{"id":27215,"date":"2010-12-28T08:13:14","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T13:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=27215"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:36:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:36:00","slug":"raisin%e2%80%99-cain-with-johnny-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/12\/raisin%e2%80%99-cain-with-johnny-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"Raisin\u2019 Cain with Johnny Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"<p>The<\/a>Much like the subject of her book, Raisin\u2019 Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter <\/em>(Backbeat Books, 2010), Mary Lou Sullivan had to take a long road to realize her dream. She first met the famed Texas blues guitarist and singer in 1984, but it took nearly 20 years before Winter agreed to cooperate on a no-holds-barred biography.<\/p>\n

With Raisin\u2019 Cain<\/em> now in its third printing and receiving glowing critical reviews, Sullivan\u2019s persistence has been rewarded with recognition by The Blues Foundation, which will present her with its Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Literature on Feb. 5 in Memphis, during the KBA Awards dinner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was absolutely thrilled when I got the call,\u201d says Sullivan, publicity and marketing manager in UConn\u2019s Center for Continuing Studies. \u201cMy goal from day one was to ensure that Johnny’s legacy was captured in his own words in his lifetime. The Keeping the Blues Alive Award is recognition from the blues community that my book and Johnny’s contributions to the blues are now part of blues history.”<\/p>\n

The recognition places Sullivan in the company of such previous recipients of the award as the late Robert Palmer, author of Deep Blues<\/em> and a regular music contributor to The New York Times<\/em> and Rolling Stone Magazine<\/em>; Peter Guralnick, author of In Search of Robert Johnson<\/em>, the landmark two-volume biography of Elvis Presley \u2013 Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley <\/em>and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley<\/em>; and <\/em>Robert Gordon, <\/em>author of Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters<\/em>, and filmmaker of the PBS American Masters documentary \u201cCan’t Be Satisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Johnny<\/a>
Johnny Winter and Mary Lou Sullivan. Photo by Andrew "Drew Blood" Grzybowski<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After first meeting Winter when she was a news reporter and radio talk show host in Hartford, Sullivan thought the musician\u2019s story merited a book. But Winter\u2019s manager thought any biography should be postponed until the guitarist, then 41 years-old, could gain wider recognition. She stayed in touch with Winter\u2019s management over the years, and after doing an interview with the musician in 2001, began the process that led to starting work on the book in 2003. Sullivan pursued dozens of original interviews with people from Winter\u2019s past in order to provide an authoritative story.<\/p>\n

Winter\u2019s road to fame included a familiar litany of a musician\u2019s life, including losing money to bad management, drug addiction, the struggle for recognition, and a trail of ex-girlfriends.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a couple of times when I got different versions [of stories],\u201d she says. \u201cI wanted to get the story in Johnny\u2019s own words. I spent a year at his house in Connecticut on Saturdays interviewing him. I drank water. He drank vodka. It took a while for him to get comfortable with me. Once he did, he opened up. Johnny\u2019s an honest guy. That\u2019s one of the reasons I wanted to do the biography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Johnny<\/a>
Johnny Winter performs with Janis Joplin. Photo by Steve Banks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Throughout his career, Winter performed with such legendary musicians as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, James Cotton, Willie Dixon, and the performer who most influenced him \u2013 Muddy Waters. Eventually Winter was able to fulfill one of his musical dreams by playing with Waters on \u201cHard Again,\u201d an album he also produced and which won a Grammy Award.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Muddy Waters album was the first time he heard a slide guitar. It kind of freaked him out because he couldn\u2019t figure out what was happening,\u201d Sullivan says. \u201cJohnny loved Muddy Waters and wanted to spend time with him. When he was able to produce and play on Muddy’s four albums for the Blue Sky label, it was joyful for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says that while Winter admits to making many mistakes during his life and career, he seems to have found happiness as he enters his 60s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to characterize him. Is he a saint or a sinner? Who am I to judge? He\u2019s made some choices that weren\u2019t the smartest for him,\u201d she says. \u201cBut he\u2019s really happy. God bless him. From the time he was a kid, he thought he was going to be famous. To have that kind of confidence and to just keep at it. I don\u2019t have \u2018Johnny fever\u2019 anymore, like I did when I used to see him, but we did get to be good friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winter wrote the foreword to the book and indicated that he wanted all of his story told, the good and the bad. \u201cReading this book was emotional \u2013 the good stuff was great and the bad stuff was really horrible,\u201d he wrote. \u201cSome of the memories are painful, but I\u2019m glad they\u2019re in the book. To try to whitewash my life would have been horrible, that wouldn\u2019t have been worth reading.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan says she is grateful that Winter trusted her to tell his story truthfully.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was critical to me to get Johnny\u2019s story in his own words so after he left this Earth it would be an honest account and not be people telling their own story with their own slant,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Winter continues to perform on recordings and in concert. His latest release is a DVD titled \u201cJohnny Winter Live Through the \u201980s,\u201d and he recently completed work as a guest performer on Joe Louis Walker\u2019s latest compact disc, \u201cBlues Conspiracy.\u201d He will perform in Connecticut at the Wolf Den in the Mohegan Sun casino on Jan. 7, at Infinity Hall in Norfolk on Feb. 4, and at Toad\u2019s Place in New Haven on March 4, before completing his American tour and heading to Europe in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Blues Foundation honors UConn’s Mary Lou Sullivan for her biography of musician Johnny Winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-27215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 05:21:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27215"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36318,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27215\/revisions\/36318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27215"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=27215"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=27215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}