Live performances ran from ninety minutes to two hours; their blistering rendition of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” was one of the biggest crowd pleasers. Hobbs and Radford clicked musically, and it’s evident in videos of those performances, where they’re jumping in unison and playing off of each other like musical bookends. Radford also fit in well with Johnny, and unlike Brockie, respected his position as second guitarist.
“Johnny was the leader and I’m good about following,” said Radford. “We worked out solos and changes. He was very generous. He’d take the first solo and I’d take the second one, or Johnny would play a slide guitar solo, then I’d get a solo. I was very honored and excited that Johnny allowed me to play solos.”
The fall 1974 European tour opened in London with a live studio performance for the Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC 2, Britain’s premiere television music show. Radford had only rehearsed with the band three or four times, so he was understandably nervous. Johnny alleviated his fears with a lesson that had a strong impact on Radford’s style.
“Johnny says, ‘Don’t worry about it; play how you feel,’” said Radford. “‘Play how you feel’ is one of the things I learned from Johnny. We played ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ and a lot of songs on the John Dawson Winter III album. Johnny was never concerned about playing things the same way. Sometimes he’d come out and change things around, which made me a little nervous at times. But it was exciting to follow him.”
That three-week European tour included sold-out performances in London, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, and a TV show in Bremen, Germany. “European audiences weren’t much different than the ones in the States,” said Radford. “Johnny Winter fans are all very loud.”
Johnny loved traveling on his own plane during the Saints and Sinners tour. When he heard the jet from the Led Zeppelin tour was available, he leased and customized that aircraft.
“The jet was one step bigger than a Learjet,” said Radford. “He painted JOHN DAWSON WINTER on the nose. When we landed in private airports, we’d be greeted by two limousines. The band would climb into one limousine; they put the luggage in the other one.”
As Johnny’s fame escalated, so did the size of the venues. During the ’74-’75 U.S. tour, he played stadiums that held 50,000 to 75,000 people. Although he had vowed to slow down after his stint in rehab, that twelve-week tour only gave him a week off once a month. “We would go for nights in a row; that was the hardest thing,” said Radford. “Flying to the next city, sound check, playing the show and party in the room afterward, get very little sleep that night, go to the next city, do another sound check, and do it all over again. There was little time for anything else.”
A private person, Johnny kept to himself on the road, but occasionally he’d meet Hobbs and Radford at a restaurant for dinner. Although he was the star and the biggest moneymaker, they always had a hard time getting him to pick up the check. “When we ended up at a restaurant with Johnny after a show, we’d always look at him, but Johnny never paid,” said Radford with a laugh. “He’d say, ‘I ain’t got no money.’ That was Johnny—‘I ain’t got no money.’ He finally did pay, after we made him.”
Johnny hired Peter Frampton, an up-and-coming artist, as his opening act. With a mobile recording unit set up by the stage every night, Frampton recorded all of his shows. His performances at four venues during that tour appeared on Frampton Comes Alive, a double album released on A&M Records in January 1976. “After that record hit the charts, the tables turned,” said Radford. “He’d be selling out 100,000-seat stadiums, so we’d have to open for him.”
In fall 1975, Johnny joined forces with the Edgar Winter Group (with Rick Derringer) to play a series of dates recorded for two live albums: Captured Live! (with Johnny’s band) and Together (with both bands). Edgar, who was still riding the wave of the success of “Frankenstein” and “Free Ride,” both hits from his They Only Come Out at Night LP, headlined the shows, which consisted of a set by Johnny’s band, a set by the Edgar Winter Group, and all the musicians onstage for the finale. Although both bands rehearsed together before the tour, having three guitar players onstage created intense competition. “Playing with three guitars was hard,” admitted Johnny.
Radford described the vibe between Johnny and Derringer during that tour as “love/hate.” “Guitar players are very egotistical,” said Radford. “We love each other and we hate each other. So, there was a lot of competition and fighting. I loved it, even though it was very, very competitive. I was eighteen years old and trying to keep up with those guys. Occasionally I’d throw out a lick that they didn’t do. I’d come back the next show and sure enough they’d be playing it. I did the same thing—I listened to their licks and said, ‘Okay, you steal my licks, I’ll steal yours.’ It was an honor to have somebody play one of your licks, even though they won’t admit it.”
Radford also noticed a touch of sibling rivalry when Johnny and Edgar shared the stage. “Johnny and Edgar are brothers and act like brothers,” he said. “They love each other, but they fight with each other. They both want to get their way. They’re different in terms of how they express themselves. Johnny plays from the heart. He’s not concerned with technicality or how things are arranged or how every riff is going to sound. Edgar also plays from the heart, but he’s a little more of a mindset that it has to be technically correct. Johnny is fun-loving; he enjoys the music and wants to have some fun. Edgar does too, but he’s very, very intelligent—keeps up with what’s going on in the world, is technical about a lot of things. Even though they’re brothers, Johnny and Edgar are almost opposites.”
Johnny Winter And Live had been his biggest-selling LP, so Johnny decided to release a live recording that captured the energy and excitement of his latest band, as well as a live album of both bands with songs he and Edgar had played in the Southern bar circuit ten years earlier. Those albums were recorded at shows at three California venues—the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino, San Diego Sports Arena, and the Oakland Coliseum Stadium—with the bands playing the same set all three nights.
No expense was spared in packaging the live albums. For Captured Live!, Mick Rock shot the cover photo of Johnny jamming on his Firebird, his head flung back, his hair flying. Jim Marshall shot the back cover photo from behind the stage, capturing the band in action dwarfed by the massive audience at the Oakland Coliseum Stadium. Richard Avedon shot a striking profile of Johnny and Edgar for the front cover of Together and an artistic shot that highlighted their white hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes for the back cover. One inside sleeve showcased a collage of childhood photos from their mother’s attic; the other sleeve included photos of Johnny, Edgar, David Holiday, and Willard Chamberlain (of Johnny and the Jammers) with B. B. King at the Raven Club in 1960, and Johnny and the Jammers playing a New Year’s Eve gig in 1964.
Blue Sky Records released both albums in 1976. Captured Live! featured Johnny on guitar and vocals, Radford on guitar, Hobbs on bass, and Hughes on drums. Together featured Johnny on guitar and lead vocals; Edgar on saxophone and lead vocals; Derringer on guitar and background vocals; Radford on guitar; Hobbs on bass; Dan Hartman (Edgar’s bass player) on piano and background vocals; and Hughes and Chuck Ruff on drums. Johnny and Edgar worked out the songs with a minimum of solos and no jamming to keep the emphasis on the vocals.
“Randy and Floyd had both played in White Trash so they knew all of Johnny’s songs and my songs too,” said Edgar. “It was really great. It turned into an entirely new band with a different feel; it was very powerful. I loved the way the music felt with two drummers.”
“It was kind of a nostalgia trip,” said Johnny in an interview coinciding with the release. “The tunes were soul and rock ‘n’ roll. It had been quite awhile since I’d played live with Edgar. It felt really good. We sang harmony on ‘Soul Man’ by Sam and Dave—we did a lot of harmony that night. We sang harmony on ‘You Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,’ Edgar sang the higher falsetto part. We also sang harmony on �
�Mercy, Mercy’ [and] ‘Baby, Whatcha Want Me to Do.”’
“It was really fun to do the old songs we did in bands together,” said Edgar. “That was the concept—to go back and do harmony songs like ‘Lovin’ Feeling’ by the Righteous Brothers—songs that could lend themselves to a duet thing that he and I had done together. Almost every one of those songs was a song we would play in various bands when we were kids. It was very emotional for me, and lots of fun.”
An interview with Johnny and Edgar was released on an album entitled Johnny and Edgar Winter Discuss Together: Johnny and Edgar Winter. Although the album was distributed to radio stations across the U.S. prior to the record’s release, it didn’t help sales. “That album sold mediocre,” says Johnny.
But rockers still loved Johnny’s band, which was at the peak of its power when the tour ended in late September. Many fans and critics called Captured Live! one of the best live albums of the decade. “When we were touring with Johnny, the band was getting better and better,” said Radford. “The promoters were coming up to me to get to Johnny, saying we want Johnny to come back, we’ll pay you double. We were already making a lot of money, but the shows were just getting better and stronger, and the promoters were willing to pay.”
But Johnny had played rock long enough. When he got the call to produce Muddy Waters, nothing could have held him back. His musicians, like the lineup in Johnny Winter And, were completely surprised when he called a rehearsal and told them he had decided to call it quits.
“After we rehearsed, Johnny says, ‘I’m going into the studio for nine months with Muddy Waters,’” remembered Radford. “And that was it. It was over. It was very quick. I don’t understand why Johnny did it that way, but I think the decision came from Johnny’s heart. On Captured Live! we played a lot of blues, but it was still rock ‘n’ roll. Johnny had a fair amount of fortune and fame by expressing himself through rock ‘n’ roll. But for him to go with Muddy Waters was the greatest dream of a lifetime.”
9
A DREAM COME TRUE
When Waters left the Chess label in November 1975, his manager Scott Cameron scheduled meetings with several labels. Ron Luxembourg, who headed Epic Records, came up with the concept of Waters working with Johnny. Cameron negotiated a record contract with Blue Sky, with the stipulation Johnny play on and produce the records. Paul was happy to sign Waters.
“Muddy Waters was the first recording artist I ever hired to play at the Scene,” said Paul. “I loved him then and when I had a chance to sign him as a Blue Sky recording artist, I couldn’t have been more thrilled.”
Waters had been impressed with Johnny’s talent and love of the blues when he met him in Austin and knew he was making the right move. “Muddy spotted Johnny’s ability the very first time Johnny opened for him down in Texas, before Johnny had a record deal,” said Cameron. “He knew his sincerity and [that Johnny] knew Muddy’s music—he wasn’t going to come in and try to change Muddy. He was just going to enhance it.”
Having an opportunity to play with and produce his idol meant the world to Johnny. “I always loved Muddy—it was like a dream come true to be able to work with him on a record,” he says. “I tried to do everything I could for him. The record company itself was behind him—they had a big picture of him up on one of the floors of CBS.”
Johnny loved Waters’s early Chess Records and wanted to produce records in the same vein. He felt the attempts by Chess to repackage Muddy to suit the latest musical trends didn’t do justice to the blues legend.
“I thought Chess had messed him up pretty good,” says Johnny. “They had a Muddy Waters Folk Singer album. The Brass and the Blues record wasn’t bad but it wasn’t really Muddy. I hated Electric Mud. It just wasn’t Muddy Waters at all. It wasn’t Muddy’s band; it was a psychedelic band playing the blues. The publicity shot-Muddy in a robe with his hair up—was pretty terrible. I don’t think he had that good a relationship with Leonard and Marshall Chess. He said Chess wasn’t doin’ a lot to promote his albums, and he didn’t make much money from his old records. He wasn’t getting the proper control and respect.”
Johnny respected the stylistic difference between his music and Waters’s blues, which like the music of John Lee Hooker, didn’t always stick to time signatures. Waters would throw in odd measures and make changes at unexpected times, which affected the meter. “Some of the old blues songs that Muddy played didn’t change at the right times,” says Johnny. “‘Rollin’ and Tumblin” and ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’ are hard songs to follow because they don’t change when you think they’re going to—they change at a different point.”
Guitarist Bob Margolin, who joined Waters’s band in 1973, agreed that his style could be challenging to follow. “Muddy’s blues in general had a behind-the-beat feel called delay time,” said Margolin. “The note would come a little later than you would expect it to. A lot of bluesmen had it. I certainly didn’t have it naturally when I got in the band—I really had to work on playing that way. Johnny was able to get with that too.”
Waters used heavy strings with high action on his 1957 or 1958 Telecaster, compared to Johnny’s thin-gauge strings, and his playing style was sparser than Johnny’s, who said it felt natural to play more notes. Rather than using a guitar with open tuning for slide and a second guitar, Waters now used a capo on a single guitar with standard tuning.
Waters had set the stage for instrumentation with two guitars, bass, piano, drums, and harp; his sound, which combined blues from the Mississippi Delta and the South Side of Chicago, was like no other. “Muddy’s sound was so distinctive that if he stopped playing, the whole feeling would change,” says Johnny. “His slide was shorter and smaller than most slides. He’d only get two or three strings at a time, where most guys could get six strings. He never told me why he did that.”
Waters’s traditional method of making a slide never worked for Johnny, who tried it once or twice in his early twenties. “Muddy said he’d make a slide by wrappin’ string around the neck of a soda bottle, soak it in kerosene, light it, let it burn until it went out, and then break it,” says Johnny. “I never got that down. The bottle would break off in the wrong places.”
Despite their stylistic differences, Johnny’s knowledge of Waters’s music and his love for the bluesman made their collaboration joyful. “Making Hard Again was fun,” says Johnny. “You could tell it was fun by just listenin’ to the record.”
“Muddy loved working with Johnny,” said Cameron. “He was very sincere with Muddy and he had a lot a respect for Muddy and treated him that way. What was important to me was that he brought the best out in Muddy.”
“I think Johnny knows more about my music than I do,” Waters said in an interview in the August 1983 Guitar Player. “When we went to do Hard Again, he was bringing up things I had forgot all about, and he was playing them just like they’re supposed to be played.... He wanted to go back to the old sound, but I didn’t know he went so far back.”
Johnny laughs at the memory. “That’s nice,” he says. “Muddy probably meant I knew all the parts he was doin’ in the songs more than he remembered in some cases. It made the Blue Sky records easier to do—that I knew so much about Muddy—his tunings, phrasing, slide, picks, everything involved in the old sound.”
Johnny chose The Schoolhouse studio in Westport, Connecticut for the Hard Again sessions, which ran from October 4 to 10, 1976. Set in a one-room schoolhouse built in 1760, The Schoolhouse included fifteen additional rooms, and had a live-in maid and cook. The studio was owned by Dan Hartman, a multi-instrumentalist who had played in Edgar’s band and on six of his albums, as well as on several of Johnny’s LPs. Hartman, who was also a songwriter, producer, and engineer, released his own records on the Blue Sky label in the late 1970s and early ’80s, including the gold disco single “Instant Replay.” A $300,000, twenty-four-track studio, The Schoolhouse was the perfect setting because Johnny could record all the musicians in the same room.
“The
Schoolhouse was a real relaxed studio that was close and sounded real good,” says Johnny. “Dan Hartman put the studio in himself for his own recording. He didn’t rent it out very often. The studio had a great big room—we set up everybody in that room. The control room was upstairs and the playing room was downstairs. I was playing and doing the producing too, so I’d run downstairs and play; and after we played a tune, I’d have to run up and listen to it. It made it a little crazy.”
The Schoolhouse setup had two microphones near the ceiling, which created a room echo and captured the raw sounds of Waters’s early blues recordings. “With overhead microphones, you get the sound of a whole band instead of separate instruments,” says Johnny. “Everything fed through everybody else’s mike. Regular miking ruined the sound of real raw blues. Studios did the same thing to early, nasty rock ‘n’ roll—made it too clean. Overdubs ruin the sound of raw blues, and we had enough musicians so we could get it without overdubbing anything, except for the vocals.”
Johnny also used close miking—placing microphones close to the amplifiers for separation and a cleaner sound. “Johnny put mikes on each instrument and the drum set, and had two microphones near the ceiling, capturing the ambience in the room,” said Margolin.
To ensure that engineer Dave Still knew the sound he wanted, Johnny gave him a crash course in Muddy Waters. “I played him a bunch of Muddy’s records at my house,” says Johnny. “I played him the good records and told him why they were good, and played the bad ones and told him why they were bad. He knew what I was trying to get before we went in the studio ’cause I had gone over all that stuff with him so particularly.”
Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) Page 24