“Whatever Johnny played, I would find a part that would go well with it,” said Margolin. “I was playing a little more straight Chicago blues, but when we did ‘Tired of Tryin’,’ I did a long solo that was more of a modern style. Johnny’s really got his own distinctive sound; he doesn’t sound like anybody else. My guitar playing is a combination of my influences too, but it certainly isn’t as recognizable as Johnny’s.”
Nothin’ But the Blues was lauded by the critics; a reviewer in Rolling Stone wrote: “There’s no shortage of hair-raising picking, for Winter simply has never recorded in as vital a blues context.... Winter has effectively bridged the gap between hard rock and the blues in a way that only great stylists like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton have been able to, thus proving himself as one of our greatest musical resources.”
Johnny needed a band to tour in support of Nothin’ But the Blues and remembered the musicians who had befriended him in New Orleans. Torello was playing in Black Oak Arkansas, but had kept in close contact. When Black Oak Arkansas offered Torello a seven-year contract, Johnny paid his own attorney to review the paperwork, and Torello was advised not to sign.
“Johnny says it’s time for you to play with me,” said Torello. “Then he says, ‘Okay, Bobby, you’re in the band, pal, but you don’t know how to play blues. All you know is the Allman Brothers; you don’t know anything about blues.’ So I sat in his apartment for two months listening. I learned quite a bit. Every night we’d sit and listen to all these old classic blues records, stuff you wouldn’t even believe timing wise. It’s called ‘Follow the Leader’ and that’s all you had to do. Of course, I played it a younger, more powerful style, but it worked out well.”
Johnny’s original lineup for that tour included Rush and Hobbs, but Hobbs was replaced by Ikey Sweat when he passed out at a rehearsal and was taken away by ambulance. “I thought he got electrocuted,” said Torello. “It looked like he was having an epileptic seizure. So Johnny flew Ikey Sweat in to play bass for that tour. Ikey was one of the nicest people I ever met in my life, a country guy straight out of Texas.”
Rush, who was living in New Haven, Connecticut and had played with Torello in one of Michael Bolton’s early bands, remembers Hobbs’s sudden departure. “We rehearsed for the tour at S.I.R. for a few weeks with Randy Jo, then rented the Calderone, a concert hall in Long Island, for two afternoons and nights in their off times,” said Rush. “We set the whole stage up so we could see how everybody wanted their gear set up. Randy put his bass on, turned around, started adjusting his amplifier; and all of a sudden, he fell over in the drums and passed out cold. We called the emergency guys and they came and took him away. We didn’t see him again until he came out again to see us at a gig. Ikey flew in the next day; he had big enough ears that he could jump in and play.”
The Nothin’ But the Blues tour covered the U.S.; the band played four or five gigs a week for eleven weeks. One of Johnny’s last U.S. tours at large venues and coliseums; they performed for 10,000 to 15,000 people each night, headlining over 38 Special and the Climax Blues Band. Gone were the wild outfits; Johnny dressed to suit himself, in a flat brimmed leather hat, blue-jean shirt, and old ripped up jeans with patches. Like the Hard Again tour, Johnny kept to himself, but traveled with one of his on-the-road female companions.
Jimi Hendrix jamming with Johnny at the Scene in 1969. Jimi is playing Tommy Shannon’s 1962 Fender Jazz bass. (Photo by Charles Harbutt)
Promo shot for Johnny Winter. (Photo courtesy of Sony/Legacy)
Johnny and Janis shared a warm rapport—on- and offstage. (Photo by Steve Banks)
Johnny joined Janis Joplin at a December 1969 gig at Madison Square Garden. (Photo by Steve Banks)
Johnny with Jimi Hendrix engineer/producer Eddie Kramer during the Johnny Winter sessions in Nashville. (Photo from the personal collection of Uncle John Turner)
Triumphant return to the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin in March 1970. (Photo by Burton Wilson; from the personal collection of Uncle John Turner)
Johnny and Susan Winter, who has shared his life since 1972. (Photo by Bob Gruen)
Johnny Winter And: The band that earned Johnny’s only gold record. (Photo courtesy of Bobby Caldwell)
Johnny at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in 1975. (Photo by Jim Summaria; www.jimsummariaphoto.com)
Saints and Sinners billboard for the Long Beach Arena show recorded for the King Biscuit Flower Hour in 1974. (Photo courtesy of Doug Brockie)
Edgar sits in with Johnny in 1976. (Photo by Bob Gruen)
Johnny with bassist and close friend Ikey Sweat during the Nothin’ But the Blues tour. (Photo by Bob Gruen)
Johnny and Muddy Waters at the Palladium during the Hard Again tour. (Photo by Steven Pearl )
James Cotton blows his face out during the 1977 Hard Again tour. (Photo by Steven Pearl)
Johnny with Clarence Garlow, his mentor and main Texas guitar influence. (Photo courtesy of Johnny Winter)
Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, and Johnny jam at Chicago Stadium in June 1979. (Photo by Paul Natkin)
One of the more memorable gigs on that tour was one that didn’t happen. After playing the Fox Theater in Atlanta on August 15, the band was scheduled to play Memphis the following night. The crew, with the tractor trailer carrying the gear, left early that morning but couldn’t get into Memphis. Elvis Presley had died, traffic had stopped, and the interstate had turned into a parking lot.
“Johnny wanted to play and do a tribute to Elvis, but there was no way for us to get into Memphis,” said Rush. “The crew couldn’t get anywhere near the Coliseum. Even if they did get in and set up, we were flying in. The only way to get from the Memphis airport to downtown would have been by helicopter and there was no place to land. We’re talking 1977—logistically, it couldn’t happen. So we ended up having a night off in Atlanta. I don’t think Johnny knew Elvis but everybody was pretty upset about his death.”
Like the Johnny Winter And band that never knew what song Johnny might play, the Nothin’ But the Blues band had to stay on its toes. “Johnny would pull out different songs from one night to the next during the entire tour,” said Rush. “One night we did ‘Honky Tonk Women’—he just pulled it out of his hat. We all went, ‘Okay, one, two, three,’ and played it.”
On October 11, 1977, the Hard Again band appeared on The Mike Douglas Show, where Johnny and Waters joined Douglas for a lengthy interview. Johnny was quite talkative; Waters didn’t a get a word in edgewise unless Douglas asked him a specific question. “Muddy wasn’t a good talker when it came to interviews,” says Johnny. “I think he was nervous; he had a hard time comin’ up with things to say.”
Although the tour was billed as “An Evening with Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter, and James Cotton,” only Johnny and Waters were invited to chat, much to Cotton’s dismay. “James got out of joint that he wasn’t gonna get to talk,” says Johnny. “He said he deserved to talk, but there just wasn’t room for him. Muddy took him back and talked to him but he was still pissed off about it. James thought he was always in Muddy’s shadow. On the road, James always felt like he was gettin’ taken advantage of. He thought he deserved more than he was getting—more respect, more money. I thought he was gettin’ plenty.”
Johnny regaled Douglas with stories of Texas clubs where “I never went to a gig without a gun in one boot and a knife in the other” and how he learned table throwing and to wipe out rednecks with his solid body guitar. Despite his obvious discomfort (Johnny put his head down and said he didn’t like to talk about it), Douglas relentlessly grilled him about his drug use. “Did you go all the way? Acid, heroin?” Douglas asked. Johnny’s amusing tale about losing his hair from doing acid and quitting because “I wouldn’t be very cute bald,” didn’t deter him. “Then what? From acid to ... ?” responded Douglas.
The show was taped in Philadelphia in the morning and aired in the afternoon, so not all of Johnny’s responses made it to the national broadcast. When Douglas asked him, “Do
you have anything to tell the youth of America about drugs? Like, don’t do them!’ Johnny didn’t take the bait. “He just looked at him seriously and thought about it for a second,” recalled Margolin. “Then Johnny says, ‘Well, I’ve always thought anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ That never got into the actual TV show.”
During the musical segment, the band played “The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Love Me with a Feeling,” and closed the show with “Got My Mojo Workin’.” Unfortunately, Waters exuberant dancing on “Mojo” was overshadowed by the ending credits.
Less than three weeks later, Waters and Johnny returned to The Schoolhouse to record I’m Ready. More polished than Hard Again, Waters’s second LP on Blue Sky featured Jimmy Rogers, his guitar player from 1947 to 1955, and “Big Walter” Horton, a former harp player. Margolin suggested using Rogers and Horton and both Johnny and Waters loved the idea.
“Muddy played slide on ‘33 Years,’ ‘Mamie,’ and ‘Screamin’ and Cryin’,” says Johnny. “He played more ’cause I asked him to. I had more control of him and he was ready to play guitar—that’s why he called the record I’m Ready. I didn’t play on as many songs because we had Jimmy Rogers playing too. That was the first time I’d seen Jimmy Rogers; I played open tuning slide on ‘Who Do You Trust’ and he played the other guitar part. Me and Jimmy and Walter traded solos. He played a hollow-body Gibson and was playin’ a little more distorted than I was used to, but it worked out fine.”
“Muddy used my Music Man amp and Jimmy used Muddy’s amp,” said Margolin. “I set them up to have pretty heavy distorted guitar sounds. Muddy and Jimmy liked that—it was the way they sounded in the ‘50s when they played together. Johnny was up in the control room, and said, “Are you sure you want those amps that dirty?’ They said, ‘Yeah, we like that.’”
Before they began recording, Johnny asked Waters and Rogers if one of them wanted to play the top part and the other play the bottom. “They said, ‘We don’t care about that; we just play what we want to play,”’ says Johnny. “I guess they were so used to playin’ and not worrying about talkin’ about it, they thought I was crazy for even mentioning it. They made me feel like an idiot, to tell you the truth,” he adds with a laugh.
Both Johnny and Waters had misgivings about Horton, so they asked guitar player Johnny Nicholas to accompany him to the studio and make sure he didn’t drink.
“Muddy worried that Big Walter might screw up in the studio because he’s a screw-up,” says Johnny still laughing. “He was an excellent harp player but he drank too much.
“Big Walter gave me a lot of trouble playin’ through a glass at Columbia [the Johnny Winter LP], so I wasn’t sure if it would work or not. But Muddy is a good leader. Big Walter was easygoing when it came to Muddy ’cause Muddy was the boss. He was anxious to play with Muddy and do a good job. We brought in Jerry Portnoy just in case. Jerry was a good harp player—he was fairly young and Muddy had used him before for several years. We worked both of ’em in. We didn’t really need two harp players. We could have left Jerry out, but we figured we’d go ahead and use him.”
Margolin credits Horton’s respect for Waters for his good behavior. “I remember Muddy giving Walter some instructions and Walter’s eyes got real big, ‘Okay, Muddy. Anything you say, boss,”’ said Margolin. “Walter’s nickname was ‘the Old Goat’ because he could be cantankerous. He was a little lamb that day and played pretty well.”
Portnoy had a close relationship with Horton and was thrilled to work with him on that record. “I love Big Walter,” Portnoy said. “I used to go to his house and drink and exhort him to play for me. I just soaked it up. He had the greatest pure sound ever to come out of a harmonica. Walter certainly was a very eccentric fellow. A lot of those old-timers were, in one way or another. Sometimes you have to step around their idiosyncrasies to get what you want. I learned a lot just hanging around with him in Chicago, trying to imprint his sound on my head. I love his sound, and I dug him as a person too. He had a very crusty exterior, but he was a goodhearted guy inside.”
Both Portnoy and Horton played harp on “I’m Ready” and “Hoochie Coochie Man.” Portnoy played chromatic to Horton’s diatonic on “I’m Ready.” Both played diatonic—the standard blues harp—on “Hoochie Coochie Man.”
Margolin had filled in on bass for Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown at a European gig in 1976, so when he eliminated his spot as a guitar player by suggesting Rogers, Waters asked him to play bass. “Bob Margolin played bass on everything,” says Johnny. “He played bass real well. Charles was a better bass player but Bob played simpler.”
Johnny didn’t join Waters for the I’m Ready tour because it didn’t make sense financially. He had helped Waters pay Portnoy and Jones during the Hard Again tour, and now had his own band to think about. “It cost so much to go on the first tour and I couldn’t manage goin’ in the hole again,” he says. “It just about cost me more than I made ’cause we had different bands to contend with. I earned more money with my own band, so I just came around when he had something goin’ on and I had the time to do it.”
Johnny shared the stage with Waters at a “Foghat Blues Tribute” at the New York Palladium in 1978. The show, released on video in 1979, included Foghat, John Lee Hooker, Paul Butterfield, Otis Blackwell, Dave “Honeyboy” Edwards, and Eddie Kirkland. Margolin remembers the grand finale. “All the bands were jamming onstage,” he said. “Johnny turned around to me and said, ‘I can’t see too well. How many people are onstage right now?’ I looked around, counted, and said seventeen. He said, ‘Man, this is gonna set the blues back thirty years!’”
Johnny also joined Waters’s band for occasional gigs in Europe, including a blues festival in France the following year. Johnny traveled with one of his girlfriends, who made quite an impression on Portnoy. “She had some kind of bustier, something low cut,” Portnoy said. “Across the rise of her left breast was Johnny’s signature tattooed into it. When he came out to join us onstage, the first song he did was “I Got My Brand on You.” I got a tremendous kick out of that; I thought it was pretty hilarious.”
Johnny frequented clubs in Manhattan, and on an evening that would prove to be serendipitous, he stopped by the Bottom Line in February 1977 to catch Son Seals, who was opening for Mose Allison. He met Bruce Iglauer, the president and founder of Alligator Records, when he went backstage. “Johnny just showed up,” said Iglauer. “He was very approachable, very friendly, not pretentious. He was like, ‘Hey, I’m a blues fan, you’re a blues fan; here we are.’ There wasn’t any sense of ‘I’m a cool guy’ at all.”
They met again the following year when Johnny sat in with Seals at the Bottom Line in January. “He came in with the I’m Ready record and asked me what I thought of the cover,” said Iglauer. “I actually didn’t like it so I was beating around the bush, trying to tell him I wasn’t crazy about it. He said, ‘I hate it.’ We liked each other right away and stayed in touch.”
A week later, Johnny traveled to Chicago and stayed at Iglauer’s house. “I had a lot of Alligator Records,” says Johnny. “They had the best people around—they were a real good label. I thought it would be nice to get to know Bruce better and be friends with him. Bruce had a lot of good records, so when he went to sleep, I stayed up and played his records. He had one Junior Wells record I never had heard before.”
Iglauer was delighted to have Johnny as a guest. “He just hung out with me and stayed in my spare bedroom,” said Iglauer. “He was a wonderful houseguest, which sort of surprised me. He always made the bed. We went out to clubs every night—the Wise Fools, the Kingston Mines—and I asked Dick Shurman to take him out one night when I couldn’t go. They got along right away too. After we got back from gigs, Johnny would want to sit up and listen to my record collection. As soon as he detected I was tired, he’d get on headphones so he wouldn’t disturb me. He smoked pot and knew I was a little phobic about that. So he would very carefully clean
up after himself and take his pot back to his room when he went to bed.”
Iglauer invited Johnny back to play on a live Son Seals record being recorded at the Wise Fools Pub. He stayed at Iglauer’s house; and once again, they had a great time talking about and listening to music. “Johnny had this huge vocabulary of blues knowledge and we talked music all the time,” said Iglauer. “He was excited, fun, and funny, always very wired, twitching with the enjoyment of being in Chicago.”
Although Johnny played several songs with Seals, none appear on Live and Burning, the album recorded at that gig. “It wasn’t very good because they were too nice to each other,” explained Iglauer. “I was trying to get them to go head-to-head, to have a little guitar battle, and everybody was holding back. It was, ‘After you,’ ‘No, after you,’ and they both played very conservatively.”
During his time in Chicago, Johnny began a friendship with Shurman, who would produce several of his subsequent albums. “We got along ’cause he knew a lot about blues and he liked to talk about blues and I did too,” says Johnny. “He was a good guy to hang out with. I remember him asking me a question to see if I knew what I was talkin’ about. He asked me who’s the girl in the song that—oh hell, a particular blues player that I can’t remember the name of right now—but he asked me what the girl’s name was on the record. I said, ‘Lily,’ and I was right. I don’t know what he would have done if I had said the wrong name,” he added with a laugh. “But I knew it was pretty off-the-wall and he was doing it to test me.”
Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) Page 26