Introductions

Just as Johnny was arriving on The Vulcan Gas Company scene, Austin-based Sonobeat Records was finishing up recording sessions with The Conqueroo, the de facto Vulcan house band. On August 2nd, a hot and sticky Friday night, Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. stopped by the Vulcan expecting to see The Conqueroo perform, but, instead, an unfamiliar act, Johnny’s trio, was on stage playing to a packed house. Bill Sr. came away wowed. The next day, he ran into Johnny at Austin head shop Underground City Hall, where Johnny was purchasing a pair of sandals. The two struck up a conversation about Johnny’s Vulcan show the night before, which led to setting a date for a Sonobeat recording session and, as they say, the rest is history.

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The 45 RPM stereo single

Initially, Sonobeat elected to record and release a stereo 45 RPM single by the group, but Johnny had a wealth of material, both originals and covers, so the sessions weren’t strictly limited to recording two songs that would make up a single. The Joseys and Johnny would choose, later, which songs would be featured on the single.

To capture Johnny’s “guttural, edgy” sound (as CREEM Magazine writer Lester Bangs described it), Sonobeat recorded the Winter trio at The Vulcan, where they could play at full performance volume. Although the resulting tracks have a distinctive live sound, raw and primal, they were recorded during daylight hours, when The Vulcan was closed. On August 18, 1968 (a Sunday), and again the following day, with Uncle John’s drum kit on the Vulcan’s raised stage and Johnny’s and Tommy’s guitar amps on the dance floor, Sonobeat co-founder and producer Rim Kelley“Rim Kelley” was the pseudonym used by Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Jr. as a radio deejay in Austin, Texas, during the 1960s and as a Sonobeat producer from 1967 to 1970. used only half a dozen dynamic and two condenser microphones to cover the band. An additional mike, set up at the back of the hall, captured The Vulcan’s cavernous acoustics (owing to the giant empty cistern under The Vulcan’s floor). To set the mood, Vulcan Gas Company artist-in-residence Jim Franklin set up a pulsating liquid light showPut water and colored oils in a small glass tray, add heat and an overhead projector, and you get a kinetic visual experience that plays well with hallucinogens.. Although The Vulcan sessions weren’t recorded before a live audience, they were mixed “live”; that is, the instrumental tracks were mixed at the same time as recorded to a quarter-inch 2-track Ampex 354 tape deck through Sonobeat’s custom 10-input portable stereo recording console, and, therefore, could not be remixed. The vocals were overdubbed later in the same sessions by combining the instrumental track playback from one Ampex taoe deck with Johnny’s vocal overdubs to another Ampex. The Vulcan sessions yielded eight electrified and electrifying tracks on which Johnny played a 12-string Gibson Firebird V-12, from which he’d removed six strings, and a Fender Mustang.

Sonobeat knew even before it began the Winter sessions that it would issue a stereo 45 RPM single, so it commissioned legendary Austin music photographer Burton Wilson to attend the second session, on August 19th, to photograph Johnny and the band. Burton’s photos, some candid and some staged, ended up on both the Sonobeat single’s sleeve and, later, the jacket of the Imperial Records release of Sonobeat’s Johnny Winter album.

A week after The Vulcan sessions, Sonobeat recorded two acoustic tracks – featuring Johnny alone – in the cozy comfort of the Josey family living room in northwest Austin. Johnny multi-tracked National steel standard guitar, mandolin, mouth harp, and vocals on Sonobeat’s brand new half-inch 4-track Scully 280 recorder, which had been delivered to the Joseys too late to set up for Johnny’s Vulcan sessions. There was noticeably greater clarity in Johnny’s solo acoustic recordings, and, for a more intimate effect, they were mixed with shallow reverb.

Initially, in September 1968, Sonobeat released a Winter 45 RPM single featuring a high energy performance of McKinley Morgenfield’s Rollin’ and Tumblin’ (“A” side) and the guitar tour de force Mean Town Blues (“B” side), written by Johnny. The single was packaged in a black and white picture sleeve designed by producer Rim Kelley and featuring an appropriately stark photo of Johnny taken by Burton Wilson. An alternate, two-sided sleeve used film strips from Burton’s photo shoot for the backside of the single sleeve that appeared on as few as 100 copies of the single. Although Rim has no recollection of designing it, the Sonobeat archives include the black and white contact sheet that was used to create the backside of the ultra-rare alternate sleeve.

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The album

The August ’68 sessions with Johnny provided plenty of completed tracks from which the Sonobeat single was pulled. Only weeks after releasing the single, Sonobeat issued a limited edition white jacket advance pressing album consisting of ten tracks, including the two recorded at the Josey family home. Bill Josey Sr. named the album The Progressive Blues Experiment, inspired by his belief that Johnny’s music was blues-rock’s answer to the progressive rock movement that emerged at the end of the ’60s. The album tracks were culled from dozens of alternate takes and false starts; five tracks were original Winter compositions and five were covers. Sonobeat’s advance pressings were used to get early radio airplay and reviews and to market its recordings to larger national labels.

After recording the album, in October ’68 Johnny made a trip to the U.K. to check out its music scene. There he was introduced to the Vernon brothers who owned a young but successful London-based blues specialty label, Blue Horizon Records. Johnny played the Sonobeat album for the Vernons, and by November, Sonobeat had entered into negotiations to license The Progressive Blues Experiment to Blue Horizon for distribution in the U.K., Europe, and Canada. By the time Johnny returned to the U.S. in early December, a Rolling Stone magazine article by Larry Sepulvado and John Burks, proclaiming Johnny one of the hottest blues performers out of Texas, changed everything: wooed to New York by Steve Paul, owner of hot Manhattan nightclub Scene, Johnny signed a six-hundred thousand dollar contract with Columbia Records, the largest advance the label had ever given any artist at the time, who rushed him into its Nashville studios to cut an album in January ’69.

On the heels of the Rolling Stone article, Winter performed at San Francisco’s Fillmore West rock ’n’ roll music venue in a performance attended by Los Angeles-based Liberty Records execs, who wanted to see and hear firsthand what all the Johnny Winter commotion was about. In a frantic conversation with Johnny following the performance, the Liberty execs learned that Johnny already had an album “in the can”, got details, including Sonobeat’s Austin phone number, and immediately called Bill Josey Sr. to open negotiations. Bill Sr. put the Blue Horizon discussions on hold and, as Christmas week 1968 began, airmailed numbered copy #48 of the album advance pressing to Liberty’s Bud Dain and Eli Bird along with a short cover letter. From there, things moved lightning fast because Liberty was afraid they might lose the album: Eli called Bill Sr. on Friday, December 27th, to make what he hoped would be a preemptive offer. By January 15, 1969, after several negotiation phone calls, a deal was agreed and Bud and Eli ordered Liberty’s legal department to rush out a contract. Within little more than a week the contract was reviewed, negotiated, and signed. Immediately on closing the sale of The Progressive Blues Experiment to Liberty, Sonobeat ceased distribution of its Winter single (which featured two tracks from the album) and terminated negotiations with Blue Horizon. The Liberty deal done, the Joseys drove 1,400 miles to Los Angeles to hand deliver the master tapes to Liberty’s execs. The week of March 10, 1969, Liberty released the Sonobeat-produced album on its Imperial label (as LP-12431), beating Johnny’s Columbia debut album to market by two weeks. Thus, the Sonobeat album holds the distinction of being both the first Winter album recorded and the first released.

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Album co-producer Bill Josey Sr. summarized in his original 1969 album liner notes precisely what made Johnny’s The Progressive Blues Experiment a seminal work that would become as legendary as the great albino bluesman himself: “Winter is hard and heavy in his hypnotic blues bag. Before the recording session, there was Johnny Winter and his guitar. During the session, Johnny became the guitar.” To this day, The Progressive Blues Experiment is considered by blues aficionados and critics alike as one of Johnny Winter’s finest works.

Liberty Records, parent of Imperial Records, merged with United Artists Records in 1969; in 1973, United Artists reissued The Progressive Blues Experiment with new cover art under the title Austin, Texas. There have been multiple re-issues on CD, including a sort-of 30th anniversary edition released in 1999 on the Razor & Tie label; that release reinstated the original title and cover design. In 1979, EMI acquired United Artists Records (including its Liberty and Imperial labels), and EMI’s Capitol Records subsidiary created a 24-bit digital master for a spectacular 2005 CD reissue. The Progressive Blues Experiment is available worldwide on all major digital download and streaming platforms.

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Following his work on The Progressive Blues Experiment and Johnny’s first two Columbia albums, drummer Uncle John Turner formed seminal Austin band Krackerjack with former Winter bandmate Tommy Shannon and then-newcomer Stevie Ray Vaughn. Uncle John remained a major force in Austin’ss blues scene for four decades. Uncle John succumbed on July 26, 2007, to complications relating to hepatitis C and was posthumously inducted in the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2008.

Johnny produced three Grammy-winning blues albums – spanning 1977 to 1979 – with his muse, Muddy Waters. He was inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 1985, and, in 1988, into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, becoming the first non-African-American so inducted. On July 16, 2014, fans around the world mourned his death, which occurred during his European tour. Johnny left a legacy of great blues recordings spanning an almost 50 year musical career.

Tommy Shannon was inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 1996 and, in 2015, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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