RIP Johnny Winter, Blues Legend

When Johnny Winter hit the scene back in the '60s, he looked and sounded like nothing else on the planet.

A ferocious blues guitar player with a snarling voice to match, Winter, who died Wednesday in a hotel room near Zurich, Switzerland, also cut a striking figure on stage with his thin, pale frame and long, white hair.

A 1968 Rolling Stone article described him as "a cross-eyed albino with long, fleecy hair, who plays some of the gutsiest, fluid blues you've ever heard."

If, as its mythology suggests, the blues comes from the crossroads, Winter found himself at a heavily trafficked intersection. Hailing from Beaumont, Texas, he's part of a line of Lone Star blues guitarists that stretches from Lightnin' Hopkins and T-Bone Walker to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson and beyond. Winter also arrived at a time when British rock guitarists were hearing the blues, then feeding it back to American audiences in new forms. Winter found himself right in the middle of all that, earning the admiration, even the awe, of those who heard him.

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South East Texas has produced a ton of famous musicians, athletes, and politicians. You may have heard of Mark Chesnutt, Tracy Bird, Bubba Smith, Jay Bruce, George Jones, Kendrick Perkins, Clay Walker, Edgar Winter, Kevin Millar, Jerry Ball, and Charlie Wilson just to name a few...