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

by Mary Lou Sullivan

  “I didn’t have as much creative control at Alligator as I wanted to have,” explains Johnny. “Bruce was very critical—that was his style. He didn’t seem to like anything I did. It’s always been hard for me to take orders from other people. He knew I had been a producer of all my records before that but he thought he knew more than I did.”

  Johnny also dubbed it as a personality conflict escalated by what he perceived as Iglauer’s constant criticism. “I’m fairly easygoing but I sure wasn’t with him. Bruce’s criticism made it harder to play. I would talk to Dick and say, ‘Bruce probably wouldn’t like this.’ I would get down on him before I even knew whether he would like it or not. I expected him not to like stuff. That can happen when somebody’s always putting you down.”

  “I’m very controlling, and it was hard for him to share control,” said Iglauer. “Johnny was used to being in charge of his own records. Most of the artists on my label had not worked with real producers, or were fine because they knew me better, or just thought, ‘It’s his record company; he’s the producer.” Most would have said, ‘This is a break for me; I’m stepping up in the world.’ Johnny was slumming; he was coming down in the world. Although we sold more records than his last few Columbia records, I didn’t have the kind of experience he did.”

  As bad feelings intensified, it didn’t take much to start a conflict. “We had gotten to the point where we were looking for excuses to argue,” said Iglauer.

  While dubbing the vocals for “Route 90,” they argued about the way Johnny pronounced El Paso (he put the enunciation on the third syllable rather than the second). During most of the disagreements, Shurman took Johnny’s side.

  “I loved working with Dick because he knew how I wanted things to sound and always agreed with me,” says Johnny. “I think Dick understood my music more than Bruce. Dick said, ‘Johnny’s from Texas, he says it the way somebody from Texas would say El Paso, so why ya bitchin’ about the way he’s saying it?’ Bruce finally gave up but he didn’t like the way I was saying El Paso.”

  Iglauer became the scapegoat no matter how hard he tried to put Johnny at ease, even when he wasn’t the guilty party. “We’re doing a tune, and the vodka is just starting to kick in, and Johnny says, ‘Bruce, which way do you want me to do this one?’” recalled Shurman. “Bruce says, ‘I just want you to feel comfortable with it.’ Johnny goes into a big rant about comfortable: ‘Look who we got here. Bruce Freud, comfortable.’ We actually had to stop for a while because Johnny was so pissed off.”

  During preproduction, Shurman made a tape of Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s version of “Broke and Lonely,” rather than the one Johnny recorded in 1963 as Texas Guitar Slim. That sent Johnny into a rage against Iglauer. “But it was me who had done it, not Bruce, and it wasn’t an insult,” said Shurman. “But Johnny would stew about stuff all the time because he thought Bruce was too critical and it made him doubt himself. Johnny thought Bruce didn’t like anything he did and Bruce didn’t intend to convey that. Their musical values were very close, but they just didn’t connect.”

  Despite the tension, it took only five days to record Serious Business, and ten days to mix it. The final nail in the coffin came during the mixing stage, when Johnny and Iglauer battled over bass and snare drum sounds. “Bruce wanted a lower drum sound and I wanted a higher one,” says Johnny. “We didn’t agree on how we wanted the instruments to sound. We ended up giving in just enough where neither one of us was happy with any of it. It sounded harsh—real trebly—it didn’t have enough bass to it. I didn’t like the way it sounded and was determined not to work with Bruce anymore,”

  “Johnny and I were hearing the record differently,” said Iglauer. “My perception was he won those arguments; the record didn’t come out sounding like I wanted it to sound. I always thought Serious Business sounded thin. It was a very odd little rollercoaster. Some of it was my fault; some of it was his fault.”

  The battle continued over the photograph for the album, when Johnny, who had photo approval, wouldn’t let Iglauer use the photo he wanted. “The cover shot I wanted is an inside shot in the Deluxe Edition package,” said Iglauer. “Johnny hatless with his knee cocked, very cool shot. We designed the album cover around it and he said, ‘Why would you pick a picture without my hat?’ And I thought, if you wanted a picture with your hat, why did you sit for fifty pictures without your hat? We would have sold more of Serious Business with a better cover.”

  Despite the battles, Johnny still wanted to record on Alligator and Iglauer picked up his option for a third album. But Johnny refused to let Iglauer coproduce.

  “I wanted to stay with Alligator because they kept their records out there,” says Johnny. “But Bruce wanted to control everything, so I told him I didn’t want to use him anymore. It shook him up a little bit, but he said ok.”

  “I was upset about it but we had so much tension, I didn’t want to re-create that experience,” said Iglauer. “I didn’t maintain approval over the song choices. I approved the mixes, but I wasn’t there for any mixes. I kept a very low profile, which is terribly hard for me. It was definitely a significant change for me, and very hard for my ego.”

  Despite their falling out in the studio, Johnny and Iglauer still like each other and feel badly about their battles. “I still say hi to Bruce him every time I see him and am still good friends with him,” says Johnny. “I wish we could have gotten along better in the studio.”

  “Johnny’s a sweet guy,” said Iglauer. “He can be childish and petulant but only to a somewhat greater degree than I can be. He can be very charming, and he’s an intelligent guy. Has real good taste in music. He’s got a level of self-awareness and a real good sense of humor. We never argued about whether we liked or disliked each other. It was always about what a record or performance should sound like. I have nothing but affection for Johnny. We’re probably just people who shouldn’t work together.”

  Without the tension between Iglauer and Johnny, the sessions for Third Degree went off without a hitch. “Third Degree was the best record we did,” says Johnny. “Bruce didn’t come out and it worked great.”

  Johnny played a scorching version of J. B. Lenoir’s “Mojo Boogie,” which is still one of his trademark tunes. “I changed the words around and my version was a little bit rockier. The words were perfect—‘Got that Mojo Boogie, gonna slide on down’—so it was perfect for slide. Mac [Dr. John] turned me onto ‘Love, Life and Money.’ ‘Bad Girl Blues’ by Memphis Willie B. was a funny song really—it was about women liking women.”

  Johnny used Gayden, Jones, and Saydak as the core lineup, and invited his old friends Tommy Shannon, Uncle John “Red” Turner, and Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack as guest artists. Dr. John played on “Tin Pan Alley” and “Life, Love and Money.”

  “I’ve known Mac for years,” says Johnny. “I love his playing. I think he’s the best piano player in the world. He’s got a great feeling for the blues. I met him in New Orleans in the early ’60s, when I was with Edgar and Ikey and we were playing the Whisky a Go Go. He was playing at a club right across the street from us. We’d go over and listen to them and they’d come over and hear us during their breaks. Our musical roots are similar because we’ve heard a lot of the same songs.”

  The next two nights, Shannon and Turner stopped by the studio and recorded “See See Baby,” “Shake Your Moneymaker,” and “Broke and Lonely.” Johnny got the idea to record with his old rhythm section at the Chicago Blues Festival the previous year. Stevie Ray Vaughan headlined the opening night, and Johnny went backstage to catch up with Shannon.

  “Tommy, especially, really wanted to play on a blues album with me because he was making it with Stevie but they weren’t really doing straight blues,” says Johnny. “Red was playing blues with a real good Texas guitar player named Alan Haynes.”

  “Working with Johnny on Third Degree was a lot of fun,” said Shannon. “We put down some real good tracks. It was healing being back together after all
those years, very healing to play together again as the old trio like we did when we started out. The session was easy and we got to hang out a lot and talk, like the old days.”

  When Shurman called in Gayden and Casey to record “I’m Good” while Shannon and Turner were still in the studio, Shannon pegged it to reverse racism. “We only did three songs because Alligator didn’t want anybody who wasn’t black,” he said. “Johnny was the only white musician on the label and they wanted Johnny to use black musicians.”

  But Johnny and Shurman thought the Icebreakers were better suited for that particular song. “I thought they’d be better at it because they were real good at straight blues,” says Johnny. “It’s hard to compare the four of them but they just had an easier time doing the blues stuff than Tommy and Red did.”

  But the studio players didn’t have the longtime friendship and deep-seated love Johnny, Shannon, and Turner had for each other. “It felt great to work with Tommy and Red,” says Johnny. “It makes a big difference when you love the guys you’re playing with—the caring comes through in the music.”

  Johnny wasn’t as comfortable when Shurman brought in legendary harp player Junior Wells to play on several tunes. Although they cut five or six songs, none came out good enough to make the album.

  “Johnny was nervous about playing with him and got a little tipsy—as did Junior—in anticipation,” said Shurman. “The music was sloppy and didn’t jell.”

  “Junior Wells was a real good harp player and I got intimidated by him,” says Johnny. “He was a pretty straight-ahead guy and knew what he was doing better than I did. I don’t think we got a good take out of Junior because I was worried about him, scared of him really.”

  Early blues artists, like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, as well as Johnny’s other heroes, had all played acoustic guitar. Johnny felt that to be an authentic bluesman, he needed to master the acoustic guitar, which he found harder to play because the action is higher. He practiced on his Nationals for a month before the sessions, and included two acoustic songs—“Evil on My Mind” and “Bad Girl Blues”—on Third Degree. “I played slide on the single cone,” Johnny says. “It was an old National that sounded really raw and nasty, like a garbage can with strings on it.”

  Iglauer was producing Lonnie Brooks’s Wound Up Tight album in another studio at Streeterville Studios while Johnny recorded Third Degree, so when Johnny’s album was in the mixing stage, Iglauer invited him to play on Brooks’s album. “I played ‘Got Lucky Last Night’ and ‘Wound Up Tight,’” says Johnny. “He was easy to work with in the studio. We had already planned it out. He just said, ‘Play here’ and I played there.”

  Although Iglauer and Johnny were cordial during those sessions, Third Degree signaled the end of Johnny’s relationship with Alligator. “We figured it was time to try something else,” Johnny says. But his problems in the studio with Iglauer would pale by comparison to the experiences he would have cutting his next record.

  There were other changes brewing as well. Susan had become a born again Christian and began questioning their living arrangement. She started pressuring Johnny to get married but he wasn’t willing to make that commitment. “I didn’t want to get married because I was still goin’ out with other people and didn’t want to stop,” he says.

  12

  NOT BAD FOR A WHITE BOY

  In 1988, Johnny became the first white performer inducted in the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. Founded in 1980, the Blues Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Memphis, Tennessee. Johnny was thrilled to be recognized as a bluesman in a Hall of Fame that had honored so many of his heroes: Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Robert Johnson, B. B. King, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, and T-Bone Walker. He had officially earned equal status as a bluesman.

  Although determined not to stray too far from traditional blues, Johnny was ready to claim his place among contemporary blues artists topping the charts with crossover hits. Stevie Ray Vaughan enjoyed widespread success, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers spent a year on the charts with Bad to the Bone. Billy Gibbons, another Texas buddy and ZZ Top guitarist, hit the charts with “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” from the Eliminator LP. The Fabulous Thunderbirds, with guitarist Jimmy Vaughan, crossed over with “Tuff Enuff” and “Wrap It Up.” It was time to cash in on the growing trend.

  “I think Johnny looked around and saw people he had looked at as either proteges or disciples—the young bucks compared to him—on top of the heap,” said Shurman. “He wanted to show these guys he could still be—if not the boss—up there with them if he chose to take that approach.”

  Slatus had been shopping for a major label, and negotiated a one record deal with MCA Records in 1988. He needed a producer with a proven track record for blues-rock hits; Terry Manning had the credentials. He began his career as an engineer at Stax Records and later became producer/engineer of Ardent Studio in Memphis. Manning had produced all of Thorogood’s LPs, including Bad to the Bone, produced Powerful Stuff by the Fabulous Thunderbirds, had engineered seven ZZ Top albums, including Eliminator, and was engineer on Led Zeppelin III.

  “Ted [Slatus] wanted something a little more melodic and commercial than just straight twelve-bar blues,” said Manning. “He was looking for something that would push Johnny into radio, more into the rock scene. He was insistent on finding melodic songs with hooks people could remember, but not go too pop or ultra-commercial. I saw it as walking quite a fine line with going more toward radio and pop music without losing the core or essence of Johnny, which is based in the blues he loves so much.”

  Although Manning says Johnny was fully aware of the type of recording he was hired to produce, Johnny’s recollections of what Manning said he planned to do and what he actually did are a bit different. “I was looking for a good record, one that was fun and blues but would have a chance at crossover,” says Johnny. “Terry was looking for something crossover and nothing else. We had meetings before we went into the studio. I told him what I wanted and he said. ‘Great, that’s what I want too.’ He just lied. I told him what I wanted but he didn’t give it to me.”

  Johnny left Alligator specifically to cut a less traditional blues album, but wasn’t willing to give Manning the leeway he needed to produce a hit. “We were willing to change but I didn’t want as big a change as he wanted,” Johnny says. “I didn’t expect it to be that much rock; I wasn’t trying to be commercial.”

  Manning pegs it to the difference between what Slatus and the label wanted, and what Johnny wanted. “You have to make a record they will accept because they have the right to refuse a record,” he said. “It was more commercial than most of his albums, but it was something that was expected of me.”

  MCA released The Winter of ’88 in late September; musicians included Tom Compton and Jon Paris, with keyboards on several cuts by Lester Snell and Manning, and background vocals by William Brown. Both Snell and Brown were Stax session players. With no preproduction or rehearsals, Winter of ’88 took three weeks to record at Ardent Studio. “We had twelve songs and it took more than a day a song to rehearse it, learn it, get it down, overdub it, and get it finished,” said Manning.

  Manning taking full rein as a producer without consulting Johnny about what he was doing ruined any chances of a cordial relationship and eventually disrupted the sessions. It wasn’t long before Johnny and Manning were at odds in the studio. “They weren’t communicating; sometimes they weren’t even talking to each other,” said Shurman. “Terry Manning had Johnny play all these parts, so he could go back and forth, and pick and choose. Johnny didn’t understand his method, and was pissed because Terry wouldn’t explain what he was trying to do.”

  Incidents with Johnny’s amp and Compton’s drum sounds added fuel to the fire. “I was playing through my Music Man and he had my guitar miked to a Marshall in the back room,” says Johnny. “He didn’t tell me—I found out when I heard the amp echo
ing in the background. He had it hooked up to both amps but was just recording the Marshall sound. That’s pretty bad. When I found out about that, it really pissed me off.

  “He told Tom he was a real good drummer, too bad nobody will hear your drums on the record. He didn’t say it in front of me, but when I found out I got pissed off. He had Tom play ’cause I wanted to use my own people. Terry Manning used Tom’s drum sounds as a trigger. His real sound was the drum machine, which would hear what Tom played and play the same thing back. That just sounds stupid. He’s doing it and sounding good, why bother to get something else? I talked to him about it and he said, ‘I’m the producer and I’m gonna do it the way I want to.’”

  Manning doesn’t remember recording Johnny through a Marshall but admits it might have happened. He said he used Compton’s drum sounds and only used a drum machine for the snare drum. “I probably did augment the snare, but nothing else,” Manning said. “Not the bass drum, not the tom, not the cymbals. It would have been only one snare sound triggered from his snare exactly—it would not have replaced his snare, it would have only added to it. I never used the trigger sound louder than the normal snare sound, which makes it more like an effect, a reverb type thing. It makes the snare pop a little more, and that’s what people want on the radio. Today it’s the norm; at the time it was still somewhat of a new effect.”

  Nearly twenty years later, Johnny still harbors resentment about Manning. “Terry Manning was the worst—I never had a producer as bad as him,” says Johnny. “He knew exactly what I wanted but he didn’t want to do it. He was so bad; I almost got into a fistfight with him.”

  Manning initially denied any problems in the studio, but when pressed about Johnny’s reference to a fistfight, he sighed and reluctantly shared his memories. “The fight was actually about pizza,” said Manning. “Johnny says he was so hungry he had to stop. I said, ‘No problem, what would you like?’ He said, ‘Pizza.’ We ordered pizza delivery, and I told him the pizza would be here in thirty minutes or it would be free. He said, ‘Great.’ About two minutes later, he stopped the next take of the song and said, ‘I’m hungry; I’ve got to eat.’ I told him, ‘I just said, we ordered pizza.’ He said, ‘No, you didn’t say anything about pizza.’ We calmed him down and told him pizza was on the way. We started doing another practice of the song, and he stopped again and said, ‘I’m hungry. We’re going to have to get some food. I can’t play another note.’