen attentively to live playing or recordings; whenever the music stopped she would respond by singing.”
Stevenson is an emotional piece for a friend lost as a result of the hurricane. Says Winston: “This is dedicated to my dear late friend, New Orleans filmmaker Stevenson J. Palfi (1952-2005), who made the wonderful film Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together about Professor Longhair, Allen Toussaint, and Isidore “Tuts” Washington.”
The centerpiece of Gulf Coast Blues & Impressionsis Winston’s epic arrangement of When the Saints Go Marching In, one of the oldest traditional New Orleans songs. The arrangement starts at a deliberately ominous tempo inspired by Dr. John, before breaking into the song’s familiar celebratory melody and variations inspired by James Booker. The festivities are interrupted when Winston’s left hand moves up an octave, inspired by Henry Butler, before returning to the melody. At the end of the tune he breaks into a stride piano section before ending with two hand rolls inspired by the South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand).
The album closes gently with Blues for Fess, Beloved, a eulogy for Professor Longhair that leaves each note hanging in the air reverberating, thoughts offered to fallen friends and a region and a city struggling to get back on its feet.
GULF COAST BLUES & IMPRESSIONS–A HURRICANE RELIEF BENEFIT follows on the heels of Winston’s 2001 album REMEMBRANCE-A MEMORIAL BENEFIT, a six song album of piano, guitar, and harmonica solos. All the artist’s proceeds from that CD are being donated to benefit those affected by 9/11. He is currently touring to support Gulf Coast Blues & Impressions and working on his next recordings, Love Will Come-the Music of Vince Guaraldi-volume 2, Beloved-The Music of Professor Longhair., and Night-A Love Story 2
With a tour schedule that includes more than 110 shows a year - solo piano concerts, solo guitar concerts, solo harmonica concerts, and solo piano dances, Winston is driven by a deep rooted realization that his craft is still evolving, and by his desire to bring music to life through live performances, musical interpretation of other composers’ works, and the recording and production of albums of many of those who have influenced and inspired him. Constantly traveling, he draws inspiration from the places and people he encounters.
George Winston was born in 1949 and grew up mainly in Montana, and he also spent his later formative years in Mississippi and Florida. His favorite music was instrumental rock and R&B - artists like Floyd Cramer, The Ventures, Booker T & The MG’s, the late jazz organist Jimmy Smith, and many more. “I was always an avid listener, especially to instrumental music and especially organists,” Winston recalls. “In 1967, when I heard The Doors, I started playing organ. I studied chord structures, music theory, and recordings of organists, especially the great jazz organist Jimmy Smith. In 1971 when I heard the 1920s and 1930s recordings of the great stride pianist Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller, I switched to solo piano.”
“I play three styles: New Orleans R&B piano, and the majority of songs I play are in this style; stride piano, which was the main way of playing that I worked .. hearing Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; and third, folk piano, the style that I came up with in 1971 which is influenced and inspired by instrumental R&B and rock, North American folk music, and mostly by the sounds of the piano itself. Many of the songs on my albums are in this melodic folk style, and it has a rural sensibility, the opposite of the urban sensibility of the R&B piano and the stride piano. My approach is North American and I basically treat the piano as an Afro-American tuned drum, as well as using the natural overtones that the piano has.”
In 1972 Winston recorded his first solo piano album BALLADS AND BLUES 1972 for the late guitarist John Fahey’s Takoma Records. “I would not be doing anything that I am doing now - solo piano albums, solo instrumental concerts, and recording the great solo Hawaiian Slack Key guitarists on my own label - without John’s influence and inspiration,” Winston states. “He is certainly the only person in the world who would have recorded a solo piano album of me in 1972.” Since 1980 George has released ten more solo piano albums: AUTUMN (1980), WINTER INTO SPRING (1982), DECEMBER (1982), SUMMER (1991), FOREST (1994), LINUS & LUCY-THE MUSIC OF VINCE GUARALDI (1996), PLAINS (1999), NIGHT DIVIDES THE DAY–THE MUSIC OF THE DOORS (2002), Montana-A Love Story (2004), and GULF COAST BLUES & IMPRESSIONS–A HURRICANE RELIEF BENEFIT (2006).
In 1984 George also recorded the solo piano soundtrack for the children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit with narration by Meryl Streep. In 1988 he recorded the solo piano soundtrack for the Peanuts® animation This is America Charlie Brown: The Birth of the Constitution, playing mainly the late Vince Guaraldi’s pieces. In 1995 he worked with George Levenson of Informed Democracy on three projects: a solo guitar soundtrack for Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes with narration by Liv Ullmann; and two soundtracks with piano, guitar, and harmonica solos for Pumpkin Circle with narration by Danny Glover, and Bread Comes to Life with narration by Lily Tomlin.
In 1983 Winston founded Dancing Cat Records to record the Masters of the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar, the finger style guitar tradition unique to the Islands, which began around 1830 (and predated the steel guitar by about sixty years). As of 2008, 39 titles have been issued in the ongoing Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters Series, recordings that have introduced many of the Slack Key guitarists to a global audience.