Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll resonates from every page of a new book on noted native son Johnny Winter.

The Beaumont-born blues guitar legend shares his globe-trotting highs and lows through author Mary Lou Sullivan in “Raisin’ Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter.” This is authorized, and the real deal, Winter says in the foreward.

Noted for their dedication to and skill at Southern rock and blues, and for flowing white hair from being albino, Johnny and Edgar Winter started their love of music as Beaumont teens and were noted around the world . Museum of the Gulf Coast, mentioned in the book, features the pair. Edgar is interviewed and pictured in the book, but it’s Johnny’s story.

Uncle John Turner and Ikey Sweat, musicians with Southeast Texas ties, are also featured in Johnny’s tale of ‘50s rock bands, record labels, addition, women and jamming with the likes of Muddy Waters, who happens to refer to his gumbo as “chili.”

Of course, Janis Joplin is in the book. The music world couldn’t wait to unite the Beaumont guitarist with the Port Arthur singer. Their first encounter involves vomit.

“I met Janis at the Miami Pop Festival where I ended up jammin’ with her and doin’ vocals and drinkin’ Southern Comfort,” says Johnny. “I had taken acid before and Janis and I were drinking Southern Comfort on the stage like it was Kool-Aid. Later on down I got real sick. I threw up on her in the helicopter. We went back in the helicopter and I threw up all over her. It was terrible — it was a mess. She was alright with it; she called me up later on and asked me for another date.”

Backbeat Books offers this release.  Author Mary Lou Sullivan met Winter in 1984 while writing for the Hartford Advocate and hosting and producing a radio talk show on WCCC in Hartford, CT. She says Winter turned down her offer to write his biography for years, but persistence paid off. She spent hundreds of hours with Winter at his home and covers “his appearance at Woodstock, his affair with Janis Joplin, stadium-filling tours, a devastating fall into heroin addiction, and a triumphant road back to stardom.”

Look for Winter’s personal photos and shots of him with Jimi Hendrix, Joplin, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and others. She interviewed Winter's mother Edwina, his brother Edgar Winter, wife Susan Winter, artist/friend Jim Franklin, bassist Tommy Shannon (who went on to play with Stevie Ray Vaughan), drummer Uncle John Turner, Winter's original manager Steve Paul, and Scott Cameron, who managed Muddy Waters.

Dan Aykroyd, a.k.a. Elwood Blues, called Raisin' Cain "one of the world's great music biographies."

Winter said this:

 "Mary Lou did a fantastic job -- it couldn’t have been better," he wrote in the book's foreword. "I loved talking to her on all those Saturday nights. I was really open because I wanted my story to be told. She did an excellent job on research and really spent a lot of time on this book. It is perfect--there isn’t anything left out."

For more information about the book, visit www.JohnnyWinterBook.com

Picks on Johnny Winter

Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur features Johnny Winter and his brother Edgar, two musicians from Beaumont. The new book “Raisin’ Cain” focuses on Johnny Winter. Here is part of his profile from the Museum:

Born Feb. 23, 1944, John Dawson Winter III in Leland, Mississippi, Johnny Winter grew up in Beaumont, Texas, and attended Beaumont schools and Lamar State College of Technology. In high school and college, he played with the band he had formed at 14, called Johnny and The Jammers, playing local clubs and talent shows with his younger brother, Edgar.

Both of Johnny’s parents were musicians, and he became interested in music at an early age. He learned to play the clarinet at 5 years old and the ukulele at about 8; he taught himself to play the guitar at 11 years old. Before Johnny and the Jammers, he and Edgar worked as a ukulele duo around Beaumont. By the late 1950s, Johnny was touring with Gene Terry and the Downbeats, working gigs through Texas and Louisiana.

Johnny formed various rock groups, The Crystaliers, It & Them, The Black Plague, and Traits, and worked local gigs into the 1960s before attending Lamar. 1962 found him working club dates in Chicago, and he worked with Mike Bloomfield at the Fickle Pickle Coffeehouse there in 1963.

The following two years, Edgar and Johnny teamed again to play clubs, roadside bars, and campus dates through the Southeast. Johnny continued to play the club scene and record numerous singles, both on small local labels and on major labels like MGM and Atlantic, but he couldn’t land a major label contract until 1968.

1968 was the year that Winter traveled to England in search of a more receptive musical climate. He had just recorded some songs for Imperial Records before he left. He spent part of that year working dates in London and considered moving the band over there. When he returned home, he discovered that Rolling Stone had printed an article raving about the unknown albino blues guitarist from Texas. Nearly every major label was on the phone trying to sign him.