WHO'S THAT OTHER GUY?

Holy shit. All it took was seeing a random post about Edgar Winter and I lost an hour or so of my day lapping up stuff from his White Trash period. Edgar Winter's White Trash was the band he had before the Edgar Winter Group ("Frankenstein"). For my money, the stuff he did with White Trash was better than anything he's done before or since, and not entirely because of him, but I'll get to that. The first White Trash LP was his second album, released after a comparatively staid solo album. It was if his label nudged him, telling him he'd better pick it up a notch or risk getting dropped. The album was produced by Rick Derringer, had Johnny Winter and Ray Barretto (!) guesting, and liner notes in the form of a poem about him by a struggling writer named Patti Smith (she was also writing pieces for Creem magazinr at the time). 

It's crazy though. The best thing about the two best Edgar Winter LPs (both of them White Trash albums) is the singer sharing lead vocals with him, Jerry "Count Jackson" LaCroix. The guy had an awesome voice, all throat, all gravelly soul (not unlike Otis Redding), but he never really became a household name. It might have been the weird trajectories that his career took. He first recorded with the Boogie Kings, a late sixties mostly covers outfit, before hooking up with Winter in 1970, or thereabouts.  He left White Trash after a couple years, recorded two solo albums and then joined Blood, Sweat and Tears. A year later he was with Rare Earth. And in both of the latter, he was not the original lead singer. He was a fill in. (His first appearance with Rare Earth was singing "Get Ready" on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, without having ever rehearsed the song, or any other, with his new band.)

LaCroix with Blood, Sweat and Tears

Here's some from White Trash, the first and last feature LaCroix on lead vocals. "I've Got News For You" is a Ray Charles cover, and "I Can't Turn You Loose" is an Otis Redding cover. Note: A couple of these are slow downloads, but all are worth hearing.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Edgar Winter's White Trash - I've Got News For You mp3 at Horn Dogs LaCroix on lead vocal
Edgar Winter's White Trash - Give It Everything You Got mp3 at Giant Panther
Edgar Winter's White Trash - Cool Fool mp3 (via DivShare) at Your Sister's Record Rack (long intro, song starts at 1:07)
Edgar Winter's White Trash - I Can't Turn You Loose mp3 (via DivShare) at Your Sister's Record Rack LaCroix on lead vocal
Visit:
Jerry LaCroix's official site
Interview at Swampland Really good, about how he ended up in all those bands.
Jerry LaCroix solo LP's available here (with song snippets) They're hard to find elsewhere.