Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition)

by Mary Lou Sullivan

  “We set up these big amplifiers, P.A. system, drums, everything in my bass player’s parents’ living room, where we rehearsed,” said Radford. “Bobby didn’t know it was an audition; he thought we were just getting together to jam.”

  Caldwell., age eighteen, was playing in a Florida band called Noah’s Ark, which had been signed to Decca Records and Liberty Records for several singles. Ironically, he almost didn’t go to the audition.

  “A friend called to ask if I would like to come down,” said Caldwell. “I politely declined. He said, ‘But it’s Johnny and Edgar Winter.’ I said, ‘Okay, but I’m not really big on jammin’ with people.’ When you’re playing drums, you’re just providing a back drop for everybody to solo. It could go for hours and it’s not challenging. I went and stood around for three hours. Hour after hour, these people are coming in and out and I’m thinking, ‘C’mon! You want to play—let’s play.’ Finally they called me in and I started playing this MACH 3 type of drum patterns. They all joined in and we played for thirty-five to forty minutes. At the end, Johnny asked me if I could travel, and said he wanted me in his band.”

  Caldwell joined Johnny Winter And in July 1970 and moved up to Staatsburg. He had jammed with the Allman Brothers Band; that connection wasn’t lost on Johnny. “Bobby Caldwell was a real aggressive drummer,” says Johnny. “A real good rock drummer.”

  Caldwell felt alienated from the rest of the band, but pegged it to being the new kid on the block. “There was nobody in that band or organization you could talk to,” he said. “It was very cold initially. Johnny seemed like a nice enough guy, but was a little bit standoffish in the beginning. If I had a problem, I’d go to Teddy Slatus, our tour manager, but he had to ask Johnny. It was frustrating. Initially it was very much a sideman situation, but it got to respecting how good it was, and we became more of a band and got very close.”

  With minimal rehearsals, the new lineup played their first gig in Florida, then flew to Europe and headlined a festival in Marseille, France. Johnny introduced a Rolling Stones song at that concert that would become one of his signature live numbers.

  “When we finished at Marseille, we did ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ as an encore,” said Caldwell. “We had jammed on it at the house in Staatsburg. We never intended on doing that. We were just screwing off and started playing that song. Johnny loved it ’cause he loved the Rolling Stones. Johnny would start it onstage and we’d all fall into it. Rick would look at me. I’d look at him, Hobbs would look over, we’d all look at Johnny, sort of straighten our tie a little bit—figuratively speaking—and play.”

  Before the official release of Johnny Winter And in August 1970, Paul delivered advance copies to progressive-rock radio stations in Detroit—WKNR-FM, WABX, and WXYZ-FM—to generate a buzz for the show at Detroit’s Eastown Theater. Prior to that gig, Johnny attended the Ann Arbor Blues Festival—getting up at 9 AM (which was and still is an ungodly hour for him) to see his idols Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Otis Rush, and Son House, as well as Hound Dog Taylor, Johnny Shines, Roosevelt Sykes, and Robert Lockwood Jr. Throughout most of the three-day festival, Johnny remained a spectator, telling a Creem reporter, “They don’t need any modern blues up here.” But on Sunday, he joined Luther Allison for an inspired jam that spectators described as a “killer competition” with both guitarists playing at the peak of their powers.

  Mark Erlewine, the luthier who owns Erlewine Guitars in Austin, and sold Johnny his first Lazer guitar in 1984, remembers that performance.

  “Our family traditionally ran the backstage bar at the festival,” Erlewine said. “When Johnny Winter came, I was worried about him thinking, ‘He’s a white kid, a great rocker—poseur as a blues player; I don’t know if he should go onstage and play with Luther Allison.’ But it was an incredible duel between the two of them—just grinnin’ and having the best time. I was shocked how good it was.”

  Johnny Winter And played a date in London, then flew back to New York to perform at an antiwar rock festival held at New York’s Shea Stadium on August 6, 1970. An estimated 20,000 people showed up at the Summer Festival for Peace to hear twelve hours of music by a lineup that included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Paul Simon, Steppenwolf, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Al Kooper, Richie Havens, and Miles Davis.

  “The twelve-hour festival at Shea Stadium was pretty radical,” said Shannon. “There were a lot of speeches by Abbie Hoffman, a bunch of people like that. There wasn’t violence but there was a feeling of violence behind it, like they came there for the rally instead of the music.”

  To be closer to the gig, the band stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, where Johnny and Caldwell had an unexpected visitor. “Janis Joplin came to the hotel room that afternoon,” said Caldwell. “Janis came in and tackled Johnny right at the door. Started calling him affectionate names in a good-natured way. ‘Honey.’ ‘You ole SOB!’ Johnny was stone sober, but she wasn’t of her right mind. She had been drinking excessively when she came down to Shea Stadium that night, and started an altercation with a bunch of photographers and reporters.”

  Johnny Winter And soon became known for its wild stage show, as well as the musicians’ prowess. Johnny and Derringer played inspired guitar duels that pushed both musicians to greater heights.

  “I remember it was really unbelievable, charismatic,” Liz Derringer, Rick’s wife during that timeframe, told Muise. “They used to get in such a frenzy and so crazy that Rick used to run between Johnny’s legs and Johnny would jump over him. And they’d do a lot of battling dual-guitar stuff. It was pretty incredible.”

  Paul believed in the power of theatrics and encouraged the band to push the limits.

  “One of the things Steve Paul liked to dwell on, as a manager, was, ‘A good musician belongs in the pit,’” Derringer explained to Muise. “What that meant is you can go to any Broadway show and hear great musicians but you never see one. ’Cause those great musicians end up in the pit. So what makes the guy on the stage? He’s more than a great musician. He is a great entertainer. So we were always schooled first and foremost in being entertainers.”

  “I dressed more rock ’n’ roll in that band,” says Johnny. “I had a sequined silver tee shirt that was tank top on one side and had a sleeve on the other. I wore suede vests with fringe and had a dark blue leather jacket with long fringe. We were doin’ more showmanship than before ’cause we were doin’ rock ’n’ roll. Rick was down on the floor and I had my guitar pointed down at him. We played off of each other. We did a lot of jumpin’ around too.”

  “Johnny and Rick were great onstage together,” said Caldwell. “They played so opposite. Rick can’t play like Johnny stylistically—he just doesn’t hear music that way. Johnny couldn’t play like Rick does if he had to. It’s two different worlds because Johnny doesn’t hear it that way either. Once we started coming together—it was a juggernaut—bigger than big. If Johnny started to play a song out of the blue, we jumped in. Everybody knew that anything could happen at any given time and not in a negative way. Rick didn’t like the fact Johnny could not play something over and over the same way—in a structured way because Rick is such a polished person playing wise. But he would simply grin and bear it. He knew this was his shot at getting exposure.”

  Despite his misgivings about playing with another guitarist, Johnny enjoyed playing his Les Paul gold top with Derringer in the band. “I liked being a frontman, but with a second guitar, I was free to do more solos; I wasn’t tied down so much because he played rhythm,” says Johnny. “I liked him a lot as a guitar player. His style complemented my style really well. We planned out the parts ahead of time. Rick could tell what I was gonna play and fit himself into it. He was great to work with; there were no clashes at all. I always took the reins when we were playing; I was gonna make sure it was my band.”

  There was a great deal of camaraderie both on- and offstage in Johnny Winter And. “Rick and I were pretty good friends,” says Johnny. “We’d smoke pot and
talk about music. Randy Hobbs was one of the best bass players I ever heard; I probably got along with Randy the best.”

  But there was a black cloud on the horizon that hit on September 19, when the band played the Boston Tea Party, a psychedelic club in Bean Town. The somber announcement of Jimi Hendrix’s death came over the club’s sound system during that gig. Devastated by the loss of a musical icon and friend, the band worked through their grief by memorializing him in a song.

  “That night we huddled together in somebody’s room and threw together a tune called ‘21st Century Man’ about Jimi Hendrix,” said Caldwell. “It’s a single we recorded in Columbia Studios two days after his death. It wasn’t a tribute song, but it was inspired by Jimi’s death. It’s a pretty cool song and it still sounds great.”

  Never released on a Johnny Winter And LP, “21st Century Man” was put out by CBS as the B side of “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo.” Derringer got songwriting credit; he and Johnny shared production credit. Those credits didn’t seem fair to Caldwell. “It was collaborative,” he said, “but at that time there was the caste system of India going on.”

  Hendrix died on September 18, 1970. His death certificate listed “inhalation of vomit, barbiturate intoxication, insufficient evidence of circumstances, open verdict” under cause of death. His family requested a private funeral for family and friends; the service was held at the Dunlop Baptist Church in Seattle on October 1, 1970. Invited guests included childhood friends as well as Hendrix’s bass player Noel Redding, his drummer Mitch Mitchell, Miles Davis, John Hammond Jr., Buddy Miles, Johnny, and Steve Paul.

  “I was on the road when Jimi died and it shocked me,” says Johnny. “To be so bad where you just have to give up and die. I hadn’t played with him recently when he died and it had been awhile since I had seen him. Janis Joplin and Al Wilson, the guitar player for Canned Heat, died around the same time period. It seemed like everybody was going. I was using heroin at the time but it [the deaths] didn’t affect me at all. I figured it was a good thing to do—because it made things better. I didn’t think it would ever kill me.

  “I think a lot of it [his death] had to do with the pressures of being a star—the same reasons I was having troubles with were giving him trouble. Not having any real friends. I think he just kind of gave up on it. He wasn’t making any money—I’m sure he wasn’t making as much as he should have. Nobody made much money in those days—the record companies were making all the money. It seemed like he was getting worse but he never talked about it.

  “I went to Jimi’s funeral with Steve Paul—Jimi played at his club a lot. I went to the church. The preacher was very... it seemed like he thought he had all these sinners there and it was his chance to save everybody. He was saying stuff that sounded like he really didn’t know too much about Jimi. He was saying things like, ‘Jimi was great but the real great person is God.’ A lot of stuff about ‘Jimi is not important; the real important thing is God,’ and nobody wanted to hear that. It seemed like the guy was insensitive.

  “I don’t think I went up to the coffin. There were some nice floral arrangements—flora) guitars. I wondered what I was doin’ there. I think Steve wanted to go, and talked me into going. I didn’t feel like I was that good a friend of Jimi’s to be at his funeral, but I guess there were a lot of people who weren’t as good friends as I was. I’m just not comfortable going to funerals.

  “We had a jam at the club at the Hilton Inn hotel where we stayed. Jimi may have paid for the party—Iremember him saying he wanted to have a party instead of a funeral. I don’t really know why he talked about that. I heard some of his band went out in the parking lot and cried—I don’t know if that’s true or not. Mitch Mitchell—I heard he was crying. But it was fairly happy—everybody was feeling like they were doing it because Jimi wanted them to party. So they were gonna try to do the best they could for him.”

  Johnny flew back the next day to play a weekend of triple bills at the Fillmore East, with Tin House and Buddy Miles as opening acts.

  “That was during Johnny’s psychedelic phase,” said Radford. “He was wearing blue jeans and an embroidered top with silver chains. Every time he would come on the stage, it was magical. He had an aura about him and everything he’d do. He’s play a note on his guitar, or walk out onstage; and immediately, you felt it. When he played, his aura exploded.”

  Meanwhile, Caldwell. was exploding over his sideman’s pay, especially after seeing thousands of dollars counted out in hotel rooms after the gigs. He had been earning $150 to $200 a weekend playing in Noah’s Ark, and wasn’t doing much better in Johnny Winter And.

  “I was making only a little better than that initially—which was an outrage,” he said. “It wasn’t a case of being paid what you were worth—it was a case of what you would tolerate. I remember sitting with Rick in Steve’s hotel room in Miami. I said, ‘I’m quitting the band. I don’t give a damn. I don’t care who it is. If I don’t get paid more, I’m done.”’

  Paul was envisioning a solo project for Derringer, and tried to smooth things over by telling Caldwell he could be part of that project.

  “Steve Paul had an idea that someday he would like to manage Rick,” said Caldwell. “He wanted me to be involved ’cause Rick and I play well together. Steve was only managing Edgar and Johnny at that time, and was directing Rick’s affairs—whatever that meant. Steve said, ‘Rick is going to be doing some things on his own in the near future—we’d like you to be a part of it and stick around.’ I thought, that’s fine—but we’re still talking about money now. It was a pivotal moment because I didn’t care. Things changed very quickly and he agreed to pay me what I was asking.”

  From Johnny’s dramatic rise to fame in 1969 until the present, Johnny has always been the star with his musicians relegated to sideman status. Given that dynamic, Steve Paul felt that he and Johnny treated the band members responsibly. But Caldwell had concerns about the way the players were treated, especially Randy Hobbs.

  “Randy was a very good bass player with a lot of experience, but he wasn’t taken very seriously,” said Caldwell. “He was a child star along with Rick in the McCoys, and he idolized Johnny. Randy was a sycophant and Johnny and Randy grew to be good friends. Everything was, ‘Oh yes, Johnny, you’re right, Johnny.’

  “It was an ongoing joke. We’d all be sitting around, killing time on the road. We’d be reading Rolling Stone or Creem magazine and Randy would be reading Guns & Ammo. He was a redneck—I’m not saying that disparagingly. Nowadays, every country band member probably reads Guns & Ammo. But in those days, it was all about arts and music. Everybody was more into the yin, the feminine side of their energy, and Randy was firmly ensconced in the yang.

  “When we were playing in Stockholm, we went to a club after the show. He’d just bought a new Stetson and some drunken girl kept hitting it. He was gone, but he had a tremendous reservoir of ability to hold it. You wouldn’t know it—he could have drunk, done drugs, and still played and hardly made any mistakes. This woman kept hitting his hat, and all of a sudden it got pretty nasty. Randy slapped or hit her, and her blood went all over his new Stetson. Everybody stood up, and there was chaos. Another time, Randy had words with a union worker backstage. Randy had a pair of pliers in his guitar case and started chasing the guy with these pliers like he was gonna do some dental work or pull his nose off. That’s the kind of things we dealt with—we’d laugh about it.

  “Randy Hobbs was like a second-class citizen in that band. Everyone looked at Randy as someone to tolerate and politely put up with. He was a fine bass player but he was always high on something. Yet he could always get up there and play—every night. It was unbelievable.”

  In early 1971, the band released Johnny Winter And Live, which made the Billboard charts that March, peaked at number forty and stayed on the charts for twenty-seven weeks. Johnny earned his first and only gold record in 1974 with Johnny Winter And Live.

  “A live album seemed like the right thing to d
o at the time,” Johnny says. “We recorded it at the Fillmore East and Pirates World in Florida [an eighty-seven-acre theme park in Dania with a large outdoor concert venue]. Our shows were ninety minutes, so we had three hours to pick from. The audiences seemed to like the new band pretty good, real good in fact. Johnny Winter And sold worse than anything we had out to that point, but the Johnny Winter And Live record sold more than any other record I ever had out.”

  A high-energy showcase that captures the intensity and excitement of that lineup, Johnny Winter And Live is the hardest-rocking recording that Johnny ever released, almost an anomaly in his catalogue. (Captured Live! comes close, but never reaches the intensity of Johnny Winter And Live.) The scorching guitars of Johnny and Derringer on “Good Morning Little School Girl” take the Sonny Boy Williamson blues standard into the outer stratosphere of rock, making the Yardbirds’ version sound like Pat Boone. Many rock aficionados consider it one of the best rock ‘n’ roll records ever, and Caldwell explains why he thinks it earned that moniker.

  “You can hear it’s a real group—it’s not a ‘Johnny, you’ve got it all going, and I hope you can pull it off’ like it usually is,” he said. “Every night was a juggernaut. It was unstoppable; as big a stomping band as you’ve ever heard. It was like walking in the forest and there was King Kong standing there. You thought all the monkeys you had encountered on the path looked pretty big, and all of a sudden you see this thing that’s one hundred feet tall. That’s what comes across as a group on that record.”

  While Johnny toured with Johnny Winter And, Edgar put his own band together with a lineup of Louisiana and Texas musicians. Edgar and his band lived at Hearthstone Farm in Clinton Corners, New York, not very far from Johnny’s house in Staatsburg.

  “When I was putting together White Trash, Johnny used to come out to the Hearthstone Farm and listen to the band play,” Edgar said. “On occasion, he would sit in. He played slide on ‘I’ve Got News for You’ on the White Trash album. That song came out great. I loved the primitive authentic slide guitar in contrast to the Ray Charles R&B-style horn.”