Kurt Frank Winter (April 2, 1946 – December 14, 1997) was a Canadian guitarist and songwriter, best known as the lead guitarist for The Guess Who from 1970 to 1974.
Biography
Winter was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He attended Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute.[1] From the mid-1960s he was a member of several local Winnipeg rock bands, collaborating at various times with bassist Bill Wallace and drummer Vance Schmidt (later known as Vance Masters).[2][3][4] In 1969 Winter, Wallace, and Schmidt formed the band Brother, who were associates of The Guess Who.[1]
Kurt Winter (far left) was a guitarist for The Guess Who from 1970 to 1974
Guitarist Randy Bachman left The Guess Who in 1970, and that band's leader Burton Cummings recruited Winter and Greg Leskiw as Bachman's replacements.[2][3] Winter was with The Guess Who for four years and became one of the band's primary songwriters in tandem with Cummings.[5] After six studio albums, Winter left The Guess Who for undisclosed reasons in 1974,[5] and was replaced by Domenic Troiano. Winter briefly joined a lineup led by bassist Jim Kale in 1977–78, and contributed to the album Guess Who's Back.[6]
Winter then retired from the music industry and resided in Winnipeg for the rest of his life.[1] Burton Cummings invited Winter to write songs for his 1990s solo albums, though Winter chose a life away from music.[1] Winter suffered from health problems attributed to excessive alcohol use, and died at age 51 from kidney failure on December 14, 1997.[1] His alma mater, Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute, initiated an annual scholarship in Winter's name in 1998.[5] Cummings described Winter as "one of my fondest writing partners".[7]
