His career mirrors his music. Pained or joyful, JOHNNY WINTER keeps on rollin’.
"I make my living feeling rotten, but I feel good when I play blues." J. Winter, "World of Contradictions"
JOHNNY WINTER, BLUESMAN. Spell it with a capital B. The foregone tunes, culled from Johnny's latest, The Winter of '88 (Voyager/MCA), effectively distills his thirty years of single-minded promulgation, dissemination and pursuit of the almighty blue note.
Ostracized since childhood because of his skin color, packaged and repackaged by calculating business types, a heroin addict in the early seventies who rejected a decade later by the industry that spawned him, he keeps playing the blues he first thrived on. And, like T-Bone and B.B., Muddy and Robert Johnson, he plays the blues to lose the blues. True, the backbeat may sometimes stray into rock ‘n’ roll territory—see his Johnny Winter And phase (’70-’71), his 1973 post-addiction comeback album Still Alive And Well, or his current Terry Manning-produced project—but Winter’s guitar playing always bleeds in blues.
Whether it’s the growl in his voice, or the nasty, bent-string wail from his guitar, Johnny Winter’s work is a catalogue of pain. His earliest entry was School Day Blues, recorded back in 1959 when Winter was all of fifteen, for Pappy Daily’s Houston-based Dart Records. He’s borne the blues banner proudly for thirty years, wearing in and out of fashion along the way, but always connecting with enough blues lovers to keep himself working.
His unbroken trilogy of blues albums, released in consecutive years by Alligator Records—1984’s Guitar Slinger, 1985’s Serious Business and 1986’s Third Degree—Johnny is now charting a new, much rockier direction with The Winter Of '88. Producer Terry Manning, who helmed ZZ Top’s last four releases, worked with Winter to produce a highly commercial album that plays more to the mainstream than any of Johnny’s recent projects, but Johnny’s still flashing those killer licks.
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Written by BILL MILKOWSKI
Guitar World - March 1989
But we bothered him about it so much that he just kinda had to try it. And the crowd seemed to be on his side.
GW: What was the club scene like in Beaumont when you were growing up?
WINTER: It was strange. The only way you could hear the blues was by going to black clubs. It was always us and a bunch of my very close friends (like that) went over there. And we really didn’t mind, but some of my very close friends liked that part of my black-blues music. And I went to hear three or four of those kids who were up there, and I started talking and playing music like them. But I never thought of it as anything other than something I had to play because I did hear it. I’d have to play it as long as I played on records, so I was more into blues and more into rock ‘n’ roll, which is more sophisticated and really good. I never understood what it really was, how complicated it was to be able to speak the language of blues. I was more into rock ‘n’ roll until I met Mike Bloomfield and knew what kind of person he was and where he was from.
GW: You met Bloomfield before then, didn’t you?
WINTER: Yeah, I spent some time in Chicago in 1963, when I was playing with a band called The Gems. I put together a band that played some rock stuff. But it was strange, man. Before I met Bloomfield, I was asking about blues records, and nobody knew what I was talking about. People there looked at me kinda weird, not really understanding what blues was, or who Muddy Waters was. But when I met Mike and knew what kind of folks he’d been playing with and how black all the musicians were—South Side guys and musicians who lived on North Side who came over to play with North Side bands—it was wild. Bloomfield was already on to everything in blues, and I learned so much from him. He introduced me to the clubs, and it was a real eye-opener. He was very intelligent about blues music and how to play it.
But looking back on it, I guess it was wild, cause now is when things are happening, and people are more accepting of things they weren’t before.
GW: First and foremost, it’s a guitar album…
WINTER: Absolutely, and it’s easier for B.B. and a lot of older guys playing guitar to work hard for it. There’s more stuff for B.B. and older guys now that I think has been a lot of forgotten blues before, and these performances were never really…
...about airplay, you have to figure, "Now, how far do I wanna go in that direction?" It’s always real hard to figure out whether you should go further than you really want to. But on this new record, I was pretty careful. I felt that every song had enough blues in it to make me feel good listening to it, but I didn’t think that I had sold out to whatever powers that be. I felt that it was still completely along the lines of what I’ve been doing all along. But honestly, I don’t have the faintest idea of what’s commercial today and what isn’t. The new album really isn’t much different from the last three Alligator records, but we did hope that there was stuff on there that the radio people could get onto. That’s always hard to tell, though, when you’re trying to play a kind of music that isn’t really well known and you’re trying to get it out there for kids. I guess they’ve heard Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Fabulous Thunderbirds, so maybe they might pick up on my new record. But the kind of stuff that I do, I guess it isn’t entirely in with any of that. I don’t like trying to win over any whole new audience.
GW: What’s the story about the bootleg album with you and Hendrix?
WINTER: Oh yeah, I heard that on it, as far as I can remember. I played that record and I don’t think it’s me on it. There were a lot of strange things on there—Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, and I guess a few other people. So I know it wasn’t me, because the guitar playing didn’t sound like me. And, again, the band didn’t sound like any band I had ever played with.
GW: Did it bother you?
WINTER: Yeah, I thought it was funny, but it was pretty strange.
GW: What’s the best advice any musician ever gave you?
WINTER: Well, I guess it was Mike Bloomfield who gave me the best advice. I was really hung up on trying to be something, and Bloomfield told me, "Why don’t you just relax and play what you play?" He told me I was trying to be somebody else and to be something that I wasn’t. He helped me figure out that I was OK, the way I was.
GW: Did it change you?
WINTER: Yeah, it changed my music because I wasn’t nearly as hung up about it after that. It really made me relax and not think about things as much as I had been. I liked the blues before that, but knowing how to be expressive with it took years. I mean, I was too stupid about what I was doing, about how good you are as a player or how hard you should push to figure it out. I think there’s a way to push for things that’s right. It’s knowing what your limits are.
GW: Is it difficult to know when it’s time to go further, or when it’s time to say, "Okay, that’s enough"?
WINTER: It’s always tough. You’re always trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do.
GW: But you never quit. You’re still playing essentially what you’ve always played.
WINTER: Yeah, it hasn’t changed. It’s still the same. That part of it hasn’t changed a bit.
...around the house. It’s like the first four strings of the guitar, so I played uke until my hands got big enough, when I was 10 or 11, to play guitar.
Where did you get your first guitar?
I think the first one was just lying around the house. I must have been 12 years old, like ’56, or something like that. My grandfather had an old classical guitar and I think there was an old Stella, too—a two- or three-dollar Stella. I messed around on those. The first real guitar that I ever got was a Gibson ES 125, one of those pickup, no cutaway, archtop guitars. I had that one for a couple of years. I really loved that guitar. Then I went to a white Fender Stratocaster that I had to alter, and it took over a year to get it right. It was one of the many times that I’ve gotten Fenders and I just could never play them right. I’d love to have the Strat that I had then. It was a great guitar. I just could never play it quite right. After that I got Les Paul customs. I had one of the black ones, and I had a white SG style that they still called the Les Paul. Both of them were three-pickup guitars, but I had them altered to two pickups. The middle pickup just seemed to get in the way. Especially with the thumb pick. What bothered me most about the Stratocasters was having to play over that middle pickup.
Where did the thumb pick come from?
I started out liking to play Merle Travis and Chet Atkins and that kind of fingerpicking style, where you play lead with your fingers and play the rhythm with your thumb, and the thumb pick was really the only way to do that. I’ve seen some people now who can play that stuff holding the flat pick and playing with their other fingers, but the thumb pick was a lot easier. There’s a guy named Luther Nally, who I think is now playing with the Sons of the Pioneers, and he was really good at that style. He sold me that first Gibson and gave me a few lessons on that Chet Atkins-style stuff when I first started playing. He used a thumb pick. It seemed like a lot of the blues guys used thumb picks. Muddy used the thumb pick… Jimmy Reed. For a long time I thought I’d made a mistake and I tried to learn how to play with a flat pick. It seemed like you’d be able to play a lot faster and have more control, but it just never felt right to me. So, I’m still using the thumb pick. I kind of wish I learned how to play with no pick at all, just playing with my fingers, like a lot of people do now. I’ve always played with the bare thumb. There are guys who can get a clear sound, but I always had a fuzzier sound, like I could never get a clear sound. I guess you have to play with your fingernails, too. And that, I just started using the thumb pick and it’s too late to change.
When did you focus in on the blues?
I heard the blues almost at the same time as I started playing guitar. I guess I was about 11 years old. Before I could go out to the clubs, I listened to everything I could on the radio. There’d be stations from the South that would be nothing but the blues. Usually, they were a radio recorder that would sponsor an hour of blues, and there’d be 50,000-watt stations. One was XTRS in Mexico, and Harmon Jack was on it for a while, then Dr. Jive, who later moved to Nashville, did the same show. There was WLAC in Tennessee, which had Randy’s Record Shop in Nashville and Ernie’s Record Mart. Then there was KWKH from Shreveport, with Stan’s Record Shop. So all these stations would advertise that great stuff that I’d not roll stuff for people. You’d hear these names like Little Richard and Fats Domino, and I thought, “It couldn’t be believed!” And then Howlin’ Wolf, and then it was Chuck Berry, Little Richard, I couldn’t believe what they did. Waters… it was like Fats Domino was a rock compared to somebody like Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf. So it was even dirtier and wilder.
...and better music of the same kind of stuff that I was liking. For years, I’d go crazy listening to all these stations and spending all my lunch money buying literally every blues record that I could find. Finally, there got to be a blues station in Beaumont— KJET —and I made friends with one of the disc jockeys, named Clarence Carlow, who was also a guitar player, who made records and played at night.
You dedicated "Guitar Slinger" to him.
Yeah, Clarence really helped me out a lot. You know, I was just a little kid and I got a fake ID and he’d take me around to some of the clubs he was playing at and kept me from getting killed. He was one of the first guys who told me about using an unwound 3rd string, ’cause in those days, there was just Gibson Sonomatic strings and I didn’t know anybody who didn’t use a regular big old wound 3rd string. And I was trying to play all these licks where you’re pulling the strings. I didn’t have any idea of how to do it, and Carlow was one of the first people who turned me on to the light gauge strings. When I could actually go out and see people play, it was a whole different thing than listening to the radio or a record. But by the time I was 14, 15, and going out to clubs, I’d already sat around with the record player and my guitar and had a lot of the licks down. Then there was the whole thing of watching people and getting to sit in.
So, when you were 14, 15, you were getting up there and starting to play?
Yeah, that’s about the time my parents started to let me. They hated the idea of me going out to play in night clubs at night. We had a drummer, and the drummer’s father liked to go out drinking and raising hell, and he would tell all the rest of the parents that he would take care of us. So, we’d go out with him and he didn’t care what we did for the rest of the night. But at least he’d go with us. My folks thought it was OK.
What were some of the first licks that you picked off records?
I can remember “Honky Tonk,” by Bill Doggett. Some earlier Chuck Berry stuff. I remember Luther Nally had me take home some Bill Doggett records ’cause Luther was mostly a country & western guitar player and hadn’t even heard some of the things I was asking him to show me. When I was taking lessons with him, he was showing me real basic things.
Chuck Berry had some heavy duty bends going.
He had some real good stuff. I heard all these bending riffs, and I was playing on strings that you couldn’t move. I thought it had to be a vibrato bar. When I started, there was no one around to show me that stuff, so from first listening to records I did all sorts of wrong stuff. When I finally had people to watch, I realized I should have done a lot of things differently. I never knew you could do finger vibrato completely until Eric Clapton, and that’s real strange because I played the same stuff but I used a vibrato bar to do most of it. Then when Clapton came out and did his heavy vibrato stuff just with his fingers, it became a point of honor. You had to learn how to do it to be up there with the guys. So, I stopped using the vibrato bar completely and took it off my guitar, and learned how to do it with my fingers. That was a whole different ballgame, going from always using that Bigsby to using finger vibrato. Another thing I did wrong was I almost never used the little finger on my left hand. I always stretched the ring finger up. One day I just realized, Hey, you’re gonna have to change this around. I still use the third finger where a lot of people would use their pinky ’cause I still don’t have the power in it.
