Adapted from notes for the new double-disc Johnny Winter Anthology, with the kind permission of Shout! Factory.

“Imagine a 130-pound, cross-eyed albino bluesman with long fleecy hair playing some of the gutsiest blues guitar you have ever heard,” effused a Rolling Stone cover story in December, 1968, an overview of Texas music focused on Austin, where RS had run across 24-year-old blues dynamo Johnny Winter and his trio ripping up a local club. Johnny’s first taste of national publicity ran to just three short paragraphs, but they would nonetheless alter the then-struggling electric blues flash’s life forever.

Within a year Johnny would be one of the top concert draws in America. But while the lanky albino blues rocker from Beaumont seemed like an overnight sensation to throngs of newfound fans on both sides of the Atlantic, Winter had already toiled the better part of a decade to get there.

Backed by drummer “Uncle” John Turner and bassist Tommy Shannon (who’d play the same role in Stevie Ray Vaughan’s own Texas trio a decade later), Winter’s snarling voice and aggressive, wildly expressive playing rebuffed the British invasion’s claim on American blues with a vengeance. Recorded in 1968 at Austin’s (apparently empty) Vulcan Gas Works club for an indie label, the Progressive Blues Experiment album (later picked up by Imperial) established the template for subsequent Winter triumphs that carried him far beyond his humble Southern origins.

“My folks were living in Leland, Mississippi when I came along (in 1944),” Winter recalled of his geographical roots. “But because there weren’t any hospitals in Leland, they went to Beaumont, Texas to have me.” But with his father’s cotton business struggling, Johnny’s family soon returned to Beaumont to stay, with brother Edgar born not long after.

Yet he resisted calling Texas his home, largely because of music: “Up until the time I was 11 or 12 years old, people would ask me where I was from and I’d always say Leland. I never wanted to claim Texas…I loved Mississippi. All the blues in the world came from there.”

But Johnny did find music in Beaumont, where his father variously sang in the church choir and a barbershop quartet, played saxophone, and turned young Johnny and Edgar on to Artie Shaw and other Swing-era bands. Indeed, it was the clarinet that the future blues-rock legend first gravitated to; it took an orthodontist to detour him towards the guitar.

“They said I was going to have an overbite or an underbite or something gruesome if I didn’t stop playing the clarinet,” Johnny explained. “But it’s a good thing it happened. (Because) I shifted to the ukulele. Later on, when I was 11 or 12 and my hands were bigger, I started on a guitar that was handed down from my grandpa.”

Winter also found the region’s radio and what was then still known as “race music” – blues records and regional R&B sides that wafted across the airwaves from Shreveport, Memphis and Nashville. “I loved the blues and I loved the guitar,” Johnny said of his twin musical obsessions. “Every blues record that came out I bought. I don’t mean most of them, I mean all of them. I’ve got records by the thousands, and I learned to play from those.”

Yet Winter never learned to read music, not because of the poor eyesight that was characteristic of his albinism, but because he “didn’t want to play notes that somebody else had written out. This is very emotional music, and it’s so personal that it’s got to be all yours.” Johnny’s first professional-grade guitar was a single pickup ES-125, moving through a series of instruments in his early days that included a Strat, SG and Les Paul Custom. Stylistically, Winter has long preferred a thumb pick, which he grasps like a regular pick when doing upstrokes “to keep the thing from falling off my thumb.”

After playing with brother Edgar in a high school band, Johnny and the Jammers, Winter enrolled in college, but quit after a semester to pursue music fulltime. He first toiled in Chicago (where he befriended and jammed with Mike Bloomfield) with little success, then back in Beaumont with Edgar, a base from which the brothers’ act toured with middling success.

Setting off on his own, Johnny gigged and recorded a succession of generally one-off projects for small labels in Houston and elsewhere. Eventually Winter forged a fortuitous trio with Tucker and Shannon in the Spring of 1968, playing clubs in Houston and Austin, where RS writer Larry Sepulvado’s Texas feature described him as “the hottest item outside of Janis Joplin.” Thus inspired, New York club owner Steve Paul tracked Winter down and began aggressively pursuing a management deal, then a record contract.

Just a week after his RS exposure, Johnny Winter was onstage at New York’s Fillmore, jamming with his old Chicago friend Mike Bloomfield. Now-manager Paul’s aggressive negotiating soon netted Winter reportedly the then-largest contract in Columbia Records history ($600K over five years), and Johnny and band decamped to the label’s Nashville studios, with Winter in the producer’s chair.

Johnny Winter (aka ‘Black Album’) was released in May, ’69, quickly becoming a Top 30 success. Anchored by a blistering cover of B.B. King’s “Be Careful With a Fool” that showcased Johnny’s trademark growl and the fiery, enduringly influential electric fretwork that made him a star, the sessions featured blues legends Willie Dixon and Walter Horton, as well as brother Edgar on piano.

Summer of ’69 found Winter basking in his “overnight” success, playing a long string of club dates, as well as a trifecta of festival appearances at Atlanta, Newport and Woodstock. Tour breaks in July and August found Johnny in Nashville to cut a follow-up album, Second Winter. “It really was a ‘rags to riches’ story,” said Tommy Shannon of the whirlwind period. “We literally went from sleeping on floors one night to living in a mansion the next, playing gigs for $5000 a night.”

Joined again by Edgar on keys and sax, Winter’s band now ventured into straight-ahead rock, including Little Richard’s “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” a roaring cover of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” that would soon become a live staple and a propulsive spin of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” that showcased Johnny’s fevered slide work. Percy Mayfield’s “Memory Pain” spotlighted the band’s equally accomplished way with R&B, while Winter’s original “Hustled Down in Texas” paid tribute to his Lone Star state roots.

Second Winter was also notable for its bizarre format — a double album with only three sides of music because, as Winter explains, “after we finished, we found out that if all the songs were used we might lose some volume if only one (disc) were used. Since it was very important to us that our album be as loud as is technically possible, we had a problem. We also didn't want to leave any of the songs out.”

But just as Winter’s band hit the top, it splintered — for reasons still debated - following their first European dates in early 1970. With Turner and Shannon out, Johnny quickly took on an unlikely set of new sidemen — the McCoys, the Midwest band who’d topped the 1965 charts in their teens with “Hang On Sloopy,” and who were also managed by Steve Paul.

“The first time I saw Johnny play was at the Fillmore East,” McCoys guitarist/singer Rick Derringer recalled. “I met him a few months later when Steve (Paul) brought both Johnny and Edgar to see The McCoys at a club. That's when Steve hit us with the idea that both Johnny and The McCoys should do something together. The McCoys were in a bad situation - our music had become characterized as ‘bubblegum.’ Johnny came on the scene with some real respect, so we looked at this as an opportunity to get what we were looking for - some respect ourselves.”

Derringer got that and more, forging relationships with both Winter brothers that would lead to some of their greatest chart successes. “I produced all of (Johnny’s) stuff that was either gold or platinum,” Rick once noted proudly. Indeed, while also splitting duties with two different Edgar Winter bands, Derringer produced Johnny Winter’s next half-dozen releases, the most commercially successful of his career.

“We lived right beside each other and had a rehearsal studio that was just ours, with nobody else using it, it was part of Johnny's house, so we could rehearse every day,” Derringer said of their association. “We played all of the songs on Johnny Winter And every day before we recorded them, so that when we got in the studio, it was totally easy.”

With Derringer contributing on both sides of the recording console, as well as writing a handful of songs, the already seasoned band (Rick on rhythm and second lead, brother Randy on drums, and bassist Randy Jo Hobbs) pushed Winter further into mainstream rock. Rick’s “Look Up” showed Johnny could flirt successfully with pop, while Winter’s lugubrious take on Derringer’s “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo” gave the ax slinger a bona fide rock anthem, one that Rick scored big with himself a couple years later.

The rock-centered Live album that followed displayed how well Derringer and his ex-McCoys complemented Winter. “Our roles became very defined because of the nature of our styles,” Rick said. “I took the rhythm place, which a lot of people didn't know how to do, really the first time that Johnny had a rhythm guitar player. (But) when he gave me a solo, I certainly knew how to take advantage of that opportunity.”

While chestnuts like “Good Morning Little School Girl” and “Johnny B. Goode” hearkened back to Winter’s rockin’ East Texas club days, a lengthy workout of “Mean Down Blues” showed where his heart was. His hard-charging cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” would eventually be repaid by the Stones — but not before Winter stopped singing the blues altogether and started living them.

Johnny’s flirtation with heroin had turned into addiction, then a suicidal depression that landed him in New Orleans’ River Oaks Hospital for nine nightmarish months. “I hated myself,” he told journalist Chet Flippo just weeks after his release. “I couldn’t even think about eating, changing clothes, playing jobs or anything. But I’m totally different now. I was totally off drugs for nine months and it really does make a difference in what you think and feel.”

He toured with Edgar’s band for the latter half of ’72, returning in Spring ’73 with an album whose defiant, Derringer-penned title track boasted Still Alive and Well. The Stones gave Winter “Silver Train” months before releasing their own version, while Johnny’s take on Big Bill Broonzy’s “Rock Me Baby” did just that.

While Winter plied the blues on a Mustang early in his major label career, he’d soon gravitate towards fellow Texas bluesman Albert King’s hallmark Flying V, and then the instrument that would become his own trademark ax, the distinctively shaped Firebird.

“I've got three Firebirds,” Johnny told Guitar Player in 1974. “I've (also) got a '58 or '59 sunburst Gibson (acoustic). I'm terrible on remembering models, but it's a jumbo flat-top — no fancy inlay work on it, probably the cheapest. I used it on stuff like "Cheap Tequila" and "Too Much Seconal" (from Still Alive and Well). Pretty much anything I need an acoustic guitar for, unless I'm using one of my steel Nationals.”

“I've also got a two-pickup, solid body Epiphone. I've got a double-neck, I've got a fairly new Flying V ... I'm not sure what year any of them are. I've also got a really strange all-metal guitar made by John Veleno. It's got the thinnest neck in the world. Since it's solid metal, you don't have to worry about it warping. But I'm not quite used to it. The neck's a little too thin.”

Winter made up some lost time via ’74’s Derringer-produced Saints and Sinners and John Dawson Winter III, continuing a successful formula of mixing rock chestnuts with some pop-seasoning and bracing Winter originals. He cajoled JWIII’s opener from no less than John Lennon. “I'd been hustling for a song from him for three or four albums,” Winter admitted. “Then he was recording at the same studio as us and my producer talked to him and mentioned that I was recording there, and asked again if he had any songs we could use. ‘Rock 'n' Roll People’ he'd written for himself, and had done it. But it hadn't come together right, and he didn't like it for himself, so he gave me the tape and it was just perfect for me.”

The Winters fused their powerhouse bands for 1976’s live Together collection, yielding a joyous, nine-song medley that was essentially Johnny’s ‘70’s farewell to rock and roll. Winter leveraged his status and love of the blues by producing Muddy Water’s Grammy-winning, post-Chess “comeback” record Hard Again (the first of four stand-out releases Johnny helmed for the Chicago blues icon), then borrowed Waters’ band to immerse himself in the form again on 1977’s Nothin’ But the Blues, before forging a new band of his own for the following year’s White, Hot and Blue.

As rock rapidly morphed into new forms in the early ‘80s, Winter in turn retrenched himself deeper in the blues. But as Raisin’ Cain’s cover of Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” displayed, Johnny could still shift musical gears at will, proving the point again when 1984’s Guitar Slinger secured a traditional blues Grammy nod, the first of several the Texas electric bluesman would receive for his own recordings.

1992’s Hey, Where’s My Brother? playfully echoed a question both Winters were long familiar with, while the album’s “Johnny Guitar” gave the axslinger yet another memorable anthem. Recorded at the famed Bottom Line club, Live in NYC ’97 showcased Winter’s new trio on a playful track he’d long performed, but never recorded, Freddie King’s chugging “Hideaway,” also part of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan’s repertoire. Seasoned by his signature slide work, 2004’s Grammy-nominated I’m a Bluesman brought Winter into the 21^st century — yet not so far from where he started.

“An albino belongs to the smallest minority there is,” Johnny once mused. “Maybe that’s why I went for the blues. I don’t know. I never did say to myself, ‘poor me, I’m going to sing the blues’ I never felt like that. Everybody’s got problems. There were always people worse off than me.”