Johnny Winter was born 77 years ago today.
Winter was a blues guitarist, singer and producer best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances. He also produced albums for the blues legend, Muddy Waters. Since his time with Waters, Winter recorded several blues albums and toured until his death on July 16, 2014.
Johnny Winter, along with his brother, Edgar Winter, were nurtured at an early age by their parents in musical pursuits. Both he and his brother, who were born with albinism, began performing at an early age.
When he was ten years old, Winter appeared on a local children's show, playing ukulele and singing Everly Brothers songs with his brother. His recording career began at the age of fifteen, when his band Johnny and the Jammers released "School Day Blues" on a Houston record label.
During this same period, he was able to see performances by classic blues artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Bobby Bland. In the early days, Winter would sometimes sit in with Roy Head and the Traits when they performed in the Beaumont, Texas area.
In 1967, Winter recorded a single with the Traits: "Tramp" backed with "Parchman Farm" (Universal Records 30496). In 1968, he released his first album, The Progressive Blues Experiment, on Austin's Sonobeat Records.
Winter caught his biggest break in December, 1968, when Mike Bloomfield, whom he met and jammed with in Chicago, invited him to sing and play a song during a Bloomfield and Al Kooper concert at the Fillmore East in New York.
As it happened, representatives of Columbia Records (which had released the Top Ten Bloomfield/Kooper/Stills Super Session album) were at the concert.
Winter played and sang B.B. King's "It's My Own Fault" to loud applause and, within a few days, was signed to reportedly what was then the largest advance in the history of the recording industry — $600,000.
Winter's first Columbia album, Johnny Winter, was recorded and released in 1969. It featured the same backing musicians with whom he had recorded The Progressive Blues Experiment. They included bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Uncle John Turner, Edgar Winter on keyboards and saxophone, and (for his "Mean Mistreater") blues legends Willie Dixon on upright bass and Big Walter Horton on harmonica.
The album featured a few selections that became Winter signature songs, including his composition "Dallas" (an acoustic blues, on which Winter played a steel-bodied, resonator guitar), John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson's "Good Morning Little School Girl" and B.B. King's "Be Careful With A Fool."
The album's success coincided with Imperial Records picking up The Progressive Blues Experiment for wider release. The same year, the Winter trio toured and performed at several rock festivals, including Woodstock. With brother, Edgar, added as a full member of the group, Winter also recorded his second album, Second Winter, in Nashville in 1969.
The two-record album, which only had three recorded sides (the fourth was blank), introduced a couple more staples of Winter's concerts, including Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" and Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited."
Also at this time Johnny entered into an intimate, albeit short-lived, affair with Janis Joplin. It culminated in a concert at New York's Madison Square Garden where Johnny joined Joplin on stage to sing and perform.
Contrary to urban legend, Johnny Winter did not perform with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison on the 1968 infamous Hendrix bootleg album, Woke Up This Morning and found Myself Dead, from New York City's Scene Club.
According to Winter, "...I never even met Jim Morrison! There's a whole album of Jimi and Jim and I'm supposedly on the album, but I don't think I am 'cause I never met Jim Morrison in my life! I'm sure I never, never played with Jim Morrison at all! I don't know how that [rumor] got started."
Beginning in 1969, the first of numerous Johnny Winter albums was released which were cobbled together from approximately fifteen singles (about 30 "sides") he recorded before signing with Columbia in 1969.
In live performances, Winter often told the story about how, as a child, he dreamed of playing with the blues guitarist, Muddy Waters. In 1977, after Waters' long-time label Chess Records went out of business, he got his chance.
Winter brought Waters into the studio to record Hard Again for Blue Sky Records, a label set up by Winter's manager and distributed by Columbia. In addition to producing the album, Winter played guitar with Waters veteran James Cotton on harmonica.
Winter produced two more studio albums for Waters, I'm Ready (with Big Walter Horton on harmonica) and King Bee and a best-selling live album Muddy "Mississippi" Waters – Live.
The partnership produced three hit albums for Waters. Waters told Deep Blues author Robert Palmer that Winter had done remarkable work in reproducing the sound and atmosphere of Waters's vintage Chess Records recordings of the 1950s. The albums gave Waters the highest profile and greatest financial successes of his life.
Winter was professionally active until the time of his death near Zurich, Switzerland. He was found dead in his hotel room two days after his last performance, at the Cahors Blues Festival in France on July 14, at the age of 70.
The cause of Winter's death was not officially released. According to his friend and record producer Paul Nelson, Winter died of emphysema combined with pneumonia.