Winston, George (1949—)

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Winston, George (1949—)

One of the parents of a new style of instrumental pop music called "new age," George Winston is known for his passion for the traditional and the ability to synthesize the elements of very different types of American music into his own style of "rural folk piano." Though some might sneer at his music as "easy listening," many welcome it as a deeply felt musical reminder of a simpler time, when life was led to the primal rhythm of the seasons.

As a child growing up in Montana, Mississippi, and Florida, Winston spent hours listening to pop music on the radio. He especially loved the instrumentals and made sure to tune in each hour for the short piece of instrumental music that preceded the news. The bands he heard in those formative pop music years of the 1950s and 1960s, the Ventures, Booker T. and the MGs, the Mar-Keys, Floyd Cramer, and the like, were his first musical inspirations. Winston began playing music himself after he graduated from high school in 1967. He began with the electric piano and organ, but by 1971 he was listening to the swing piano of such musicians as Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson, and Winston switched to the acoustic piano, where he has remained at home ever since, with occasional forays into guitar and harmonica.

Also in the early 1970s, Winston met another musician who became one of his mentors, guitarist John Fahey. Fahey was responsible for developing the "American primitive" style of guitar, and he and Winston shared a passion for nurturing and evolving traditional styles of music. In 1972, Winston released his first album, Ballads and Blues, on Fahey's Takoma label, but the album did not sell well, and Winston went back to doing odd jobs for his living.

In 1979, Winston was introduced to the music of 1940s and 1950s progenitors of rhythm and blues such as Professor Longhair and James Booker. This music, especially Professor Longhair's "Rock 'n Roll Gumbo," inspired Winston anew. Able to find the common thread of earthy emotion in rural and urban traditional music, folk, jazz, and rhythm and blues, Winston created his own style: crystal clear, rhythmic, and sincere. In the materialistic atmosphere of the 1980s there arose a subculture seeking spirituality and a return to roots, and with these seekers Winston's mellow music struck a chord. Those who sought more peaceful and traditional alternatives to a high-tech, fast-paced, hedonistic lifestyle turned to Eastern and other indigenous spiritual traditions for inspiration. They called their movement "new age," and they welcomed Winston's spare, gentle music as a part of its soundtrack.

Winston began to record again on Dancing Cat Records and became one of the anchors of William Ackerman's budding new age label, Windham Hill. This time there was no question of going back to odd jobs. Fans loved Winston's seasonal meditations with names such as Autumn (1980), December (1982), and Winter into Spring (1982). He also wrote and performed soundtracks for several animated children's videos, notably The Velveteen Rabbit (1984) and This is America, Charlie Brown (1988). Winston maintains an intensive concert schedule, playing more than 110 live concerts a year. Most are in the United States, though he is beginning to gain an international following as well and is especially popular in Japan and Korea.

Winston has continued to seek inspiration in traditional and vintage music, and he has never ceased his attempts to bring those kinds of music to the public attention. In his 1996 work Linus and Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi, he highlights the music of the little-known composer of such famous pieces as 1960's classic "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" and many of the Peanuts television specials. Most recently, he has worked to bring attention to the traditional Hawaiian slack key guitar, a folk guitar style which originated in Hawaii in the early 1800s and inspired modern steel guitar. An accomplished steel guitar player himself, Winston has devoted much energy to recording the masters of the Hawaiian guitar in an effort to preserve the quickly dying traditional art.

—Tina Gianoulis