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

by Mary Lou Sullivan

  “He didn’t know if I was any good or not, and didn’t want to take a chance,” says Johnny. “First he asked to see my union card. I showed it to him, and it surprised him that I had a union card. I said, ‘Please, let me sit in, Mr. King; I know your songs,’ and he finally let me play. I played his guitar Lucille. I played ‘Goin’ Down Slow’ just played the one song. He says he let me sit in for a few more songs, but he didn’t. He just let me sit in for the one song and took his guitar back.

  “It was fun. He had three horns, drums, bass, guitar, and organ; it was the first time I played with such a big band. I got a standing ovation, and that surprised him. He said, ‘I’ll be seeing you down the line; you were great.’ That made me feel great. It meant so much to me to have a great bluesman, somebody who I always idolized, encourage me. I always knew I wanted to be famous and that was great—it made me feel like I can do this and have people like me.

  “Later on, I heard B. B. was afraid we were from the IRS—that we were comin’ down to the club for his taxes. We all had on black trench coats—it was cold and nasty out—and most white people didn’t go to black clubs unless they had a reason to be there. I didn’t know he felt that way until later on when I heard him talking about it on an interview.

  “We were treated real well at the Raven Club, but that changed when young black people started getting down on the blues. They felt like blues was the sound of the suffering of the black people, the music of the depressed era. People who liked it kept buying the records anyway, but they listened to it in the basement instead of in the living room. The younger black kids didn’t really like us coming to the black clubs. They’d say, ‘Hey, whitey,’ and things like that. I didn’t stop going but they made it uncomfortable.”

  Johnny and Edgar also frequented the Tahiti Club, a black jazz club in Beaumont. Johnny wasn’t a jazz aficionado like Edgar, but was impressed with the musicianship of black players. “There was one jazz band that played in the Tahiti a lot,” says Johnny. “I’d go up all the time with Edgar and sit in. Not that jazz meant much to me, but I wanted to play with black musicians.”

  “The Tahiti was the only place I could go and hear real jazz,” said Edgar. “It wasn’t supper-club jazz; it was fully extended jazz, really nice all out playing. I played the Tahiti maybe one night or a couple of nights. Johnny sat in too; everybody loved blues, even jazz lovers.”

  Although Edgar loved jazz, Johnny preferred the primitive sounds of the blues and didn’t want the more sophisticated arrangements of jazz to affect his style. But when he wanted to learn how to play songs by Bobby “Blue” Bland, he let Edgar show him a few jazz chords.

  “There were certain songs that had more chords in them than the normal songs—not just major and minor chords, but diminished and augmented chords,” said Edgar. “I showed him those chords and he learned them, just to be able to play those songs. As I got more and more interested in jazz, I tried to show him jazz chords. One time when I tried to show him a chord, he said, ‘I don’t want to learn that chord. If I learn it, I might start playing it.’ He could have played any of that stuff. I have heard him sit in with jazz bands and play solos and really complex chords just playing by ear. It’s so perfectly like Johnny in wanting to keep his style pure. If he learned that chord, he might start to use it and it might affect his changes and feel of his playing.”

  A longtime admirer of Bland’s music and his musicians, Johnny not only added Bland’s songs to the band’s repertoire, he traveled to see him and other blues artists that had made a strong impression on him.

  “I saw Bobby Bland at a club in Levelland, Texas,” he said. “I also went to the Pleasure Pier Ballroom in Port Arthur, which was right on the water, out on the pier on the Gulf of Mexico. I saw Lonnie Brooks, Lightnin’ Slim, and Lazy Lester there. I liked Lonnie Brooks the best. Port Arthur was about twenty miles away, so Willard, our saxophone player, usually drove. I drove once in a while, but I wasn’t supposed to because I couldn’t see well enough to drive.”

  Drugan still has vivid memories of the day Chamberlain let Johnny drive. “He was driving down the street on the wrong side,” said Drugan with a laugh. “He had to drive on the wrong side of the road so he could see the curb. Johnny says, ‘Why can’t I do this? There’s no cars in the way. That’s the only way I can drive ’cause I can see the curb over here.’” It was a little too much for Johnny’s friends to handle, and it didn’t take long for Chamberlain to take the steering wheel and relegate Johnny to the passenger’s seat.

  Johnny enjoyed playing gigs for live audiences, but knew he had to cut records to achieve success as a musician. Despite “School Day Blues” reaching number eight on the Beaumont charts, Hall was reluctant to record another single.

  “I heard Bill didn’t think I was gonna be any good because I was an albino,” says Johnny. “That it was gonna stop my career from being really successful. I don’t know if that’s true but I heard that from one of his other artists. It really pissed me off. If you asked him, he would have denied it. Even if he said, ‘Yes, because he’s an albino,’ I don’t think anybody would do anything about it. That was a normal thing. I could understand it, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. All I could do was get mad.”

  Although Hall didn’t want to record Johnny as an artist, he was savvy enough to use the young guitarist to back up other artists he produced. “I still played as a sideman for him on other people’s records,” says Johnny. “Rod Bernard and a lot of people—there were so many different ones, I don’t remember who they were. We made $3.75 an hour. I knew it was because they didn’t have to look at me. But I didn’t say anything because he was the only act around.”

  Johnny still yearned for the spotlight and it didn’t take long to find a producer with a record label willing to record him as a headlining artist. In 1960, he met Ken Ritter, nephew of Tex Ritter, the country and western singer and star of cowboy movies in the 1930s and 1940s. Ken Ritter owned the KRCO Record label and was eager to produce and record him. He became Johnny’s manager (although Johnny insists he never signed a contract) and took him into Hall’s studio to record a number of singles.

  “I did several records for Ken Ritter,” says Johnny. “The first three records or so I paid for and after that he started paying for ’em. ‘Creepy’ was on KRCO. It was a pretty good blues instrumental I wrote. I also wrote a ballad, ‘Oh My Darling,’ for the flip side. He charged me about $150 to press a couple hundred records. We used money from the gigs. It cost him the same amount that he charged me; he didn’t make any money off it. We’d usually sell 200 to 300 copies a record. I didn’t make any money on records back then and I never did make any money on records with Ken.”

  “Creepy”/“Oh My Darling” was released in 1960. Johnny also wrote two songs for his second single for KRCO Records, “Hey, Hey, Hey”/“One Night of Love,” released later that year. Edgar played keyboards on “Hey, Hey, Hey,” and most of Johnny’s early singles.

  In 1961, Johnny cut “Shed So Many Tears”/“That’s What Love Does” for the Frolic label. It was recorded at the J. D. Miller Recording Studio in Crowley, Louisiana. Miller was a songwriter and producer with a studio known for Cajun and swamp pop releases, and records for the Excello label by Lightnin’ Slim, Lazy Lester, Lonesome Sundown, and Slim Harpo, Lightnin’ Slim’s harp player.

  “That was a better studio than the Bill Hall one,” says Johnny. “We had Lazy Lester playing harp on ‘That’s What Love Does’—we had to bail him out of jail. He was in jail for drinkin’, I think. J. D. Miller knew where he was, so we bailed him out, took him to the studio, and he played just fine.”

  In 1962, Johnny returned to the studio to record his next single on Frolic Records, “Voodoo Twist”/“Ease My Pain.” “‘Voodoo Twist’ was a twist song with a lot of horns,” says Johnny. “‘Ease My Pain’ was a blues song I wrote and dubbed harmonica on. It was more bluesy than any other song I recorded back then. Slim Harpo had a hit with ‘Rainin’ in My
Heart’ so Ken wanted harp on one song. I also played a Marine Band harmonica on a song with Ronnie Bennett called ‘Travelin’ Mood’ on Floyd Soileau’s Jin label.”

  Influenced by the sound of Little Walter on his Muddy Waters’s records, Johnny had taken up the harmonica in 1959. “I started playing harmonica when I was about fifteen,” he says. “I liked the way it sounded. I loved Little Walter—he was my favorite; he was better than anybody else, way better. I could hear what he was doin’ on the record and I just picked it up on my own. I eventually stopped playing because it was too hard to keep it up. You had to keep practicing or you’d lose your lip.”

  In 1962, Johnny met Albert Collins, the Texas bluesman dubbed “Master of the Telecaster,” at the Gulf Coast Recording Studio. Although many of Collins’s biographers place both Johnny and Janis Joplin at the studio that day, Johnny doesn’t recall Joplin’s presence.

  “I was in Bill Hall’s studio when Albert Collins recorded ‘Frosty,’” says Johnny. “I didn’t really know him except from his record ‘Freeze.’ He wasn’t famous at the time; he just had one record out. He was a real good guitar player—he didn’t sound like anybody else.”

  Despite his increasing forays into the music business, Johnny continued to attend Beaumont High School. His parents made it clear he couldn’t allow music to interfere with his education, so he worked hard to keep up his grades, especially in math.

  “The hardest thing was math,” he says. “I hated math. I just couldn’t get it. A girl in high school helped me with my math once a week. I’d go to her house, get her to help me with my math, and smoke cigarettes with her. I was taking college prep courses; I always knew I was goin’ to college. I had two algebras [Algebra I and II] and a geometry class. I took Latin and was terrible at it. I didn’t even make good Fs—I made zeros sometimes. I couldn’t do it. Daddy used to do most of the homework help, though Momma was the smarter one of the two. He’d go over the homework with me—not every night, but anytime I needed help.”

  Johnny graduated from Beaumont High School in June 1962 and enrolled in Lamar State College the following fall. He majored in business, taking three business courses, including Business Administration and Business Orientation, as well as introductory courses in English and in math.

  Despite his academic pursuits, Johnny still yearned to travel to Chicago, the home of Muddy Waters and so many of his blues idols. He called Drugan, who had moved there in 1960, and made plans to check out his band. Undaunted by the 1,200-mile, seventeen-hour drive each way, he and Chamberlain took a weekend road trip from Beaumont to the Windy City.

  “We were very close, and kept in contact after I left Texas,” said Drugan. “He came here in 1962 with Willard to see what Chicago was like. I was playing at the Last Resort at Fox Lake, a suburb about forty miles outside of Chicago, in a band called Jimmy and the Gents. The lineup included Terry Kath and Walter Parazaider, who later went on to form Chicago. Johnny just stayed that evening—that was a one-shot deal for the weekend. They drove all the way, stayed that night, and then drove back to Texas.”

  That trip changed Johnny’s life and perspective; he decided to forgo his plans for higher education and move to Chicago the following summer. “I passed all my classes but only stayed one semester,” he says. “I decided to leave college ’cause I had the deal going to move to Chicago. I wanted to play more music and I found out I couldn’t do both well at the same time. So I quit school because college was getting in the way of my music.”

  While Johnny finished up his classes at Lamar State College, he played in a band called Diamond Jim and the Coastaleers for about a year. “Diamond Jim was the bass player and he also sang a little bit,” says Johnny. “We played R&B and some blues ballads. We played a club called Yvonne’s in Beaumont, and played at a club in Louisiana.

  “In 1963, I recorded a single, ‘Cryin’ in My Heart,’ under the name Texas Guitar Slim for Diamond Records, Diamond Jim’s label. Guitar Slim was a pretty big name in the South and we figured we might get some sales for Texas Guitar Slim. Elton Anderson, a black man with a band in Louisiana, came up with the idea for me to try the Texas Guitar Slim thing. He played a lot of the same clubs we did and I sat in with him in Louisiana. That song was recorded on Diamond Records and then leased to Floyd Soileau’s Jin label because it was bigger. It wasn’t very big but it was bigger than Diamond. I never did make any money off those records either.”

  When Ritter discovered Johnny was recording under another name for a different label, he demanded the record be taken off the market. Johnny complied, even though he didn’t find Ritter’s demand reasonable. “It was really nothing [to him] because I didn’t have a contract with him,” he says.

  “Roadrunner”/“The Guy You Left Behind,” a single produced and recorded by Ritter, was Johnny’s next release. “Ken leased that one to Todd Records, but it didn’t sell many records,” Johnny says. “I had a number ten on one of those early ‘60s records. The disc jockeys were pretty good with local guys. They’d put your record out in the Top Ten even if it wasn’t sellin’ many records. I still have all of my 45s.”

  Although Johnny’s singles weren’t the blues recordings he longed to make, and his band played rock and R&B, he found encouragement and inspiration in a white blues artist named Joey Longoria, who performed as Joey Long. Johnny met him in a club in Houston, and later saw him at the Sam Houston Coliseum when Long opened for Fats Domino.

  Born in southern Louisiana in the early 1930s, Long, raised by parents who worked in the cotton fields, was captivated by the sound of acoustic blues coming from the home of a black family down the road. He began his musical career playing country and western music, but soon turned to the blues. Johnny was thrilled to hear a white man successfully playing the music he loved and was encouraged by the bluesman.

  “I met Joey Longoria when I was about seventeen and had started playing clubs in Houston,” says Johnny. “He was the first white person I met playin’ blues. Joey was a blues guitar player in Houston. I loved it because he was a white guy makin’ it playing black blues. I played with Joey a lot. He couldn’t make as much money by playin’ blues, but at least I knew you could make a living doin’ it. He said, ‘Keep on tryin’, you can make it, just keep on pushin’.’”

  With Long’s words ringing in his ears and resonating in his soul, Johnny continued his musical journey.

  4

  FROM THE WINDY CITY TO THE DEEP SOUTH

  Chicago was Johnny’s next destination. Drugan lived there so he knew he would have a band to play with and a place to stay. He quit his gig with Diamond Jim and the Coastaleers, packed his bags, and booked a flight. Arriving in early summer 1963, Johnny stayed with Drugan for two weeks before renting a studio apartment with a fold-up bed in the beach area of Lake Michigan. His girlfriend then moved up from Texas and into the North Side apartment with him.

  “We started playing as soon as Johnny got here,” said Drugan. “I was playing up at Fox Lake where there were a lot of places to play. His first job was with Jimmy and the Gents at the Last Resort, an old resort with a big stage and a dance floor overlooking Fox Lake.”

  Formed in 1962, Jimmy and the Gents consisted of a guitarist, organist, saxophone player, bass player, drummer, and a vocalist named Jimmy Rice. Their set list included a wealth of Elvis Presley songs, so they had bookings at several Chicago area clubs.

  To Johnny’s chagrin, he soon discovered that although he was living in Chicago, he wouldn’t be playing in a blues band, and he wouldn’t be playing guitar. “They played twist music,” says Johnny with a laugh. “I didn’t know that before I left Texas. I got my first job playing drums. The drummer had his tonsils out and I played drums until he got well. I didn’t really know how to play drums; I just kind of faked it.”

  Johnny’s strength on guitar eventually led to the ouster of Jim Guercio, the band’s guitarist. It was a fortuitous break for Guercio, who moved to L.A., where he eventually managed Chicago and took them fro
m an obscure club band to stardom. He later produced records by Chicago, the Beach Boys, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Frank Zappa, and built a state-of-the-art recording studio at his ranch in Boulder, Colorado, where Joe Walsh, inspired by the picturesque surroundings, recorded “Rocky Mountain Way.”

  With Johnny taking on the role as leader and guitar player, he remembers the band changing its name to Johnny and the Gents. Drugan remembers it simply as the Gents. Either way, the band was making fifty dollars a night per person, rather than the ten or fifteen dollars a night Johnny had made in Texas. Johnny didn’t consider the musicians on the same par as the players in Johnny and the Jammers, but the money was great and they were playing a minimum of five nights a week.

  After playing a number of Fox Lake resort gigs, the band set its sights on Chicago’s Rush Street entertainment district. “It was the twist era and all the good money was on Rush Street,” said Drugan. “Chubby Checker was coming out and clubs were dying for bands that could play the twist. Rush Street was where people would come into town to have a good time. They had go-go dancers in white boots on the side of the stages; they’d dance up front on the floor too. Drinks were six dollars, which was a lot of money back then. There were always lines of people waiting to get into those places.”

  “Rush Street was a seedy area with a lot of twist clubs and strip clubs too,” says Johnny. “We started at the Tony Paris Show Lounge, and also played the Lemon Twist West. We wore sharp suits with velvet collars, tapered legs, and Beatle boots; and I had my hair combed back in a pompadour. One time we came in wearing matching shirts and the owner got pissed off. He said, ‘You can’t come in here wearing shirts—you have to wear suits or forget it.”’

  “We were wearing Beatle-type jackets with cutaway collars like priest collars—with velvet collars and velvet pockets,” said Drugan. “They were turquoise blue with black velvet. Johnny wore candy apple red shoes with metallic toes—he loved those shoes. We also had red suits with Beatle-type jackets with black velvet. We got ’em at Smoky Joe’s in Chicago, which catered to musical groups.”