Johnny Winter Still True To The Blues

Johnny Winter once roared with astonishingly fast guitar licks and piercingly loud banshee yells. But his voice was barely more than a whisper when he called for an interview from his home in rural Connecticut. The Texan's slow drawl came to life, though, when asked if he still enjoyed performing on stage.

"I love it. I love playing," he said. "I had carpal tunnel and thought I wasn't gonna play ever. I thought I got beat. I was afraid I would never play again.

"It was really horrible," the 64-year-old added. "I had an operation. My hand was numb for eight months."

After going nearly all of 2005 without playing, Winter was finally given permission to pick up his beloved instrument.

What was the first tune he performed post-recovery?

"Highway," he said with a light laugh.

That would be Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," the song Winter reinvented as a blazing slide guitar number on his landmark 1969 album "Second Winter." It will be one of the few rock 'n' roll songs that Winter performs these days. His current tour finds him sticking to blues standards and acoustic originals like "Dallas." Many people will attend just to see the legend take the stage.

Winter came to national acclaim when a 1968 Rolling Stone article described him as a "cross-eyed albino with long fleecy hair, playing some of the gutsiest fluid blues guitar you've ever heard." Winter was soon signed to a six-figure contract with Columbia and delivered his universally praised self-titled debut album in 1969. His follow-up, "Second Winter," was met with equal acclaim when it came out the same year.

But personal demons soon sidelined the guitarist. Rumors of his heavy drug use were so widespread that Winter titled his 1973 album "Still Alive and Well," which proved his highest charting effort when it hit No. 22 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. Winter was performing high-energy rock shows in front of thousands in the United States and abroad with bandmate Rick Derringer during this period. Meanwhile, Johnny's younger brother, Edgar, became a rock star as well.

But Johnny Winter's true love remained the blues. So much so, he put his own career on hold to help out Muddy Waters.

Winter produced and played on four Waters albums starting with "Hard Again" in 1977. Three of them won Grammy Awards. The 2004 CD reissue of "Hard Again" features a picture of Waters and Winter arm and arm, smiling like school boys. The album opens with the rousing boast, "Mannish Boy." The song features Winter playing nasty guitar licks and prodding Waters by bellowing "yeah" while firing off one macho line after another.

"Oh, yeah, it was a lot of fun," Winter said. "It just came out. He had girls screaming on his original records."

Vinyl copies of those original records and hundreds other blues essentials remain in Winter's possession -- he refuses to switch over to CD. When not touring the states and Europe he sits at home and watches a lot of television, he said. "Star Trek" and "Three's Company" are his favorite shows. Although the Beaumont, Texas, native lives in New England, he hates snow; either his wife or professionals shovel the driveway.

To quote the title of one of his better-known albums, Johnny Winter is “Still Alive and Well,” and quite turned around from the point he was at just a few years ago when assistants had to help him make it onto a concert stage and James Montgomery had to be enlisted to handle vocal duties for the legendary blues rocker.

Winter’s health is back and his vigor is on display each night he takes to fronting a spry trio in which he both flaunts his encyclopedic knowledge of blues licks and sings in full-powered voice. Winter has even re-asserted his raucous version of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” into his live sets.

“We had to stop doing that for a while. There were just too many words,” recalled Paul Nelson, a fellow guitarist who now manages Winter’s career.

Winter himself credits Nelson for stopping a career slide that began in the ’90s. Winter’s health declined, he was going broke, and his guitar-god reputation was being overtaken by that of an artist prone to canceling shows.

But since breaking from former manager Teddy Slatus, Winter has gone on to earn the endorsement of Gibson guitars, which is making a Johnny Winter signature Firebird model, and guitar slides manufacturer Dunlop is also marketing a Johnny Winter pinky slide. And this spring Winter is teaming for shows with his brother Edgar and Rick Derringer for the first time in decades, signaling the end of a sibling and musical estrangement.

Winter is also in the midst of putting together a new album, one he wants to call “Roots” and will feature a bevy of guests, including brother Edgar and Derringer, who together some 30 years ago created essential white boy boogie with such seminal tracks as “Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo” and “Tobacco Road.”

But those going to see Winter when he plays better not expect to find Johnny Rock ’n’ Roll.

“I don’t like playing rock ’n’ roll. I got away from playing it,” Winter said.

Instead, Winter is bent on distilling his potent blues brew, an elixir that contains Texas twang, Chicago shuffle, Southern soul and country grit. There isn’t an influence Winter seems to have missed or hasn’t figured out how to weave into his one distinctive style.

“He’s a sponge. He learns from everything he listens to,” Nelson said.

Nelson and Winter met in 2000. Nelson was recording guitar tracks in Connecticut for an XFL broadcast. Winter was using the same studio, and word got to Nelson that the guitar great was looking for a couple of more songs to include on a record.

Nelson offered up two songs; Winter liked them and actually hired Nelson to play on the album. Winter eventually used a third composition and made Nelson a member of his band.

“So here I am. I meet Johnny Winter. Write three songs for him that appear on a record released by Virgin records and am at the Grammys with him all within a year’s time” Nelson said. “But there was always a storm brewing.”

And that storm was the one between Winter and Slatus. Nelson blames Slatus for keeping Winter hooked on pills and booze, and likewise with robbing the cloudy-minded artist of money owed him for performances and merchandise.

Shortly after “I’m A Bluesman” revived Winter’s stature, the guitarist developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Nelson said that when Slatus was convinced Winter’s career was over, he milked the guitarist even harder. Nelson and Winter joined forces to fire Slatus, and a few months later Slatus died.

Nelson and the rest of Winter’s band — drummer Wayne June and bass player Scott Spray — weaned Winter off his addictions and joined him along a slow road back to health. Winter withstood surgery to correct the carpal tunnel syndrome as well as hip surgery.

But in the end, Nelson said, “we got our friend back.”

“When I told Montgomery we didn’t need him any more he said, ‘That’s great,’ because he knew that meant that Johnny was better,” said Nelson, who only plays on a couple of numbers during an evening’s Winter storm.

Winter said he prefers the trappings of a trio.

“I get to show off,” he said.

The 64-year-old Winter does much of his work on a small-body Lazer electric guitar. But he still hauls out his trademark Firebird when he wants to play slide guitar. Winter confessed that he first picked up the oblong Firebird because it looked cool. Luckily, it sounded great as well.

Winter started playing music around his native Beaumont, Texas. Columbia Records released his debut album in 1969 and Winter blazed a trail through the ’70s with albums that touched on every facet of the blues, ranging from full-tilt rock ’n’ roll to simple acoustic material, in effect creating a musical bridge between Lynyrd Skynyrd and John Lee Hooker. Winter’s career faltered in the mid-’70s because of a drug addiction, but he rebounded with the “Still Alive and Well” album. Winter capped the decade by producing and playing on three landmark Muddy Waters albums, “I’m Ready,” “Muddy Mississippi Waters Live” and “King Bee.”

Winter bounced around record labels through the ’80s, releasing three titles on Alligator Records before Virgin Records approached him.

The Winter resurgence of late includes a packed slate of concerts through the U.S. and Europe as well as production of teaching manuals and a career-spanning box set of music.

As high and low as Winter has been in his career, the bluesman sounded remarkably even-keeled in assessing his career. But he made one thing clear, both in practice and creed: “You’ve got to be indestructible as a bluesman.”