In the segregated Texas blues clubs of the 1950s and 60s, a lanky teenager with white hair and pale skin stepped up to the microphone and stopped the room cold. Johnny Winter, born in Beaumont, Texas in 1944 with albinism, grew up in a musical household, played ukulele on a children's television program at age 10, released his first record, School Day Blues, at 15 with Johnny and the Jammers, and spent his youth studying B.B. King, Bobby Bland and Muddy Waters in unforgiving roadhouses. After his 1968 debut The Progressive Blues Experiment on a small Austin label, a December 1968 Fillmore East appearance at the invitation of Mike Bloomfield led Columbia Records to sign him for a reported 600,000 dollar advance, said to be the largest in recording industry history at the time.

This episode traces Winter's 1969 self-titled Columbia debut with ...