Winkle keeps drumming along in life

Oct. 28—Johnny Winkle seemed destined to drum, ever since an Alice Robertson Junior High band director met him in fifth grade. He kept drumming all the way through high school, even winning a Best Jazz Musician award.

Playing professionally was far from his mind in high school.

"Back in those days in the 70s and late 60s , if somebody became famous, they had some kind of an issue and they died, so I didn't want to do that," he said.

Instead, Winkle joined the Navy, where he worked on a submarine — 135 feet long and 16 feet wide.

"It was like being in a physical plant of a building," he said. "It's all pipes conduit, wiring, sprinkler systems, controls, It's like that throughout the submarine. There are a lot of electric panels."

He worked as a missile technician.

"Part maintenance and testing of Trident C4 nuclear missile," he said. "Part of that duty was to crawl inside of the missiles installing electronics packages for guidance."

After three years in the Navy, he attended Northeastern State University, then lived in Tulsa.

"I did all kinds of things, I did maintenance at Woodland Hills Mall, I worked for Muskogee Supply and McAdams Pipe and Supply doing vending machine repair. I worked at a heat treating plant."

He also got back into drumming, playing with a variety of area groups.

Cowboy Jones "is Red Dirt and kind of country and Americana group."

A.H. Pierce and the Arrows "is more of a blues rock."

Bebo McDaniel and the Evildoers "is probably more blues than just about anything."

He spent most of his time with Muskogee's Wild Card Band.

Winkle found more time to drum and teach drumming since moving back to Muskogee two years ago. He drums with the Muskogee Community Band and works at Zomac Music.

"Once I got down here and pretty much semi retired, it opened up more time for me to do it," he said. "After 50 years, I'm still learning."

Didn't have the lips for a horn

Johnny Winkle traces his drumming instinct to the fifth grade.

"A band director from AR came around and asked to speak to the kids who wanted to join the band," Winkle said. "He handed me a trumpet mouthpiece and had me buzz my lips in it, then he handed me a clarinet mouthpiece and had me try to make a sound out of it, then he told me he was going to make me a percussionist. That is exactly how it happened. He saw that I didn't have the embouchure (lip placement) for horns."

But Winkle didn't become a percussionist. He became a drummer.

"Jerry Huffer kind of set sights on me to have me as a lead snare drummer when I got to high school," Winkle said. "I guess I caught on to the basic rudiments that he was teaching faster than some other students. I worked really hard on reading the music."

Winkle took snare drum lessons through junior high.

"I never had any designs to play xylophone or marimba or anything like that," he said. "Today I wish I had, I wish I could play the piano."

Making music just comes natural

Winkle has drummed with Muskogee's Wild Card Band, which has been going for 25 years.

"There's a unique magic when the right combination of people get together and play music," he said. "Part of it is that we all get along very well. There's no ego and there's no drama. We just enjoy getting together to play music, and I think our varied backgrounds help us, too. We've all played in country bands and pop bands and rock bands over the years. Not many songs are too daunting to look at and cover."

He described the music as eclectic.

"We've done so many things over the years," he said. "We'll play anything."

They also play original songs.

Wild Card plays about twice a month, which Winkle said is "not as much as we used to."

"We have served as a rhythm section for large groups with horns and singers. "We've added people to our group, invited guests from time to time."

Not indifferent to what kind of drums

Winkle has five different sets of drums, including a standard five-piece set.

He played a four-piece set at a recent celebration at the Jack C. Montgomery VA medical center.

Then there's his foot drum.

"It has pedals you operate it all with your feet," he said. "You can have a snare drum mounted, a cowbell, cymbals, shakers and a tambourine."

He played a Kickboxx drum while playing with Cowboy Jones at a Guthrie Bluegrass Festival.

"It's a wooden box with a drumhead on it and you can hook up a kick pedal to it and it will work as a bass drum," he said. "I have flat mounts on it as well."

The set is easier to tote than a regular drum set, he said. "Drummers always have the most stuff."

He grooves on whatever he plays.

"When I'm drumming and everything is clicking and the sound is good and we're locked in, I go into what's almost a trance," he said. "It's amazing to me because I can actually just close my eyes and be in the zone. I can't say enough about it brings me great joy. It's a strange thing to experience. It almost feels like the eyes are in back of my head and I can just play."

HOW DID YOU COME TO BE AN OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE?

"I was born and raised here, came back after the Navy, then left again and went to Tulsa to work there. I lived there for 25 to 30 years. I was down here a lot playing music. There were a lot of people down here who played music, and my wife sat on a couple of boards. We were coming down here a lot, so we decided we should just come down here, since we were getting ready to retire anyway."

WHAT DO YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT MUSKOGEE?

"I like being involved in the music industry here. I think it's a vastly yet-to-be-realized untapped source of a lot of talent."

WHAT WOULD MAKE MUSKOGEE A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE?

"A little more participation from the citizens in the beautification process, as far as keeping your area looking nice. I think a lot of times, an area of a neighborhood gets run down or overgrown that people in that area should go over and clean up that piece of property, especially the derelict ones. I'd like to see more participation on Thursdays here at the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame."

WHAT PERSON IN MUSKOGEE DO YOU ADMIRE MOST?

"Jerry Huffer. He was our band director when I was in high school. He was very strict with us, but we had 300 kids in the band, so I felt he always needed to be strict because it wouldn't take long for 300 kids to get completely out of hand."

WHAT IS THE MOST MEMORABLE THING TO HAPPEN TO YOU IN MUSKOGEE?

"Being voted Most Outstanding Jazz Musician my senior year. It almost never went to a drummer. We had a lot of horn players over the years and guitarists, pianists and bass players, But it almost never went to a drummer."

WHAT DO YOU DO IN YOUR SPARE TIME?

"I love to play my guitars at the house. I play guitar. I've got a ukulele, I like to pick around on that some. Play with my pets. We've got a dog that's a mixed breed named Riley and we have two cats, Dottie and Piper.

HOW WOULD YOU SUM UP MUSKOGEE IN 25 WORDS OR LESS?

"A town on the brink of living up to its notoriety."