On Saturday, Winter headlines his third show since March 2011 at Club Fever in South Bend. You sit on a bus with somebody who’s in bad shape, it’s like a virus.” “The guy was my idol,” Nelson says, “and I saw that something was wrong and nobody was doing anything. Nelson’s typically credited with not only with getting Winter into addiction therapy but, by doing so, saving his life. He stopped everything: smoking cigarettes, the methadone, the drinking. “His playing and his singing have improved 100 percent from what it was eight years ago,” Nelson says. His health deteriorated to the point where he had to be helped on stage and even now he sits for the majority of time on stage.
He stopped doing all the crap of the past.”Īll that “crap” would be Winter’s much-publicized addictions to heroin in the early ’70s, methadone in the subsequent decades and alcohol. “He’s feeling great and playing really great. “Johnny’s having a nice comeback ride,” Nelson says. Winter’s manager, second guitarist and the producer of “Roots” and “Step Back,” Paul Nelson, says the label Megaforce recently signed Winter for two more duets albums. The documentary film “Johnny Winter: Down & Dirty” debuts today at the South By Southwest Film & Music Festival in Austin, Texas, and “Step Back,” a follow-up to his critically and commercially successful 2011 duets album, “Roots,” is due out in May. The aptly named “True to the Blues” arrives during a late-career resurgence for Winter, who was born Feb. It’s not a requisite of being a good blues player. “I just learned it when I was first starting to play,” he says about his signature speed. Some of the best players were from Mississippi, I think.”īut he also adds, “Texas had a good blues history, too.”īlistering, lightning-quick playing balanced by a deep, soulful understanding of the blues define Winter’s style. “I really love the Mississippi blues,” he says about which state’s blues tradition he identifies with more. Winter and his younger brother, keyboardist and saxophonist Edgar (“Frankenstein”), grew up in Beaumont, Texas, but also spent significant time in their father’s hometown of Leland, Miss. His early-’70s band, Johnny Winter And, also released the first version of Rick Derringer’s “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo,” on its 1970 debut album while Derringer was a member of the band. Goode” and Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Good Morning Little School Girl.”
Winter’s signature songs include the originals “I’m Yours and I’m Hers,” “Leland Mississippi Blues” and the acoustic “Dallas” and covers of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Since 1969, Winter’s given prospective chroniclers plenty of quality blues, rock ’n’ roll and blues-rock to choose from, a catalogue of electric guitar playing cut from the same cloth as that of Alvin Lee and Ted Nugent. “I was pretty happy with the songs they picked,” he says by phone from Virginia, taking a break from jamming with his band. He’s fine with that, and how the comprehensive career retrospective turned out. Johnny Winter didn’t have any input on the track selection for “True to the Blues: The Johnny Winter Story,” a four-disc box set released Feb.
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