Winter keeps the blues flame burning
Johnny Winter
Texas blues-rock guitar maestro Johnny Winter has a full schedule of international touring on tap for 2012. The Beaumont native starts this month with dates in Dallas, Houston and New Orleans. A European tour follows. Then it’s back to the states for more shows, including an April 14 appearance at the Baton Rouge Blues Festival. In May he goes to Japan.
Winter, who’ll be 68 on Feb. 23, released a guest star-filled new album, Roots, in September. True to its name, Roots holds songs by artists Winter first heard in Beaumont when he was an impressionable child who’d fallen hard for the blues.
For Roots, singer-guitarist Winter interprets Robert Johnson’s “Dust My Broom,” Elmore James’ “Done Somebody Wrong,” Muddy Waters’ “Got My Mojo Working,” Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City,” T-Bone Walker’s “T-Bone Shuffle” and more.
“I picked out all the songs,” he said a few Saturdays ago during a telephone interview. “They’re songs I was hearing when I first started playing music.”
Blues songs pouring from the radio that his family’s black maid listened to as she worked constitute Winter’s early memories of music.
“It was so emotional,” he recalled of the music. “It had more feeling than any music I’d ever heard. As soon as I heard it, I loved it. By the time I was 12 or so, I was listening to blues all the time.”
Winter played clarinet at 5 before switching to ukulele and later guitar. The Everly Brothers-style duo he formed with his little brother, Edgar, won a talent contest and appeared on local TV stations. At 14 he formed his first band, Johnny and the Jammers, featuring Edgar at the piano.
Despite the Jim Crow-era segregation of the late ’50s and early ’60s, the Winter brothers’ love for the blues compelled them to visit black clubs.
“Oh, yeah, there was segregation,” Winter said. “But we went to black clubs all the time and never had any trouble. Black people couldn’t have gone to white clubs like that. They would have never put up with that. But they treated us very well in black clubs. Oh, yeah, it was a lot of fun,”
Johnny and Edgar Winter also traveled to nearby Louisiana to hear music and perform.
“All the time,” he said. “Vinton was right across the border. There was a club called the Big Oaks and another one called Lou Ann’s.”
Still in his teens, Winter recorded at J.D. Miller’s studio in Crowley. His session musicians included Louisiana swamp-blues harmonica player Lazy Lester.
“I love all those people,” he said of the swamp-blues musicians who recorded at Miller’s studio. “That Excello Records stuff, that’s great stuff. Lightnin’ Slim, Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Lonesome Sundown. Good people.”
Being a performer and recording artist himself in the early and mid ’60s, Winter met many of his heroes.
“Yeah, I couldn’t wait to meet those guys,” he said. “I’ve never met a bad blues guy. They’re all friendly.”
A December 1968 Rolling Stone report highlighted Winter and Janis Joplin as the hottest acts in Texas “redneck hippie” music. He signed with Columbia Records in 1969 and played the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. His blazing, blues-drenched Woodstock set was released in 2009 as Johnny Winter: The Woodstock Experience.
Although Winter got left out of the Woodstock film and original soundtrack album, his 1971 in-concert LP, Live Johnny Winter And, captured his onstage fire. Showcasing his rock ’n’ roll side, it became his most popular album yet.
In addition to the blues, Winter’s new Roots album revisits his early rock ’n’ roll influences via Larry Williams’ “Short Fat Fannie” and Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene.”
The Roots guests include Lafayette’s Sonny Landreth, Allman Brothers guitarists Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, country star Vince Gill and harmonica man John Popper. Producer-guitarist Paul Nelson invited the guests, all of whom, with the exception of Popper, Winter knew beforehand.
“All of them were happy to do it,” Winter said. “They wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t want to.”
In other blues news, Winter’s Late Show with David Letterman performance last month was his first network TV appearance in decades.
“It’s been a long time,” he acknowledged of his infrequent TV exposure. “I would have been on more if we’d a’ gotten asked. Nobody asked us. We couldn’t force our way on.”
Well, Winter never was one of those pop stars shooting for a disposable radio hit.
“No, certainly not,” he said. “Don’t want to be.”