Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) (14 page)

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Authors: Mary Lou Sullivan

BOOK: Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition)
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The creativity and camaraderie of the crew at the Vulcan Gas Company, teamed with the easy access to pot and hallucinogenic drugs, made Austin the place to be in the late 1960s.
“Austin was a virtual paradise to us,” said Turner. “Hippies everywhere smoking pot, in the open, out in their backyard.”
“It was
literally
paradise,” added Shannon. “Smoking pot was against the law but it never stopped anybody. That was one of the cool things about it; it wasn’t repressive. In the back of the Vulcan, they had this hole in the floor, a concrete cistern. We’d take acid and climb down a ladder into the cistern. Jim Franklin had all these weird Eastern instruments, and we’d get down to the bottom of the cistern and start chanting and echo, reverberate our voices off the wall.”
“I had conga drums, a sitar, and some flutes,” said Franklin. “It was a marvelous chamber, because you could be sitting right next to someone, and if you hit the note, it would resound off the wall. You don’t hear it coming from the person; you just hear it coming from the wall.”
“The Vulcan was a hippie family, and the cistern was like a hippie tearoom,” added Turner. “We had great experiences.”
The first time the trio experimented with LSD together, they used Timothy Leary’s guidebook,
Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
which included “instructions for an actual psychedelic session, under adequate safeguards.”
“The three of us took acid together in our hotel room in Dallas,” said Turner. “It was the room we always got—it had three single beds. Tommy had Timothy Leary’s book, a great book to guide you through a pleasant, rewarding experience.”
Although the band was having the time of their lives, they didn’t have much in the way of income. Shannon and Turner crashed from place to place; Johnny shared an apartment with Carol Roma.
“Red’s mother owned a beauty shop and we would practice there on the nights we weren’t playing,” says Johnny. “Red and Tommy were sleeping on couches, floors, at the beauty shop, friends’ houses—wherever they could. I did okay because I was living with Carol.”
“I slept on floors, lived at Uncle John’s mother’s house in Houston,” said Shannon. “We were so hungry we’d go down to the fried-chicken place and eat all the fried batter they threw out.”
“We really didn’t have any money,” said Turner. “We got paid about sixty bucks a piece a night, and Johnny got eighty dollars. We played two nights a week. And that wasn’t every week. I lived on about $300 a month. We played hippie joints where if people liked what you did, you could play anything. By then, our set was all blues and Jimi Hendrix. We played just about all of Jimi’s songs.”
Another counterculture club that allowed the band to play blues was the Love Street Light Circus and Feel Good Machine in Houston.
“Love Street Light Circus was similar to the Vulcan Gas Company—they didn’t serve beer, we made about the same money, and it was about the same size,” says Johnny. “You had to walk up some stairs to get to it—stairs on the outside of the building. They had go-go girls there too. We usually went on at nine and played two hour-and-a-half sets. There was always pot and chemicals, strobe lights and lightshows. It was great!”
“I remember the Love Street Light Circus,” said Shannon. “I had this big bass amp and you had to carry your equipment up four flights of stairs—it was hell getting your equipment up there. I can’t believe we actually hauled that gigantic bass amp up and down those stairs. We can’t even get the one we use now into the car anymore. Now if I walked up to that, I’d go, ‘Fuck it, I ain’t playing.’ We never really thought about it back then, we just did it. That was miserable, but the club itself was cool.”
Although the club had seating to the left of the stage, the floor directly in front of the stage was lined with rows of pillows with wooden headrests so patrons could lie down and watch the show, which included psychedelic images projected onto the wall.
“The whole club was rows of pillows and pads with a backstop for a headrest,” said Turner. “You laid down on the floor and watched the band play. They had go-go dancers too. Diana, one of the dancers, was Johnny’s girlfriend. She danced behind the screen in the corner by the band, right behind him.”
“Diana was cool, but a little wigged out,” added Shannon. “He made her get tattooed. By the time he got through, she was tattooed all over.”
“She got a bunch of tattoos—had ’em on her chest and groin,” said Turner. “A whole lot of girls would have his autograph tattooed on their ass. Once they did that, the relationship was doomed. He had conquered the girl, and that was the vanquishing ritual. For them to get a tattoo of his signature that would be on their ass for the rest of their life signified they were weak.”
Although Johnny loved women and psychedelics, his burning desire was a recording contract to extend his career far beyond the reaches of Texas nightclubs. Determined to have originals for a demo tape, Johnny started writing songs that would eventually end up on
Progressive Blues Experiment.
“I wrote ‘Tribute to Muddy’ where I kind of linked songs Muddy did; I tried to take credit for it, but didn’t get away with it,” he says with a laugh. “I wrote ‘Bad Luck and Trouble’ and ‘Mean Town Blues.’ I didn’t write about any particular experiences, just life in general. I wrote ‘Black Cat Bone’ for that record too—a black cat bone is supposed to be good luck.”
Progressive Blues Experiment
, one of Johnny’s most powerful and critically acclaimed blues releases, was recorded at the Vulcan Gas Company. Along with Johnny’s originals, the band played blistering versions of blues classics by his favorite artists: Muddy Waters’s “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” Slim Harpo’s “Got Love If You Want It,” Sonny Boy Williamson II/Willie Dixon’s “Help Me,” Blind Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine,” B. B. King’s “It’s My Own Fault,” and Howlin’ Wolf’s “Forty-Four.”
Although the club was closed, Franklin projected a lightshow to set the mood and the band put on a show worthy of a full house. Bill Josey, who owned Sonobeat Records, produced and recorded the tape. Josey had approached Johnny at a club about recording for Sonobeat and signed a contract with him for one album and one single. Josey promised to pay him twenty-five cents a record, but Johnny never earned a penny on anything he recorded for Josey, including
Progressive Blues Experiment
.
“We had been playing together about a year and wanted to put out a record,” says Johnny. “It took two nights to record the album, about four hours a night. It was just the band, Bill Josey, and the people who lived near the Vulcan. We used a four-track reel-to-reel recorder—and just played. I played a Fender Mustang because it had a bigger sound. For slide, I played a Gibson twelve-string with six strings on it. I strung it that way because I liked the sound. I got my first National [Resonator] guitar when I was about twenty-five and played slide on it for that record too. I like the sound of a National—it’s trebly and nasty-sounding—raw. The recording technology in those days wasn’t as good as it is now, but in a lot of ways I liked it better. The sound wasn’t as neat and clean—it was nice and funky.
“I played mandolin on ‘Bad Luck and Trouble’ because it was a real country-blues instrument. I never did play electric mandolin—it was always acoustic mandolin. I still play it once in a while.”
“Progressive Blues Experiment
is still my favorite record out of all of them,” said Shannon. “We just set up at the Vulcan Gas Company. We didn’t go through any mikes; we had one overhead mike for the whole band. We weren’t on the stage. We just put our amps in a circle in the middle of the concrete floor and played a set of songs.”
The Vulcan Gas Company wasn’t a blues club, but the owners hired blues artists such as Jimmy Reed, Freddie King, and Muddy Waters along with their schedule of psychedelic bands. When the club’s manager booked Waters for August 2 and 3, 1968, Johnny was the opening act.
Bill Bentley, who worked in promotion/publicity for record labels and artists throughout his career, remembers that fateful night.
“Muddy’s band pulled up in front of the Vulcan in a station wagon with Illinois plates,” said Bentley. “When they walked into the club, they were in shorts and high argyle socks. It’s so hot in Texas in August—it’s at least one hundred degrees every day, some days it’s 105. When they came out, they were in slick pants and silk shirts—it was too hot for them to be in coats and ties.”
Thrilled to finally meet his musical hero, Johnny brought a camera to the shows and set up a small reel-to-reel tape recorder on the stage to tape Muddy’s performance.
“It was great to open for him—that was the first time I ever saw him live,” says Johnny. “We played every other set. We went on, Muddy went on, we came back, and Muddy played the final set. We talked a little after the show and he said he liked my music. We mostly talked about music and he asked me about my National guitar ’cause he had played one too. We didn’t play together that night. I felt honored just to meet him because he had been my idol since I was eleven or twelve years old.”
“Johnny was like a kid in a candy store,” said Shannon. “He was right in front of the stage and had his little tape recorder playing on the stage at Muddy’s feet. He was like some groupie type guy you would see at any club, standing right there in the front.”
Muddy and his band were backstage when Johnny and his band played, although a band member would occasionally come out to check out the show. Even Muddy—impressed by what he heard—went to the front of the club to watch Johnny play. Muddy recalled that evening in an interview with Tom Wheeler for
Guitar Player
shortly before his death in 1983: ʺI said, ‘That guy up there onstage—I got to see him up
close.”
Hearing and seeing Johnny was a revelation for both Muddy and Paul Oscher, who played harp in Muddy’s band. Johnny’s pale complexion and white hair, as well as his playing, amazed the elder bluesman.
“Muddy didn’t realize albinos were white as well as black,” said Oscher. “He thought Johnny Winter was probably black. Muddy thought he was a good musician and was very impressed with his slide playing. Muddy said, ‘That boy can play!’ or something like that. Johnny could play in Spanish tuning. ‘Kind Hearted Woman.’ Very few people knew how to do that at the time, at least white musicians. I hadn’t seen many white musicians play Muddy’s style on slide, so I thought that was pretty impressive. Johnny may have played ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin” that night. Something like Muddy because Muddy said that [his playing] was pretty close to him.”
Johnny also didn’t fit the image of blues musicians of that era, black or white.
“A lot of white blues musicians had a hipster image—with a goatee or greased hair—kind of a jazz image,” said Oscher. “When I started with Muddy’s band [February 1968], you had to wear a black suit with a crossover tie—one of those ties Frank Sinatra made famous. Later Muddy bought us red Nehru jackets and white turtle-neck shirts with cufflinks that we wore with black pants.”
With his white hair flowing down to his collar in a Beatle haircut, dressed in an orange shirt with blue polka dots and puffy sleeves, and bell-bottom jeans, Johnny looked more like a rock musician than a bluesman.
“I thought of him as a rock guy—blues—rock,” said Oscher. “There were a lot of blues guys around at that time. Magic Sam was still alive, T-Bone Walker was alive, Junior Wells, Otis Rush. The white musicians who played the blues, you could count on one hand—Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, myself, Johnny Winter, John Hammond Jr., Mike Bloomfield. It wasn’t that recognizable to be a blues musician if you were white anyway.”
Bentley attended Saturday night’s performance, and remembers the buzz around Austin that Johnny’s Friday night performance was better than Muddy’s. “I heard that on Friday night, Johnny came out and was just blasting,” he said. ”And Muddy came out and didn’t do much of a set; he didn’t really pull out the stops.ʺ
Franklin, who did the poster for that show and was there both nights, agreed. “Muddy’s band and Muddy... their attitude was, ‘This is a Texas Podunk town, we’re just gonna clean up and get to Houston or where ever the next big-city gig was,ʹʺsaid Franklin. “He’s doin’ ‘Got My Mojo Workin” and he’s looking at his watch. Right in the middle of the song, ʹI got my Mojo workin’, let’s see how long this Mojo got to work tonight,ʹʺ Franklin said with a laugh. ʺThey weren’t even in the house when Johnny played the first set, so they came up and did a ho-hum, routine set. They caught Johnny’s second set and realized they better get serious because this guy was all over the place. So the next night, Muddy had his hair done, and they were all dressed up. It was a serious evening. One of the key points in Austin blues history.”
Oscher disagrees with that scenario. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “There wasn’t ever any kind of a competition. Johnny Winter cannot kick Muddy Waters’s ass. Period. At any time. It could have been just a crowd reaction. The band was Otis Spann, Luther ‘Georgia Boy/Creepin’ Snake’ Johnson, Pee Wee Madison, Sammy Lawhorn—those were pretty tough cats—great musicians.”
Regardless of which band put on a better performance on Friday, Saturday night’s sets by both artists were phenomenal.
“Johnny was great that night,” said Bentley. “He came out and was devastating; he was so good it was unbelievable. I had never heard a guy—especially a white guy—like that. It was real loud guitar but it was blues, it wasn’t rock. He was playing a lot of slide, and with just a trio, the guitar totally stood out. Johnny did most of the songs from Sonobeat’s
Progressive Blues Experiment
because when the record came out, I remember thinking that’s pretty much the set he played that night.

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