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

by Mary Lou Sullivan

  Blaming the fiasco in Germany on Bruce Houghton and Skyline Music, Slatus began booking Johnny locally in fall 2003 and shopping for a new agency. He told Johnny he had several conversations with ABC (Associated Booking Corp.), but they passed because Johnny was too difficult to work with. In early 2004, he signed with the William Morris Agency, but that relationship was short-lived. Montgomery remembers Slatus being “in outer space” when Virgin and William Morris were trying to promote I’m a Bluesman, and thinks that impacted Johnny’s future at that agency.

  “If you’re William Morris with a stable of some of the biggest acts in show business, and you call the manager and are getting gibberish on the other end of the phone, how much time and energy are you going to spend on the act?” said Montgomery.

  With his manager out of control, Johnny coped as best he could, relying on vodka, pot, and denial to get him through. As long as he was living comfortably, his bills were paid, and he could make a living playing the music he loved, he still gave Slatus free rein. It went beyond his business affairs; Slatus was like a socialist state that took care of all of Johnny’s needs. He hired a driver to take him where he needed to go, paid all of Johnny’s household and business bills, and set up his doctor, dentist, and methadone appointments.

  “Most people are only on methadone for short period of time; whereas thirty years later, Johnny is still on methadone,” said Montgomery. “That was just another way Teddy was able to build up all these habits, and for Johnny to feel that, without Teddy, he couldn’t make a decision or do anything in his life.’

  “In those days, when you talked to musicians, the word on the street was Teddy is really loyal to Johnny. In retrospect, it wasn’t loyalty as much as a symbiotic relationship, two codependents. One guy depending on Johnny for all of his income; Johnny depending on Teddy for all his decisions; and the two of them thinking, without the other one I can’t go forward. Teddy always thought he was doing the right thing for Johnny. But there were so many wrong things that were done, and so many things in Johnny’s career that should have happened and didn’t.”

  To heighten Johnny’s dependence, Slatus continued to keep him isolated from friends and family. He referred to Slatus Management as “the organization,” and ran it as such. Anyone who saw too much or got too close was fired or denied access. Johnston used her friendship with Susan to find out who had called or stopped by.

  Fearful of what Johnny had told me during a year of interviews while Slatus was drunk or in rehab, and especially concerned about our growing friendship, Slatus cut off access and instructed Johnny and Susan to do the same. As much as he wanted his story to be told, Johnny was too medicated and dependent to defy Slatus’s demand.

  Meanwhile, Montgomery and Nelson, appalled by the amount of medication Johnny was taking, took him to Montgomery’s doctor. “There was a brown bag that traveled on the road with us that was like the Holy Grail,” Montgomery said. “It was full of pills and methadone. Every day, at this time, we had to pull over to take these, and take these and those. After a year and a half, I started thinking, ‘Something’s wrong here. Nobody has to take twenty pills a day, I don’t care who you are.’”

  As president of the New England Blues Society (NEBS), Montgomery had founded a medical program for musicians without health insurance. That program spun off of the blues society to become the DeviBlue Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing free and low-cost health care to musicians throughout New England. Montgomery hooked Johnny up with two of the doctors: Dr. Lawrence S. Hotes, Chief Medical Officer at New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton, Massachusetts, and Dr. Gerald T. Rosenberg, a physical therapist in Providence, Rhode Island.

  “Larry Hotes and Gerry Rosenberg looked at the medications Johnny was taking and said, ‘You got to be shittin’ me,” said Montgomery. “Hotes was shocked. He couldn’t believe one patient had been prescribed all this medicine.”

  Nelson followed up with Dr. Hotes and devised a plan to wean Johnny off of the medication while Slatus was in rehab. It took almost a year for Johnny to be completely free of his daily doses of Klonopin and Risperdal he had been taking for nearly eleven years.

  “I had just dropped Teddy off at the clinic, where he was going to be for two months,” said Nelson. “I told Dr. Hotes, ‘I bring Johnny to a weekly dentist appointment in New York City every Wednesday. Can we start lowering him on these pills? I’ll tell you how he feels by our long drives to the dentist.’ We start lowering them, with no side effects. His voice got better, his playing got better, and he became more talkative.”

  Johnny is grateful for Nelson’s role in his recovery, as well as Montgomery’s role in finding him a new doctor. “James thought I needed to come off those pills and he got the doctor to help me,” says Johnny. “Dr. Hotes convinced me I could stop. It was real easy, so I just quit. I quit drinking too. Now I feel great. The pills made me feel messed up—they affected my health, my playing, everything.”

  Although Slatus always told associates he was weaning Johnny off the medication, nothing could be further from the truth. He initially agreed with Johnny seeing a new doctor, but as Johnny’s mind cleared, he began to panic. “Teddy hated it when Johnny came off the pills,” said Susan. “Teddy actually called the doctor and told him to put Johnny back on the pills because he was asking too many questions.”

  Getting Johnny off the meds was step one; once he had cleared that hurdle, Nelson decided it was time for him to get rid of Slatus. Night after night, he reiterated the ways Johnny’s manager had hurt his career, and shared his concerns with Susan. The rest of the band helped to convince Johnny that Slatus wasn’t looking out for his best interests.

  “Me, Paul, Scott, and Wayne formed a team,” said Montgomery. “Whoever was up with Johnny late at night, that’s all we talked about. ‘You can’t let this happen; you shouldn’t be doing this, you should be doing that.’ We didn’t care if we got fired. Our mission became: here is one of the greatest blues artists that ever lived, let’s make sure he goes out—the last ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty years—playing and performing with dignity at the top of his potential, getting the full respect he has earned and so richly deserves.”

  Montgomery didn’t mince words when he talked to Johnny about Slatus. “James told me he hated Teddy,” says Johnny. “He thought Teddy was doing a horrible job. I thought he was doing okay. I’d been with him for years and I trusted him.

  Johnny signed with Piedmont Talent Inc. at the end of 2004, but by then the carpal tunnel syndrome in his right hand had gotten progressively worse. Slatus cancelled his gigs for early 2005 and Montgomery set up an appointment with Dr. Rosenberg, who stabilized Johnny’s hand with a splint and brace and hooked him up with a surgeon, who operated on April 7. By now, Johnny was totally off his anti-anxiety medication and seeing the situation a lot clearer. When Shurman called to ask about the surgery, Johnny told him Teddy “screwed up my career.”

  Slatus cleared Johnny’s calendar in early April for eight weeks, but Johnny’s hand remained numb throughout June. By July, his playing window was only ten minutes long. Slatus visited him twice while he was healing, but Johnny refused to see him for more than ten minutes. Feeling disgusted with the way Slatus had managed his career, Johnny dragged out his recovery period, while Nelson devised a plan to make Slatus quit.

  “We told Teddy we weren’t sure if Johnny ever could play again and that we’d move down to North Carolina and get involved in my sister’s restaurant,” said Susan. “He said, ‘You’re going to take Johnny with you?’ I started laughing and said, ‘Of course, do you think I’m going to leave him here?’ That shocked the hell out of him. He got real scared that it might actually be over.”

  That wasn’t the only shock Slatus would have to bear. Early on the morning of July 11, Johnston died unexpectedly from an aneurism at the age of fifty-one. Ironically, Johnston had married Slatus less than a month before she passed. Their lawyer had advised them to get married to protect their
financial interests if either one died. But there was a more pressing motive for the June wedding. The lawsuit against Slatus by the German promoter had a court date in September. Johnston’s quick marriage to Slatus would prevent her from testifying against him.

  Slatus missed Johnston’s funeral service and was so drunk at the cemetery that two men had to hold him up. His continual blabbering at the gravesite caused the funeral director to take him aside so he wouldn’t disrupt the service. Both Susan and Nelson attended the services. When they stopped by Slatus’s home after the funeral, Susan watched her husband’s business being conducted by Slatus’s cleaning lady and the woman who walked his dogs.

  Nelson used the opportunity to fully expose the financial discrepancies he has witnessed and documented during the past three years.

  “Paul told me all about it the day of Betty Ann’s funeral,” Susan said. “He had been giving me hints. ‘Why don’t you ask Teddy about this?’ When I would, they would get all upset—what’s she doing asking? He let me know Betty Ann was helping Teddy, which made me start wondering. Was she my friend? Wasn’t she? Teddy would get her to explain things to me so I would believe it. If I was upset about something, he would ask her to take me antiquing, or she would call me to go to lunch and ask me questions.

  “Finding out was difficult. I thought in the beginning she was my friend. But she heard so much of Teddy’s crap of how we did this to him, we did that to him, that she started believing him and helping him. But she wasn’t faking the friendship at first.”

  Slatus often called up band members from rehab in a drunken stupor, and left insulting messages on their answering machines; a favorite was, “You guys are losers.” Nelson taped a drunken Slatus, slurring “Fuck Johnny” and calling him a “meal ticket”—and played it for Johnny and Susan. They both took it hard. “It was horrible,” said Susan. “It sounded like he hated us. Teddy blamed his drinking on Johnny; he blamed everything on Johnny. He really resented Johnny for everything he had. He felt like everything we had belonged to him, and he just started taking it.”

  When Nelson presented them with proof of Slatus’s dishonesty, Susan and Johnny, who trusted and respected him, asked him to become Johnny’s manager. Not wanting to kick Slatus when he was down, they waited six weeks after Johnston’s death to make it official. On August 25, Johnny hired Nelson as his new manager and fired Slatus, his attorney, and his accountant.

  When Johnny talks about discovering that Slatus was stealing from him and had been for years, the hurt and betrayal is palpable. “I felt terrible,” he says. “It was worse because of all the years. It’s hard that I trusted him. Everybody tried to convince me he was a bad person. I should have listened but I didn’t want to believe it.”

  Slatus’s reaction to the fax that fired him made it clear that Johnny had made the right decision. “He called that whole day and you could tell he had started drinking,” said Susan. “First it was, ‘How could you do this to me?’ Then it was, ‘Why did you do this to me?’ Then, ‘How dare you do this to me.’ He said, ‘Is it about the Pieces & Bits DVD? If it is, I have $19,000 in an account for that for you.’ Of course, before that, when I asked, he said, ‘There’s no money,’ and the accountant said the same thing. We never got a cent. The calls got worse and worse as the night went on. Then he stopped calling and we never talked to him again.”

  When Susan and Nelson started going through her records, they discovered financial discrepancies that began when Johnny was hospitalized in 1993. “We have proof for the last ten to twelve years, and I’m sure it went a ways before that,” she said. “I had all my statements and Paul started looking at them. ‘I know the promoters paid for that, but he made you pay for it. I know how much this cost and he charged you too much.’ I have records as far back as 1993 where I can prove he overcharged, and charged ridiculous things that I would ask questions about and get the runaround. They didn’t think I had any business questioning them about finances.”

  “Those bills gave the story,” said Nelson. “They showed they were being charged for paying their utilities (Slatus added fifteen percent to utility and mortgage payments as a bill-paying fee), paying extra on merchandise bills, it got worse and worse. It was all there—it was blatant thievery.”

  Determined to rebuild bridges Slatus had burned, as well as Johnny’s reputation, Nelson worked feverishly to put Johnny back in the spotlight with an ever increasing schedule of gigs, preceded by interviews with Johnny in the local press. Unlike Slatus, he had a game plan for building Johnny’s career.

  “Ninety percent of his income was touring; at his age that’s sad,” said Nelson. “I made a twenty-point list; number one was health, and it had things like the band, bootlegs, appearance, endorsements, equipment, promoter, booking agent, attorneys, and accountants. I knew there were tons of bootlegs and I went onto eBay and started purchasing DVDs and CDs, and also contacted the traders that collected Johnny. I asked them to send me copies of the bar codes, the lot numbers, and the record companies of all the bootlegs. I made a tree of all the companies and submitted it to the attorneys.”

  Serendipitously, when Johnny played a gig in Texas, a fan told him his original contract with Roy Ames was displayed in a local museum. Nelson gave a copy to Johnny’s attorneys. He also contacted BMI to try to increase Johnny’s royalty revenue stream.

  “BMI attorneys sent letters to all the writers listed,” said Nelson. “If they don’t respond in a month, full ownership of the song goes back to the artists. We worked that out; now we’re checking all the original major record deals. I also got all the rights to the footage. But I couldn’t do any of this if Johnny wasn’t healthy and didn’t have his business matters back on track.”

  Nelson also set up reunion shows with Rick Derringer and Edgar Winter, who were both thrilled to see Slatus out of the picture. The first Johnny and Edgar reunion show was a “Still Alive and Well Homecoming Benefit” for the Southeast Texas Food Bank at the Beaumont Civic Center on November 17. The following day, Johnny and Edgar would be inducted into the Southeast Texas “Walk of Fame” in their home town for their contributions to music and career accomplishments.

  On October 31, less than three weeks before that show, Johnny fell and broke his other hip. This time, he couldn’t afford a yearlong recovery. Johnny went straight to the hospital, where doctors set it with pins. He was in the hospital for three days, went to rehab for two weeks, and then had therapy at home three days a week. Determined to play the gig despite his pain, and without igniting further rumors about his health, Johnny agreed to Nelson’s plan to carry him onto the stage with the house lights down.

  “Paul made it so nobody knew,” said Susan. “We were afraid it would domino if we canceled one gig. We had already canceled gigs because of his hand, so he went ahead and played.”

  Despite the respect and camaraderie he shared with Nelson, Johnny felt guilty about firing his former friend and longtime manager, wondering if he’d done the right thing. Less than seven weeks after he let Slatus go, fate—or perhaps karma—closed the door on any second thoughts he may have had.

  Three days after Johnny fell and broke his hip, an inebriated Slatus tumbled down the stairs of his home. According to the police report, when Kent Illausky, Slatus’s live-in handyman, woke him around 7 AM that morning, an already-drunken Slatus demanded another bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Illausky returned with a bottle, had a drink with Slatus, and went out to work in the yard. When Frances Brown, the woman who cared for Slatus’s dogs and birds, later looked in on him, she found him in bed “drunker than I had ever seen him.” When Illausky checked on him around 10 AM, Slatus was lying with his head on the stairwell, his legs up the stairs. Illausky called 911, and when police arrived, they found Slatus smelling of alcohol, with injuries to his head and right hand, and cuts and bruises on the left side of his face and forehead. He died shortly after at the Middlesex Medical Center in Marlborough; the official cause of death was “ischemic heart disease.”


  After Johnston died, Slatus changed his will designating John Johnston III, Johnston’s brother, and Diane Oliver (who he also gave power of attorney), as equal beneficiaries. Hired as his cleaning lady in 2001, Oliver became his caretaker and started running the business after Johnston died. At Slatus’s funeral, she said she had been Johnston’s personal assistant for four years, and although she didn’t know what she was doing, she took over all aspects of the business when Johnston died.

  Slatus’s funeral service was reminiscent of that of Ebenezer Scrooge—there were no friends to mourn him, just a handful of local businessmen. The rabbi read from the newspaper obituary, which said he became “performance manager” for Johnny Winter in 1966—two years before Steve Paul brought Johnny to the Scene. It was obvious no one knew him or how he had spent his life. Instead of displaying his pride and joy—the life-sized framed photo of Slatus proudly standing beside Muddy Waters seated in the ornate carved chair that graces the cover of King Bee—his memorabilia table, put together by Oliver and Brown, displayed a photo of Slatus with his mother, several wedding photos, and pictures of him with his cockatiels and dogs. The prayer card photo depicted a pensive gray-haired Slatus lying back with his dogs.

  Johnny’s oft-quoted reaction to Slatus’s death-“Are we having tacos tonight?”—was a way to shield his feelings. Underneath the Texas bravado, Johnny has always been a sensitive man. One can’t have a business and personal relationship with someone for thirty-six years without feeling pain at their passing.

  Neither Johnny nor Susan attended Slatus’s funeral. Susan wanted to pay her respects, but due to the Winters’ lawsuit to recoup their losses from his estate, her lawyers advised her against it. Johnny felt differently.