![]() The guitar-playing Winter made his first album, the independently released "The Progressive Blues Experiment," in 1968. ![]() In 19, he was a member of a band led by singer B.J. Johnny was 15 when he and Edgar recorded and released their first record, "School Day Blues," under the name Johnny & The Jammers. He was still an an infant when his family moved to Beaumont in Texas, where his brother, Edgar, was born in late 1946. "That guy up there onstage - I got to see him up close," Waters once noted of Winter. In the mid-1970s, after Winter had become an international blues-rock star, he produced and played on three of Waters' albums, including the Grammy Award-winning "Hard Again." The two also toured together and their differences - the economy of Waters' guitar work, the furious attack of Winter's six-string attack - couldn't have been more pronounced. "I got a standing ovation, and he took his guitar back." "He gave me his guitar and let me play," Winter recalled years later in an interview. Winter repeatedly asked Waters if he could sit in that night, until the Chicago-based blues giant finally relented. Winter was not yet 18 when he met one of his idols, blues guitar and vocal icon Muddy Waters, at a Texas club. The fact that both were albinos was much less notable than how well they played and the deep feeling they evinced for music created by African-American artists. Winter and his brother, multi-instrumental wizard Edgar Winter, grew up in Texas, where they began playing professionally in blues, rock and R&B bands almost before they'd finished junior high school. He was immensely important, because what people heard as blues-rock before then was rock musicians, trying to play the blues, and he was a blues musician who fused rock into his blues." He played updated rocking blues, but certainly in the tradition of the blues. "It was clear he loved Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters and T-Bone Walker, but he also reveled in the energy of Chuck Berry. "There were a lot of people playing blues-rock when Johnny Winter came to the fore, but what really set him apart was his great respect for tradition," Kinsman said. His musical legacy was hailed Thursday by Michael Kinsman, the producer of the 16-year-old San Diego Blues Festival. “When I get the blues, there are two things that are absolutely guaranteed to make me feel better,” confessed Cusick, “One: really, really good marijuana, and two: every time without a doubt, the music of Johnny Winter.In 1988, Winter became the first white musician ever inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in Memphis. Though I’m deeply saddened by his passing, I find comfort in the testimonial given by Rick that fateful night at the Fillmore: He was my parents’ all-time favorite musician, and having the opportunity to introduce them to him was one of the great thrills of our lives. When I was about 14 years old, my dad brought me to see him for my very first live concert. On a personal note: the short time I spent with Johnny meant a great deal to me. “There never was a time when I didn’t like smoking weed,” he told me over joint during our interview before the show. As a former addict and alcoholic, Winter had given up all drugs - except for marijuana, which he smoked almost constantly. Winter’s long career was filled with honors that included gracing the cover of the inaugural issue of Guitar World magazine, being inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and the Southeast Texas Walk of Fame, as well as winning three Grammy Awards and a High Times Doobie Award for Lifetime Achievement, which Johnny called “The best award I’ve ever been given.” My colleague Rick Cusick and I had the honor of presenting it to him on stage at the Fillmore NY, after a performance with his brother, rocker Edgar Winter in 2009. From his humble debut in the early 1950s to his historic performance at the final night of Woodstock in ’69 and beyond, he entertained audiences for over half a century with an incredible legacy of soulful blues and rock music - and was still going, having last performed just a few nights before his death. He was 70 years old.Ī frail albino from Beaumont, Texas, Winter struggled through a life of alienation, addiction, injuries and illnesses to become one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Last night, blues guitar legend Johnny Winter died in a hotel room in Switzerland. ![]()
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