Johnny Winter emerged on the national music scene in 1969 and created a sensation among rock and blues audiences. The first of his many hit albums for Columbia Records featured the song “Leland, Mississippi Blues,” which paid tribute to his roots in Leland, where his grandfather and father, a former mayor of Leland, operated the cotton business J. D. Winter & Son. Born in Texas in 1944, Winter spent parts of his childhood in Leland and came from a prominent family known for social, civic, business, and musical talent. His father, Leland native John Dawson Winter, Jr., played saxophone and guitar, sang at churches, weddings, civic gatherings, barbershop singing contests, and front porch concerts with the family band, and served as mayor from 1936 until leaving for military service in 1941. Johnny Winter and his younger brother Edgar were encouraged by their parents to perform as youngsters and were recording while still in their teens, playing rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and R&B. Although Winter spent early childhood in the Mississippi Delta, he discovered the blues in Texas while listening to the radio with the family’s African American maid. Inspired by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B. B. King, Robert Johnson, and Bobby Bland, he developed a fiery electric blend of rock and blues that drew national attention in the late 1960s. His self-titled 1969 album Johnny Winter, featuring Mississippi natives Willie Dixon and Big Walter Horton, established him as a premier figure in high-energy blues-rock circles, and he later recorded several more Columbia albums that reached the national charts. Edgar Winter also built a successful recording career, playing on Second Winter and later scoring 1970s pop hits with “Frankenstein” and “Free Ride.” In later years Johnny Winter produced albums by Muddy Waters and recorded with the Muddy Waters band, James Cotton, John Lee Hooker, and other Mississippians. In 1988, after recording three albums for Alligator Records in Chicago, he became the first white musician elected to the Blues Hall of Fame.