Johnny Winter born 23 February 1944

 John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014) was an American singer and guitarist. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s. 

Son of John and Edwina, Winter was a native of Beaumont, Texas. Both Johnny and his younger brother Edgar were born with albinism. The pair began playing music before they went to school, Johnny initially trying the clarinet before switching to the ukulele and guitar while Edgar played keyboards. The brothers won a high school talent contest singing Everly Brothers songs and were soon playing local bars and diners. In 1959 the Winter brothers, already known from local talent and TV shows, cut the singles School Day Blues and You Know I Love You for the Houston label Dart Records.

In 1962 Johnny formed Johnny and the Jammers, with Edgar on keyboards. In the early 60s Johnny recorded numerous singles for such local labels as Frolic, Diamond and Goldband, and scored a local hit with Eternally, distributed by Atlantic. Between 1965 and 1967 he played regularly across the deep South with Black Plague (featuring Edgar) and his own band It and Them (also known as The Crystaliers). In 1966 Johnny hit the Billboard Hot 100 with a version of Harlem Shuffle, which he recorded with the Traits. 

Winter was a regional star in the US south, but major success came knocking in the wake of a 1968 article in Rolling Stone magazine about the Texas music scene. He was then playing with his own trio, completed by the drummer Red Turner and the bassist Tommy Shannon, which had recently recorded the album The Progressive Blues Experiment on Austin's Sonobeat label. Winter was written up alongside names such as Janis Joplin, Steve Miller and the Sir Douglas Quintet, and was memorably described as "a 130lb cross-eyed albino with long fleecy hair playing some of the gutsiest fluid blues guitar you have ever heard". 

The result was a bidding war between record labels, which ended with Columbia signing Winter for $600,000 — reportedly the highest advance ever paid by the label up to that time. Winter’s eponymous debut album was released in 1969, and he soon became one of rock music’s most recognisable figures. 

                             

He performed at Woodstock, jammed with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and was soon enjoying all the trappings of fame. His next album, Second Winter (also 1969), found him imaginatively interpreting Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, and in 1970 he teamed up with the noted rock guitarist and producer Rick Derringer to form Johnny Winter And . 

The studio and concert albums they released in 1970 and 1971 won Winter a huge American audience, but be became so debilitated by heroin addiction that he went into semi-retirement for two years before returning in 1973 with the album Still Alive And Well. a top 30 effort that featured Silver Train, written for him by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. 

While this represented a confident return to form, Winter’s recordings in the mid-Seventies often suggested a lack of focus. In truth, throughout his career Winter was torn between the blues he loved so much and the more commercial rock sound demanded by his record label and management. 

Then, in 1977, he was the producer of Hard Again, Muddy Waters’s comeback album. It won wide praise and a Grammy, and re-established Waters as a contemporary blues artist. At the same time, the recording sessions seem to have reinvigorated Winter in his album Nothin’ but the Blues (recorded at the same time, with Waters guesting on one of the songs, it too won a Grammy). He produced three further albums for Waters. 

Winter signed a contract with Alligator Records, a Chicago-based blues label, releasing several strong blues albums, and in 1988 moved to MCA, which issued the poorly-received rock album Winter of ’88. He then went to the Virgin blues label Point Blank, but the Nineties would turn into something of a lost decade for him: he became addicted to antidepressants, and delivered poor recordings and often incoherent performances. 

In 2005 his rhythm guitarist, Paul Nelson, took over Winter’s management duties and put the guitarist in rehab. By this time Winter was said to weigh only 90lb; he also suffered from a hip problem that would force him to perform seated. Six months later, however, he was able to return to recording and performing. As a veteran musician, Winter found himself attracting the kind of attention he had once lavished on the black bluesmen of his youth. 

Winter was professionally active until the time of his death near Zürich, Switzerland, on July 16, 2014. He was found dead in his hotel room two days after his last performance, at the Cahors Blues Festival in France. The cause of Winter's death was not officially released. According to his guitarist friend and record producer Paul Nelson, Winter died of emphysema combined with pneumonia. 

(Edited from The Guardian, Telegraph & Wikipedia)