![]() "I could play the blues for white people, but they didn't want to hear it." "The clubs were big on country music," he said. "He was so talented, I knew he was going to do great things," said Meaux, who died in 2011.Īs Winter grew older and delved deeper into the blues, he found the clubs in Beaumont weren't hosting his favored form of music. But Meaux couldn't manage to make Winter's early R&B songs take. Meaux, who had a gift for finding one-hit wonders. Winter made some early recordings in Houston with famed and notorious producer Huey P. ![]() "Instead of looking for anything specific I just bought everything there was." "I bought every blues record I could find," he told the Houston Chronicle in 2011. He would mail money to record stores in Shreveport and Nashville in exchange for 45s. Winter eventually gravitated toward guitar and, eventually, the blues, which his family's maid would tune into on radio shows out of Shreveport, La. His father gave him a ukulele, and he started playing Everly Brothers songs with Edgar at age 10 on a Beaumont TV show. Winter's first instrument was clarinet, but an orthodontist said it was worsening his already pronounced overbite, so he gave it up. His father, who served as mayor of Leland, was a guitarist, saxophonist and singer who played local functions and encouraged Johnny and his younger brother Edgar to play music. John Dawson Winter III was born in 1944 in Beaumont and grew up there, though his father's roots were in Leland, Miss., where the family ran a cotton business. The next step in Winter's comeback was to be "Step Back," a collection of blues standards recorded with guests like Gibbons and Clapton, due in September. He was the subject of a documentary that premiered earlier this year and a four-disc career-spanning retrospective of his music. Winter's death comes during a period of rediscovery of his influential and important body of work. The cause of death was not yet known Thursday. The Texas blues legend was touring in Europe when he died Wednesday in a Zurich hotel room. He was a soulful instrumentalist admired by friends like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, as well as an influence on next-generation guitarists from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Derek Trucks. He harnessed those two sounds - old blues and new rock - into something forceful and his own, a gritty music notable for a raw-nerved intensity. ![]() He cut a striking figure with his long white hair and skeletal appearance: A man with blues in his bones.īut Winter was also a product of the 1960s, and he felt the strong pull of psychedelic rock. Winter studied the great guitarists of the genre and became one himself. Mary Lou Sullivan Show More Show LessĪn albino kid with a nose for trouble, Johnny Winter was a natural outcast growing up in Beaumont, so he sought sanctuary in the blues clubs outside of town. ![]() Associated Press Show More Show Less 6 of8 Blues legend Johnny Winter Paul Natkin/Getty Images Show More Show Less 7 of8 Johnny Winterįin Costello/Redferns Show More Show Less 8 of8 Johnny Winter and Janis Joplin, in a photo from the book "Raisin' Cain, The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter" were pals who played on stage at Madison Square Garden in 1969. Show More Show Less 5 of8 Winter's barroom-friendly early stuff stole plenty of rock for its blues. Charles Rex Arbogast/STF Show More Show Less 4 of8 Johnny Winter signed a deal with Columbia Records after he was featured in a 1968 Rolling Stone story. Houston Chronicle Show More Show Less 3 of8 Johnny Winter, seated, and Derek Trucks, background, perform "Highway 61" at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago. Bob Rossiter/STR Show More Show Less 2 of8 Johnny Winter in Houston. The Texas blues icon rose to fame in the late '60s and '70s. 1 of8 Johnny Winter plays during the Canton Blues Festival 2009 in downtown Canton, Ohio. ![]()
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