In the mid-1960s a new breed of music fans and musicians – most of them white – embraced the blues, beginning a love affair that didn't cool for nearly 15 years. By 1970, it was a rare night at the local rock club when at least one band didn't claim to play the blues – and in student ghettos and hippie centers, the players were products of the nation's middle class, which is to say they were white. There were exceptions – some of them inspired, like Jimi Hendrix and Taj Mahal's guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, for example. Much could be written about the blues newcomers (including the fact that listening wasn't their strong suit), but it was the rock backgrounds they often shared that were most noteworthy. The results weren't always bad (Bobby Bland's 1973 Dreamer is exhibit A), but as the new players made the scene, the once loose blues grooves tended to stiffen, and overused hippieisms littered the lyrics. In fact, the blues revival produced some epic lows when it came to the music played by the newcomers. Fortunately, the old guard was still going strong. And cheered on by British musicians like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and American hipsters like Mike Bloomfield, Bob Hite, and Danny Kalb, the blues and its many long-struggling practitioners suddenly were in the limelight.

Blues stars like Muddy Waters found acclaim and a payday that had eluded them – and while purists grumbled, the musicians smiled and cashed checks. By 1977, when Waters recorded the rock-solid Hard Again, breaking a long string of mediocre recordings, his band included a young white guitarist named Bob Margolin. More noteworthy was the presence of iconoclastic Texan Johnny Winter, one of the first hippie blues stars, who produced the album. Winter was an accomplished if overly flashy guitarist with a deep, rich baritone and albino genetic makeup, all of which helped him stand out in a crowd. And if you don't know what I mean, listen to him shouting, "Yeahhh!! Whoaa!!" again and again in the background of the album-opening "Mannish Boy."