Free Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) by Mary Lou Sullivan

to drink and dance. We had four pieces— guitar, piano, bass, and drums. Sometimes I played the tenor guitar and then we had two guitars, bass, and drum.”
    A raucous backwoods club located next to a swamp, Tom’s Fish Camp attracted patrons that often drank to excess. Drugan remembers one night that had the band scrambling to get out as quickly as possible.
    “There was a big fight, but we never told Johnny’s parents because that would have been the last time we played there,” he said. “One night a couple who had just gotten married came there for their wedding night. The bride was dancing with another guy and the husband was chasing him around with a baseball bat. Then everybody started fighting, and a girl started tearing the bride’s wedding dress all up.
    “Johnny was handing the instruments out the back window saying, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ It was a swampy area so you couldn’t run too far in the back without being eaten by alligators. Johnny’s going, ‘My amplifier is still in there—we have to get it out.’ The bottles started flying out the windows, and I said, ‘I’m not going in there.’ It was a mess, but by the next week, it was cleaned up and we played again.”
    Even then, Johnny took his gigs very seriously. He was committed to playing both sets, no matter what condition his musicians were in.
    “One time we were fooling around outside,” said Drugan. “I was shooting off fireworks and one of ’em went off in my hand. I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play, Johnny. My hand is really smarting.’ Johnny was so mad, he said, ‘Oh yes, you are.’ I wound up playing anyway.”
    Johnny was the only band member with a fake ID, but as long as the band drew a good crowd, it was never an issue. “They never questioned our age,” said Drugan. “I can’t ever remember police coming there or anybody checking people who went in there. It was a local sheriff and he probably looked the other way. I remember Tom and Tiny said, ‘You boys really play good guitar—keep playing like that and you’ll be here every week.’ We played there for awhile.”
    Johnny and the Jammers had an extensive repertoire of songs, including blues, R&B, and rock ‘n’ roll. Ray Charles, a favorite of both Johnny and Edgar, was well represented, as were songs by Buddy Holly, as well as the Crickets, including “Peggy Sue,” “That’ll Be the Day,” “Oh, Boy,” and “Maybe Baby.” They always played Chuck Berry’s rock ‘n’ roll anthem, a song Johnny would call his own for nearly thirty years.
    “‘Johnny B. Goode’ was always one of my favorite songs,” says Johnny with a laugh. “I got a lot of leverage out of that song.”
    Although Johnny was the lead vocalist, Edgar would pitch in on vocals. “I would sing maybe three or four songs a night,” said Edgar. “Johnny would sing the lead and I would find the harmony part; we would work up the songs and the arrangement that way.”
    Johnny’s innate feel for music allowed the band to play the latest rock ‘n’ roll hits on the Billboard charts, as well as songs by classic blues artists.
    “We had about fifty songs when we first started playing because of Johnny’s ability to learn songs so fast,” said Drugan. “He probably knew at least one hundred songs by the time he was nineteen. He was very good at remembering songs. If he didn’t, he put his own lead or whatever he needed in there. We’d get calls for Elvis Presley songs—that was one of Johnny’s favorites. We played ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ once because a guy gave us ten dollars to play it. Johnny saw the ten-dollar bill and said, ‘We know that song.’ It was amazing the amount of songs Johnny could come up with. When somebody wanted country and western songs I’d never heard of, Johnny could play them just from hearing them on the radio. He’d pick up the melody and that was that.”

     
    Johnny initially achieved his dream of playing onstage