Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) by Sullivan Mary Lou

Author:Sullivan, Mary Lou [Sullivan, Mary Lou]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Backbeat Books
Published: 2010-04-11T23:00:00+00:00

PART II

8

BACK WITH A VENGEANCE

While Johnny was in California, Derringer traveled to the Jersey shore to see Cobalt, a Johnny Winter cover band managed by his banker. “Our manager kept bugging Rick about jamming with us,” said Doug Brockie, Cobalt’s lead guitarist. “Rick finally gave in and came out and jammed.”

When Derringer brought Johnny to see Cobalt at a dance in New Jersey, he was blown away. “It was amazing,” Johnny said in an interview for Play:Back, published by Columbia Records. “Out of the fifty songs they knew, forty-five of them were mine. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.... I grew up copying Ray Charles, and these guys were growing up doing me.”

The minute Johnny heard Cobalt’s drummer, his search was over. “Richard Hughes was a basher, a crasher, and could play anything I needed,” he says. “He played real well, he played all my songs, and he was a good guy.”

Formed by Brockie when he was sixteen, Cobalt was based in Point Pleasant, Mantoloking Bay Head on the Jersey shore. “I found Richard at a gig at my church, playing with Jim Bentley from the 1910 Fruitgum Company,,” said Brockie. “He didn’t know any Johnny Winter material when I met him. I taught Richard all of the Johnny Winter material because I was a Johnny Winter freak. At fifteen and sixteen, Johnny was like my Robert Johnson.”

As soon as he auditioned and hired Hughes, Johnny went into the Hit Factory in New York City to cut Still Alive and Woll. After nine months in the hospital and even more time away from his music, Johnny was elated to be back in the studio cutting an album. “It felt great because it’s something you love that you’d given up for a while,” he says. “We cut seven songs in a row on the first take on the first night.”

Released in 1973 on Columbia Records, Still Alive and Well was the perfect anthem for Johnny’s triumphant comeback. Derringer wrote it as a member of Edgar Winter’s White Trash, which released it on Roadwork the previous year.

“Everybody thought he wrote it for me, but that wasn’t true,” says Johnny. “Rick wrote it for himself—he was bragging he was still alive and well. I recorded it ’cause I thought it was a good song and I was ‘still alive and well.’ I wrote ‘Rock & Roll’ and ‘Too Much Seconal’ for that album.”

Johnny wanted the sound of a power trio so most songs featured Hobbs and Hughes, with Johnny on vocals, guitar, slide guitar, and mandolin. But he also used several guest artists, including Derringer on slide guitar on “Silver Train,” electric guitar on “Cheap Tequila,” and pedal steel and click guitar on “Ain’t Nothing to Me.” Todd Rundgren played a Mellotron on “Cheap Tequila,” Mark Klingman played piano on “Silver Train,” and Jeremy Steig played flute on “Too Much Seconal.” “I had heard his album, Jeremy & the Satyrs [a 1968 Reprise release],” says Johnny. “I liked Jeremy and liked the way he played.

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