Appreciation: George Winston, dead at 74: ‘I have no doubt I’ll be forgotten, and that’s good’ said the New Age pianist

Unlike many musicians who sold millions of albums and drew devoted concert audiences for several decades, George Winston did not want to be remembered.

The soft-spoken pianist, who died Sunday from cancer at the age of 74, made that point very clear in a 1996 San Diego Union-Tribune interview.

“I don’t want to be remembered,” he said.

“I have (it) in my will that there’s to be no funeral, only cremation. Benny Goodman, who remembers him? Who even plays clarinet?

“It takes about three generations to forget about everything, so I have no doubt I’ll be forgotten, and that’s good. ... I had the privilege of playing for you all, now let’s move on.”

But Winston, whose solo piano recordings made him the biggest-selling artist of the 1980s and ‘90s in the New Age category, did want to be remembered for other people’s music.

More specifically, the music he championed on his Dancing Cat record label by such noted Hawaiian slack-key guitarists as Cyril Pahinui and Ray Kane.

“If people remember me for anything,” Winston said, “I hope it’s for helping to make slack-key as visible as other guitar traditions. If slack-key albums are available for people, then I’ve done my job.”

Winston was born Feb. 11, 1949, in Hart, Mich., and grew up in grew up in Mississippi, Florida and Montana. He took piano lessons as a kid, then switched to organ after hearing the debut album by the Doors, whose lead singer, Jim Morrison, had grown up partly in San Diego.

By the 1970s, Winston had turned to solo piano. His first album, 1972’s “Ballads and Blues,” made no impact.

But his next album, 1980’s pastoral “Autumn,” put him on the map, along with Windham Hill, the nascent Palo Alto record company that soon became one of the most successful independent labels in the nation.

Both he and Windham Hill became synonymous with New Age. It was a category Winston was quick to distance himself from, albeit without much success.

“I’m not New Age,” he stressed.

“I call what I do ‘rural folk.’ I could call it country, but that would be more confusing. People would ask: ‘Is he like Randy Travis? ‘Contemporary instrumental’ is nebulous. But, as little soul as it has, that’s the best thing to call it.”

Winston’s music was pleasant if innocuous, soothing but lacking in nuance, emotional intensity, thematic variation and dynamic tension and release. But no matter. It provided a welcome aural balm for his loyal listeners.

And loyalty was paramount to Winston.

He made his San Diego debut at the living-room-sized Old Time Cafe in Leucadia and continued to have them produce his San Diego concerts — even after he began performing in such major area venues as the San Diego Civic Theatre and the Speckels Theatre.

Attendees at his concerts here were given free brochures that endorsed nearly two-dozen of his favorite artists, including albums jazz piano greats Teddy Wilson and Dollar Brand, guitarists Ralph Towner and Bola Sete, singer-songwriter Randy Newman, New Orleans music icon Professor Longhair, minimalist composer Steve Reich, and others.

“I like playing music a lot, and I like telling people about the people I came from probably even more,” Winston explained.

Here is his complete 1996 interview:

Will we remember him? Forget it, says pianist

By George Varga, Music Critic

July 11, 1996, The San Diego Union-Tribune

Many musicians dream of achieving immortality. George Winston is not one of them.

“I don’t want to be remembered,” said the Grammy Award-winning New Age pianist, who performs Saturday night at downtown’s Spreckels Theatre.

“I have (it) in my will that there’s to be no funeral, only cremation. Benny Goodman, who remembers him? Who even plays clarinet?

“It takes about three generations to forget about everything, so I have no doubt I’ll be forgotten, and that’s good. . . . I had the privilege of playing for you all, now let’s move on.”

Winston is known, but may not be remembered by future generations, as the most commercially popular New Age performer of the 1980s.

A catch-all phrase, New Age was coined to describe predominantly acoustic instrumental music characterized by spare, overtly melodic songs that favor simplicity over complexity and gentleness over emotional fervor.

Regarded as visionary by some and vapid by others, New Age began as a grass-roots movement that was spearheaded by Windham Hill, the small, independent record label that released Winston’s first album, “Autumn,” in 1980.

Almost single-handedly, the bearded pianist helped transform what had been an underground phenomenon into a mainstream success. But he also became the subject of considerable controversy.

Critics dismissed his work as neo-mood music or worse, while jazz pianist Keith Jarrett complained that Winston had grossly simplified and diluted Jarrett’s more intricate and harmonically dense solo piano style.

Winston, whose early influences ranged from the Ventures to Herb Alpert, responded by largely shunning the media.

“Yeah, I stayed low-key,” said the Michigan-born pianist. “If you do interviews just to sell tickets, you burn out. Come on! I’m not any big thing; I’ve been doing this (music) since 1971.

“It was real uncomfortable, all this notoriety, so I didn’t talk to anybody. I mean, why? I feel like talking to you, so I am, but it wouldn’t feel good otherwise. And I have something to talk about besides the fact I’m not New Age.”

A matter of style

To hear Winston tell it, he was never New Age, even though his most recent album, the 500,000-plus-selling “Forest,” won a Grammy Award earlier this year in the Best New Age Album category.

“I’d say I’m probably more similar to New Age than I am heavy metal,” he said, speaking from his home in Santa Cruz.

“But I’m just playing tunes. I guess you could call (Andres) Segovia New Age, because he sounds more like New Age than heavy metal.

“I call what I do ‘rural folk.’ I could call it country, but that would be more confusing. People would ask: ‘Is he like Randy Travis? ‘Contemporary instrumental’ is nebulous. But, as little soul as it has, that’s the best thing to call it.”

Unfortunately (if predictably), an onslaught of generic New Age pianists followed in Winston’s wake. None has matched his zeal for exposing listeners to the many great musicians, past and present, who have inspired him.

In 1983, Winston founded his own record label, Dancing Cat. He has since overseen the release of albums by such personal favorites as Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete, New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair, classical guitarist Michael Lorimer and nearly a dozen Hawaiian slack-key guitarists, including Ray Kane, Barney Isaacs and Cyril Pahinui.

In addition, Winston distributes fliers at his concerts that list his favorite recordings by these and other of his musical idols, from jazz piano greats Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson and Abdullah Ibrahim to minimalist composer Steve Reich, Celtic harpist Patrick Ball and jazz guitar legend Wes Montgomery.

“I like playing music a lot, and I like telling people about the people I came from probably even more,” explained Winston, who spends several hours a day practicing piano and Hawaiian slack-key guitar.

“If you like me, you might like these people — they’re where I came from, my mentors. The majority of what I work on, on piano, comes from New Orleans R&B, which I studied. But my own thing, I just came up with.

“All my mentors invented a style, and this is my style. If I played ‘Georgia On My Mind,’ it would sound ‘Muzak-y.’ Spare, simple notes ringing out — that’s my style. But without my mentors, like James Booker and Fats Waller, I’d be lost.

“And if people remember me for anything, I hope it’s for helping to make slack-key as visible as other guitar traditions. If slack-key albums are available for people, then I’ve done my job.”

george.varga@sduniontribune.com