Creativity Quote by Ritchie Blackmore

Ritchie Blackmore isn’t handing out polite compliments here; he’s staking a claim about how musical value gets mispriced. Calling Johnny Winter “one of the best blues players in the world” is a straight-ahead superlative, but the follow-up - “He’s very underrated” - is the real point. Blackmore is implicitly separating peer respect from mass recognition, suggesting that the audience, the industry, or the critical machine missed the signal.

The line works because it carries the authority of someone who knows what the job actually is. Blackmore, a guitarist who helped hard rock define itself, is effectively admitting a debt to a blues lineage while pointing to an artist who didn’t get fully canonized in the way Clapton or Hendrix did. “Underrated” isn’t just about sales; it’s about placement in the story we tell about guitar history: who gets framed as innovators, who becomes a household name, who gets reduced to “cult” status.

There’s also a subtle defense of a certain kind of musicianship. Winter’s playing is raw, fast, and fiercely traditional without being museum-piece blues - a style that can be overshadowed when rock’s mythology favors spectacle, branding, or a single signature hit. Blackmore’s intent reads like a corrective: if you care about the craft, about touch and feel and fire, Winter belongs at the top table. The understatement makes it sharper: no rant, no manifesto, just a peer quietly calling out the gap between greatness and reputation.