Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) (36 page)

“I remember seeing reviews that said, ‘Muddy Waters’s slide sounds very exciting and vital,’” said Margolin. “But it wasn’t Muddy playing; it wasn’t listed as such in the credits. Maybe they can’t hear and they can’t read.”

Waters chose the lineup for
Hard Again
, which included his own vocals, Johnny on vocals and guitar, James Cotton on harmonica, Margolin on guitar, Pinetop Perkins on piano, Charles Calmese on bass, and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith on drums. Cotton and Calmese came from Cotton’s band; Margolin, Perkins, and Smith hailed from Waters’s band. Harp player Jerry Portnoy and bassist Calvin Jones from Waters’s band were kept on retainer with financial help from Johnny.

“Muddy didn’t want to get too many people from one band,” explains Johnny. “He didn’t want it to sound like somebody else’s band so he was very adamant about using different people from different bands. James Cotton fit real well—he played real good harp and was used to playin’ with Muddy. They had a pretty good relationship, but Muddy was the leader. Sometimes they’d argue about stuff but Muddy always got his way.

“Pinetop Perkins was a little primitive as a piano player, but good. He played certain things differently than I would have played them. He played kinda out of key. I don’t think he did it on purpose; I think he thought it was right. He wasn’t Otis Spann but he was one of the well known piano players around Chicago and there just wasn’t anything better. He didn’t play like anybody else; he has his own unique style.

“Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith was a real good guy and a good drummer. He wasn’t fancy and he didn’t rush things—he was behind the beat. Willie’s drums were recorded up front; it was as loud as anything on the mix. I liked it ’cause it had a good backbeat on it and it made it [the sound] real. Charles was a great bass player. He was a little more complicated than a typical blues player. He used to do a poppin’ thing with James’s band. He didn’t do it too much on Muddy’s stuff. He may have overplayed a little bit, but he tried to accommodate Muddy.”

Although Margolin was accustomed to playing with Jones, he enjoyed working with Calmese. “Charles was a little more modern player, certainly a little more versatile and energetic,” said Margolin. “We had our first rehearsal the first night of the
Hard Again
tour, at the Capitol Theater the afternoon before we played. As we were setting up the instruments, Charles was getting the sound on his bass. He started playing some modern, popping stuff, which was very new back then. Muddy came out of the dressing room and put his nose right up to Charles’s nose. ‘I hate that shit.’ Charles made sure he played as straight as he could behind Muddy. And he did a good job of it. Charles was a good guy—always great and friendly—we had a lot of fun.”

Margolin met Johnny for the first time at the
Hard Again
sessions, and they immediately hit it off. “I really didn’t know what to expect, but he presented himself as just another blues lover musician,” said Margolin. “I really enjoyed the times I hung out with him socially as well as on the bandstand.”

For Johnny, the feeling was mutual. “I liked playin’ with Bob Margolin,” he says. “He was a good guitar player to be with Muddy Waters. The other guitar players I’d played with played rock ’n’ roll and a lot of different things. Bob was just a blues guitar player and he was better on blues than they were.”

Muddy garnered respect from his musicians, and that translated into the way they performed, both in the studio and onstage. “Muddy ran a tight ship and told everybody what to do,” says Johnny. “Anybody get out of control, Muddy would push them back into line. Everybody liked Muddy because he was the Father of the Blues. He liked to have good musicians and would give them a chance to shine. He didn’t keep anybody in the background.”

During his years at Chess, Waters learned to cut a record without wasting any time, and he recorded
Hard Again
in less than a week. “Muddy started out in the era of direct to disk,” said Cameron. “The idea of overdub, and multi-tracking, didn’t capture the essence of Muddy. Muddy like to record a performance versus perform a recording.”

“We’d get in about noon and work till 5 or 6 [PM],” says Johnny. “In the studio, Muddy was straight-ahead work. Muddy didn’t fuck around between cuts. He knew what he wanted to do and did it. Sessions with Muddy were quicker than other sessions I’d been to. He wanted everybody to play it right the first time, and everybody did. He picked the right musicians, so he didn’t have to tell them much. The band didn’t rehearse; they knew the songs. He just said what to play and we’d play it. You didn’t want to do a song too many times to really be straight blues. I always felt like it should be spontaneous—that a few mistakes don’t hurt. Muddy wouldn’t do a song more than twice. If something didn’t come out right, he expected me to fix it. And I usually could.

“I played slide on ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’ and the solo on ‘Deep Down in Florida’ because Muddy didn’t want to play. I was hopin’ he’d be happy with the way things were goin’ and he was. Muddy was real good when I made suggestions. We wanted him to record acoustic songs, and he didn’t really want to, but he did it for me. He said, ‘I did that a long time ago.’ I guess he got tired of it. Me and Bob Margolin played on the acoustic songs. We did it a little sloppy and we wanted to do it again, but Muddy wouldn’t do it more than once. The second one, ‘Feel Like Goin’ Home,’ ended up on the
King Bee
album.”

Working with Johnny was life-affirming for Waters. Not only was he working with a producer who understood and loved his music; he had backing from his label, and control over his music and his image as a gentleman, both of which had been lost in the making of
Electric Mud
, a recording he referred to as “dog shit” in a
Guitar Player
interview with Tom Wheeler.

“Muddy said, ‘This music makes my pee pee hard again, so I’ll name it
Hard Again,’”
says Johnny with a laugh. “The Richard Avedon cover shot was Steve’s idea; we wanted everything to be classy. Muddy looks like he’s in control of everything and looks happy in that picture. They used the clothes he had on and shot it real quick, the same way he recorded it. Blue Sky did pretty well promoting Muddy. There was an ad in
Rolling Stone
and a lot of blues papers for the record. He wasn’t used to having any promotion at all.”

The
Hard Again
tour in early 1977 was a far cry from Johnny’s previous tour, when he played stadiums and coliseums that held up to 50,000 people. He was performing at clubs that held 500 to 600 people, but that didn’t faze him in the least. He was playing the music he loved, with a man he loved, and that was all that mattered.

“The
Hard Again
tour with Muddy was a lot of fun,” says Johnny. “I liked playing in Muddy’s band ’cause I could do what Muddy wanted and he liked pretty much the same thing that I liked. It was real nice with Muddy. During that tour, he didn’t come on for a while because he liked to have the band play before him, then bring on the star.”

“That was a tradition of Muddy’s,” said Margolin. “Let the band do as much as they can, and then come out as a feature and tear it up. He did play on those tours. He had his guitar out there and would play a slide solo. He had his Telecaster in his hand the whole time except when he was doing ‘Mojo’ or ‘Mannish Boy.”’

Having three guitar players never created any problems because the players worked around each other without competing. “Muddy and I just listened to each other,” says Johnny, who played a Firebird on that tour. “He’d play guitar on at least two or three songs. It was exciting working with him and he seemed happy to be working with me. You could tell how he felt just by looking at him, by listening to him too.”

“The band got along great on that tour,” said Margolin. “Cotton and Charles Calmese and Johnny were all nice folks who got along. All the guys in Muddy’s band were really special in getting along with each other and everybody else. If they had a problem, they talk about it, deal with it, and then let it go.”

When
Hard Again
won the
Rolling Stone
Critics Award and the Grammy for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording, Johnny had finally earned recognition as a blues player—something he had yearned for throughout his career.

“A lot of critics, especially European critics, felt that white people shouldn’t be playing blues,” he says. “Black musicians I had worked with never did anything except help me and encourage me. Most of ’em figured it didn’t make any difference what color you were. I always wanted to be respected as a blues player. I felt I’d made it as a rock ’n’ roller but not as a blues musician until
Hard Again
. I just wanted to do a good record, but I was hopin’ we would get a Grammy. I didn’t know if people were gonna like it or hate it. I thought they might hate it, think it was too rock ‘n’ roll just because I was on it. After we won the Grammy, I felt that I could relax a little—at least I’d done what I started out to do.”

Johnny was named Blues Player of the Year by
Guitar Player
magazine in 1977, 1978, and 1979. Although some of the Grammy-winning records he made with Waters didn’t sell as well as his rock-oriented releases, it didn’t matter. “Those records made me feel like I was supposed to be doin’ more blues,” he says. “Blues is my favorite; it’s something I love to play.”

While those records earned Johnny recognition as a blues artist, they also revived Waters career. “Those records made Muddy’s career happen again,” says Johnny. “Bein’ affiliated with Columbia and Blue Sky helped—’cause he made the money he was supposed to make—instead of not getting the money like in the Chess days.”

“Working with Johnny brought Muddy’s career back to life,” agreed Cameron. “It brought it to a much, much wider audience; and the reviews of Hard
Again
were phenomenal. It put a new spark in Muddy’s career.”

Johnny’s collaboration with Waters created a renaissance for the blues, exposing the genre to a broader audience, like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers did in the mid-1960s.

“Nobody had put out a good blues album in a long time, and it was time for one,” says Johnny. “People liked me and gave Muddy a chance because I liked him so much. Muddy definitely reached a different market. A lot of people told me they didn’t know who Muddy Waters was before he started playing with me. They bought his record because I was on it, and got to know him through me.”

Their musical collaboration also gave Johnny an opportunity to learn from and develop a personal relationship with his idol.

“Workin’ with him made me get to know him a lot better,” says Johnny. “You got to see what he was doin’—what he was all about. I could see what his ideas were about music. I learned a lot about being a leader from workin’ with Muddy. Don’t be scared to say what you feel. When he said something, his band did what Muddy wanted. To figure out what you’re gonna do before you went in, to get ready for the session before you go in and do it. I got to know him on a more personal level too. He was a little bit nicer than I thought he might be—he wasn’t conceited at all.”

Johnny visited Waters several times at his home in Chicago, where he was treated to one of his hero’s culinary specialties.

“Muddy was a great host. and his cookin’ was the best part of it,” says Johnny. “We ate in the kitchen, sitting by the stove. His chili was strong, really hot. I had a big bowl and I was sweatin’, really big drops of sweat. You needed water ’cause it was so hot,” he says, laughing at the memory. “It was gumbo, but Muddy called it chili. He put okra in it, and other vegetables, too. Muddy liked to cook and liked having people over. Another time we went to a birthday party for Koko Taylor at Muddy’s house.”

In the
Guitar Player
interview with Wheeler that ran after Waters’s death, he whispered “that’s my son” when Johnny left the room to get his guitar. It was the ultimate compliment, one Johnny never heard from Waters’s lips.

“That made me feel great,” Johnny says. “Muddy wasn’t an emotional kind of guy. I think it was always in interviews where he said it about me to somebody else. Muddy and I had a strong bond because I worked with him—I helped his career a lot. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I did. Muddy’s acknowledgement made me feel like it was something I should be doin’. Made me feel like I could play better than most people doin’ blues.”

“Muddy loved Johnny,” said Cameron. “I don’t know that Muddy was an unemotional guy from my relationship with him. He was highly emotional; he just hid them very well. I think he had a lot of that old-school macho in him, which kept him from outwardly displaying certain types of emotions. He thought the world of Johnny and credited Johnny with helping him in numerous interviews.” IT

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