A young Johnny Winter, with his snow white pompadour hair style and black horned rim shades, took a road trip up to Chicago in 1963 with his white Gibson SG shaped Les Paul Custom with 2 pickups, I noticed that he added an upgraded tailpiece at the bottom of the guitar and he took along his trusty Fender Twin Reverb amplifier and ended up living there in the‘ windy city’ and playing constant “ twist” shows for four music filled months, this at 19 years of age,
Johnny gradually gravitated socially to people with similar interests and one night one of the guys in his band told him about a little coffee house type joint that had blues jams and shows on Tuesday nights, this would have been some time after June of 1963. So one Tuesday night Johnny got a ride over to the coffee house, unloaded his axe and amp and headed inside fortuitously wound up meeting and jamming with a 21 year old Mike Bloomfield in a dimly lit, cigarette smoke soaked “Fickle Pickle”, a small funky blues club like coffeehouse, the “Fickle Pickle” not soaked in the brine of dill but in the brine of blues, with an old beat up and worn upright piano and a well-aged black curtain draped over one wall for effect, and then there were the classic checkerboard patterned table clothes that covered the tables and extended down almost to the floor. On these randomly spaced tiny card tables were hastily placed glass restraint salt and pepper shakers, glass catsup bottles and each had a well-used small black ceramic cigarette ash tray, complete with burn marks and half smashed cigarette butts resting in a bed of gray ashes. Cheap brown folding chairs where blues men often sat hunched over their carefully strung guitars to practice their craft and music lovers sat to immerse themselves in the sounds of live blues, looking up from your table you could contemplate period era graphitic art painted right on the wall.
If these Fickle Pickle walls could only speak, or if you were the proverbial fly on one of these Fickle Pickle walls, you could see and hear in 1963; North Side of Chicago’s hustle and bustle outside and inside the historic walls of the Fickle Pickle where Mike Bloomfield, a 21 year old talent scout of sorts, sitting at a shadowy table, his face lit by the glow of his cigarette, his eyes squinting to the smoke of the coffin nail hanging from the corner of his mouth, Bloomfield being blown away by the master skills of this young little-known snow white skinned, Colton haired shredder, that’s not something a person soon forgets.
Johnny Winter, with his limited eyesight, thought this guy Mike Bloomfield looked a bit like a young Toney Curtis; he got his looks from his mother a model and actress named Dorothy Klein. Mike Bloomfield Michael began producing a Tuesday night blues series at a coffee house called the Fickle Pickle the month of June in June 1963. Mike was undeniably a great guitarist and blues player; they both played through the classic Fender Twin Reverb amplifiers at the time and their styles of masterful blues guitar playing complemented each other with a barrage of ripping fast finger blues notes and exotic chord changes, wonderfully brutal sounds emanated from their guitars and billowed throughout the small club and into the lamp lighted street outside. The two young men were both walking encyclopedias of blues history and music and they talked for hours on end and deep into the Chicago night.
Hi, Ray. Michael was sort of a defacto member of the PBBB, starting in March and April of 1965, at least in the studio where he recorded numerous tunes with Butterfield for Elektra. But he officially joined the band on the weekend of the Newport Folk Festival, July 23-25, 1965. That was also the weekend he played with Dylan when Bob "went electric," but when Butterfield's manager, Albert Grossman, gave him the choice of playing with Dylan on tour to promote "Highway 61 Revisited," MB decided he'd rather play blues with Paul. So he appeared the band at the Cafe Au Go Go in NYC following Newport and then went on the road with the group to Club 47 in Boston and several other venues in New England. The rest, as they say, is history! Thanks, Ray. I'd love to see your book when it's done. You can just credit my book, "Guitar King: Michael Bloomfield's Life in the Blues," in your notes or bibliography. That will be fine. Do you know that Michael first met Johnny when Winter was playing in Chicago at the Scotch Mist in 1963 and he sat in with Bloomfield at the club Michael was managing called the Fickle Pickle? Bloomfield told a friend the next day that he'd been cut by another young blues guitarist and, as Michael put it, "The guy was an albino!"\
Info on Winter's 1963 sojourn to Chicago comes from the bio "Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter" (Backbeat Books 2010). Bloomfield's comments about playing with him come from Bill Keenom's interview with guitarist Mick Weiser, one of MB's Chicago friends and erstwhile band mates(Guitar King Bloomfield's Life in the Blues) David Dann
So perhaps contrary to rock and roll mythology, it appears Johnny Winter and Mike Bloomfield may have met first, or at least among the first times there at the Scotch Mist, so I am assuming Johnny was playing in a Twist venue thereat Scotch Mist and perhaps Mike Bloomfield came in to see what his competition was like and perhaps invited Johnny to the Fickle Pickle at that time. There were many other clubs that Winter and Bloomfield played guitar with Twist bands, mostly on Rush Street in Chicago; Club La Rue 32, Trade Winds, The Cabaret, Mr. Kelly`s, ''Bourbon Street, The Domino Lounge, The Happy Medium, Tony`s Cellar and The Scotch Mist where there is confirmation. Back in the day, the clubs were really classy and had ample dance floors and were filled with well-dressed, well-groomed patrons looking to drink and dance and Johnny was no exception. Bar tenders were dignified, Go-Go dancers were twisting the night away as sailors would come in their dress whites and through back a few exchanging the challenge coins from their ships or stations.
The Guitar Michael Bloomfield was using in 1963, when he was “cut” by Johnny Winter at the Fickle Pickle, was a new 1963 blonde Fender Telecaster, this is the axe wielded by Bloomfield not only when he first met Johnny Winter but for several more years. Michael Bloomfield had also used a Fender Duo-Sonic for recording for Columbia following his 1964 signing to the label. During his years playing guitar with the Butterfield Blues Band Michael used that new 1963 blonde Fender Telecaster, recording their first album and on their earliest tours in fall of 1965. By November he had swapped that guitar with the International Submarine Band guitarist John Nuese for Nuese's 1954 Gibson Les Paul Gold top model, which used for some of the East-West sessions and which he acquired in Boston. The International Submarine Band was formed by country rock pioneer, Gram Parsons in 1965 with John Neuse, a guitar player a rock band called The Trolls. John Nuese persuaded Gram Parsons to pursue the country-rock sound for which he would later be remembered. Parsons moved on to do work with Emmy Lou Harris and such country rock bands as the Bryds, in the Clarence White era, and moreover for the Flying Burrito Brothers. I think it was John Neuse that cut the upper front body horn into a pointy end on Mike Bloomfield’s 1963 Blonde Fender Telecaster and made it really ugly, the StewMac guitar show (5/7/2015) Stewart McDonald said this was because Neuse was a left handed guitar player and had to cut the horn to play it. The Mike Bloomfield / John Neuse, 1963 Fender Telecaster, Blonde Solid Body Electric Guitar, Serial # L11155 Sold at auction on Oct 24, 2015, this right after Stewart McDonald rebuilt it on the StewMac show. It came up for auction again on January 28, 2019 asking $75,000.
In 1967, Mike Bloomfield swapped the Gold top Gibson Les Paul he traded with The International Submarine band guitarist John Neuse to repairman/musician Dan Erlewine for Dan's 1959 Les Paul Standard and $100. In the early 1970’s Dan Erlewine built custom guitars for iconic guitarists and he helped mold the sound of American pop music and the 1960s-1970s musical sub-culture. These one of a kind instruments were made to the specifications of the performers, unique in style and sound; the Albert King “V”, the Jerry Garcia which “Strat-ish-caster”. Mike Bloomfield used the Les Paul Standard he got from Dan Erlewine in the Electric Flag and on the Super Session album and concerts including the famous Fillmore East jam in 1968 with Johnny Winter.
Flash forward from the 1963 Chicago Fickle Pickle Jam, five long years, in December, 1968, Mike Bloomfield invited the young Texan, Johnny Winter, join him and friend Al Cooper on stage at their Super-session concert at Bill Gram’s Fillmore East to sing and perform some blues as a special guest.
Johnny Winter decided to perform his friend, B.B. King’s blues masterpiece; It’s My Own Fault. There on that audience packed Friday night at the Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper Supersession concert in New York on a chilly December 13, 1968, and again Mike Bloomfield helped change music history, it was a Friday-the-13th that had only good luck for Johnny Winter, a Texan alone in New York where Mike Bloomfield secured Johnny Winter a premier place in the pantheon of guitar heroes.
The next year, 1969, Johnny Winter recorded and performed his own historic rendition of the Bob Dylan song “Highway 61 Revisited” as a nod or gratitude and respect or homage to Mike Bloomfield, whom shredded six strings of wheat on the original Dylan Highway 61 LP, and a show of mutual blues shred admiration. It also is notable that the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” include;
“Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren't right
My complexion she said is much too white
He said come here and step into the light he says hmm you're right
Let me tell the second mother this has been done.”
(Bob Dylan 1965).
I was told this may make reference to Noah, from the Noah’s ark of Biblical fame, Abraham was also referenced in the same song, many Old Testament scholars claim Noah was an albino. Arnold Sorsby, in The British Medical Journal ;Vol. 2, No. 5112 (Dec. 27, 1958) states that a detailed account of the birth of Noah, in the Book of Enoch, states that when Noah was born:
“his skin was as white as snow and his hair was as lamp’s wool and his eyes were so bright it lit up the room.” And also from Noah’s father; “I have a begotten son, unlike another children, he is not human; but resembling the offspring of angels of heaven”( Enoch 400 BC)
In an article written by Johnny Winter in the 2003 book; Best of Johnny Winter, Johnny says he played Highway 61 Revisited in open D tuning, the guitar is tuned to open D (low to high: D A D F# A D), Johnny continues;
“Playing slide guitar is different because you are working off a single chord that you move up and down the frets. It’s working off one chord shape. Of course playing regular guitar you play a lot of different chords. –I always thought you could mix blues and rock ‘n’ roll so there is no difference between them. That was part of the goal.
“Highway 61” was a good one for that idea.”
From: Sullivan, Mary Lou. Raisin' Cain: “The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (2010) Mary Lou Sullivan states that:
“Johnny returned to the studio in late 1969 to record ‘Second Winter’, which had a harder rock feel than the straight forward blues of ‘Johnny Winter’ and introduced Johnny’s version of ‘ Highway 61 Revisited’. Although pegged as a blues-rock record, ‘Second Winter’ marked the beginning of Johnny’s move toward rock and away from the blues”.-Johnny replies; “Blues purists didn’t like that record. They said I sold out, and I guess I did….it hurt me to hear that but you just had to deal with it.” Decades later, in October 1992, Jonny was invited to perform at Bob Dylan’s sold out ‘30th’ Anniversary Concert Celebration’ at Madison Square Garden. “Even among the impressive line-up Johnny dazzled the audience with an incendiary performance of ‘Highway 61 Revisited’”. (Sullivan, Mary Lou 2010).
Johnny’s cover of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited’ was, in my humble opinion, the high point of the Second Winter’ album and of course the iconic photo cover art of a white Johnny shadowed by a sky blue in artistic contrast.. Some of the song choices were poor in my opinion with an over use of the guitar effects pedal and weird drum style on some tracks, of all the great rock and blues tunes available in 1969, why these choices is unclear, it would have been a masterpiece with some minor changes. I wanted to explore this so I tried to contact Johnny Winter’s official biographer Sullivan, Mary Lou, Edgar Winter and Tommy Shannon last year but I was unable to make contact.
Paul Nelson, from the Johnny Winter band of the final ten years said “In Bob Dylan's book he said I will no longer perform Highway 61 revisited as I consider it Johnny Winter’s song”. Another interesting clip I found on Johnny Winter’s ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ in the same vein as the Hank Ray interview; “I’m a groupie. I really am, just like anyone else. I like Bob Dylan, A lot of their songs relate to me personally, even though I haven’t written them.” (Johnny Winter quotes from borntolisten.com).
Mike Bloomfield had a rather bazar death in 1981, like the Jimi Hendrix death where it was disputed cause of death, stranger still was Mike Bloomfield was found seated behind the wheel of his car cold and dead, all four doors were locked and an empty Valium bottle was placed on the car seat near his corpse, but no suicide note was found and the medical examiner performed an autopsy and no drugs were found in Bloomfield's system, some thought he was, like Hendrix murdered but there were apparently no signs of foul play. The circumstances surrounding his death were suspicious.
Johnny was a soft spoken southern gentleman, I think a lot of time he may not have thought his interviewer would understand his unique perspective sometimes on things as he said so he would leave out a lot, in the Hank Ray interview; “I really loved ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ , it worked perfect in my style and the open “D” arrangement I used for the slide, but of all the great Dylan tunes I picked this one, I not only just liked the song like everyone else, but I think it had a some sort of deeper and personal meanings to me.” (Hank Ray interview 1981)
Flash forward to the year 1974, the Chicago Blues Summit “Soundstage” PBS special caught an awesome jam session of tradeoffs of masters of shred, Johnny Winter and Mike Bloomfield together playing for the original blues master Muddy Waters. The Blues Summit was less head chopping I suppose but the two friends did shred for their mentor, Muddy Waters. This PBS show was far removed from in time from the historic jam at the Fickle Pickle in 1963, or the Fillmore East Supersession jam in 1968. Soundstage was in July 1974 but the flavor is the same, the chemistry between the two is there. A group of blues artists gathered together with some of their younger "blues brethren" from all over the country to pay tribute to the man most responsible for bringing blues from the Mississippi Delta upriver to Chicago, Muddy Waters. The performers were ; Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Miles, Johnny Winter, Dr. John, and Nick Gravenites, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Junior Wells and Pinetop Perkins. I remember that night in July 1974, I was 14 years old, my dad brought home an old Sony reel to reel tape recorder from work and we hooked it up to our old black and white RCA T.V.in the den. I waited with excitement as the PBS announcer with the cool voice introduced the cast of blues greats; I had been a big fan of Johnny Winter since I was 9, so this was a huge event for me. My dad was more of a Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass fan at the time, a World War Two combat pilot whom spent his leave listening to Benny Goodman, so he didn’t quite get the music but he still was clad to bring home reel to reel from work o record it for me. So we recorded the show in audio, and I played it over and over dozens of time, ‘Walkin’ through the Park’ was the one number that stuck out to me!. This show is still available to rent, download or buy.
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