The Ballad of Stevie Ray Vaughan

People talk about legends and even consider them Gods at what they do. When people talk about guitars, they talk about Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, the superstars of Blues & Rock during the 60s & 70s. They were astonishing, stunning for the audience who were now hooked into Blues-Rock. However, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a local blues guitarist from Texas wasn’t making commercial records; instead he was playing his crazy guitar all over the southern states of America with various bands. He was spreading that good old Blues with the fusion of amplified Rock music. Wherever he played, or with whomever he jammed along, he stunned them from their core with unique guitar style and skills that is considered unmatchable. In the early 80s, when he finally began to be noticed by most popular record producers and musicians of the time, he and his band Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble began to make commercial records releasing hits after hits till the end of the decade. A young legend who was praised by every other legends and criticized by very few, he hooked the young generation with the magic of Blues, shortly reviving the genre and leaving behind such an impression that still chills and stuns anyone who hears his records.When I talk about SRV (Stevie Ray Vaughan), people might feel that I exaggerate a lot, but for any blues and guitar fan out there, they might understand what I’m talking about, because the people might consider Eric Clapton a little overrated, Jimmy Page as not so great, Hendrix as an odd musician or show off but when they listen to Stevie Ray, the guitarist with a hat like Zorro’s, they will have their fucking brains blown out by his heavy solos and riffs. 

A son of a World War II veteran, he lived a troubled life as his family moved time to time at different places all over southern USA. His interest on guitar developed at early age of 7 being inspired by his brother Jimmy Vaughan who later became a popular blues guitarist. His first guitar was a toy with three strings on it but he took it and tried to practice with it. Jimmy Vaughan

The Brooklyn Underground with Stevie Ray

later recalls about his small brother who always played his guitar while he was gone and how he used to get angry when Stevie used to touch his guitar. Due to all the financial problems, their parents wanted their sons to quit chasing music and focus more on studies, but Jimmy left the house soon after and Stevie was left in a house which was breaking apart mostly due to his father’s drinking problems and domestic violence. But that didn’t stop him to play his guitar, he never learned to read music, not even in schools, he was terrible at school as he was failing in his grades. He learned music through his eyes and ears. By the time he was 12, he had already developed his guitar skills experimenting with electric guitars, amplifiers and jamming along bands in school and all around Dallas, Texas. But his financial troubles compelled him to work at restaurants where he dumped trashes and washed dishes all day long. It was until one day when God decided to throw him on a barrel of grease in which he was covered up till his shoulders, at instant he quit his job and focused in his music career.

 1960s, Little Stevie Ray In Texas

 

In the late 60s, when British Rock, and British Blues artists were ruling the charts, Jimi Hendrix travelled to UK to come out as a Guitar God. An African-American who came from the land where the blues began had to go to another foreign land to play the blues and achieve mainstream success. Meanwhile, Stevie Ray was in Dallas jumping from one band to another. When he was 14 he had joined Southern Distributor in 1969, a local band where

The Blackbirds

he played Jeff Beck’s (formal Yardbirds member) “Jeff’s Boogie” to audition for the band. A kid covering that song was kind of a miracle. Mike Steinbach, the group's drummer, commented: "The kid was fourteen. We auditioned him on 'Jeff's Boogie,' really fast instrumental guitar, and he played it note for note.” That was the beginning of Stevie’s career, for the entire decade, he kept on moving from band to band. He was still in school but soon abandoned school after he lacked time for rehearsals. Soon, Stevie formed his own band named “BlackBird” after getting tired of playing pop/rock music. He was told that playing blues won’t be enough to make a living so he moved to Austin, Texas with the band where Blues-Rock was flourishing. Stevie was getting recognition all around Texas and Mississippi where legendary bluesmen like Albert King, Otis Rush, Muddy Waters used to tour for their concerts. They were the locals down at the south and Stevie had finally received a chance to jam alongside Albert King. Albert King recalled about his experience while jamming with the young kid Stevie in 1973 at Austin. Albert used to play a piece and Stevie used to play the exact same piece at instant in his guitar without breaking a sweat, and the most amazing fact was that he was a small kid maybe 17 by that time. Later in 1983 when Albert King was set to do a live television album named In Session he was

In Session : Stevie Ray Vaughan & Albert King

supposed to be joined by Stevie Ray Vaughan (who had recently released his first studio album) but at first King denied because he didn’t know who Stevie Ray was, only later he realized that Stevie was that little Stevie kid he had allowed to jam along when he was in Austin back in 1973. After realizing that the kid was now an established blues musicians he happily agreed to play alongside SRV.     

 

 

 

 

1970s, The Blues-Rock Bands 

In late 70s, the Blackbird was already dissolve and Stevie was in a band called Paul Ray & The Cobras, they played at different venues jamming along with blues legends like Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers etc. The Cobras were famous in the south and had even recorded a hit single “Other Days” that featured SRV as the lead guitarist. SRV was achieving success; till 1977 the Cobras were playing music and touring across

Stevie Ray Vaughan in Austin, Texas

USA until they decided to chase for a mainstream success that meant leaving the blues behind. Stevie left the band and formed his own band, he knew that he wasn’t set to play music for commercial success and leaving the blues behind wasn’t an option. He formed his own band named Triple Threat Revue which included singer Lou Ann Barton, bassist W. C. Clark, and drummer Fredde Pharaoh. In January of 1978, they recorded four songs in Austin, including Vaughan's composition "I'm Cryin'". The thirty-minute audio recording marks the only known studio recording of the band. The band was renamed Double Trouble after Barton, Clark and Pharaoh left the band being replaced by Jackie Newhouse & Jack Moore with Stevie doing both vocals and lead guitar. The name was inspired by Otis Rush’s song. Soon, Moore and Newhouse were replaced by Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon. In 1982, The Double Trouble Band appeared on Monteux Jazz Festival in Switzerland where the band played and many were impressed but also few booed, there were boos because the crowd was not there to listen to Blues-Rock with heavy guitar riffs and solos, fast tempos and shuffle rhythms, many preferred Jazz and Chicago Blues. SRV was highly disappointed, he recalled that day stating, "It wasn't the whole crowd [that booed]. It was just a few people sitting right up front. The room there was built for acoustic jazz. When five or six people boo, wow. It sounds like the whole world hates you. They thought we were too loud, but shoot, I had four army blankets folded over my amp, and the volume level was on 2. I'm used to playin' on 10!". Vaughan opened with a medley arrangement of Freddie King's song "Hide Away" and his own fast instrumental composition, "Rude Mood". Double Trouble went on to perform renditions of Larry Davis' "Texas Flood", Hound Dog Taylor's "Give Me Back My Wig", and Albert Collins' "Collins Shuffle", as well as three original compositions: "Pride and Joy", "Love Struck Baby", and "Dirty Pool". Although the set ended with boos from the audience, People's James McBride wrote:  "He seemed to come out of nowhere, a Zorro-type figure in a riverboat gambler's hat, roaring into the '82 Montreux festival with a '59 Stratocaster at his hip and two flame-throwing sidekicks he called Double Trouble. He had no album, no record contract, no name, but he reduced the stage to a pile of smoking cinders and, afterward, everyone wanted to know who he was."

Mainstream Success, Addiction & Rehabilation

The Monteux Jazz Festival was the band’s biggest night, it was their big break, their performance caught the attention of the famous pop/rock icons of the 70s, David Bowie and Jackson Browne. After Double Trouble's performance, Bowie telephoned Stevie and asked him to play on his forthcoming album Let’s Dance, while Browne offered the group free recording time at his Los Angeles studio, Downtown. Stevie Ray and his bandmates were signed to a record deal with Epic, where they were put in the capable hands of legendary musician and producer, John Hammond, Sr. After that, there was the release of “Texas Flood” that went to charts reaching No.31

SRV & Double Trouble in Monteux Jazz Festival

followed by another album “Couldn’t Stand The Weather” reaching the charts again. Texas Flood might be SRV’s first studio album but it is an epic album that clearly demonstrated the band’s ability, the album solely brought back Blues-Rock into the early 80s. In the 70s, Blues-Rock was being highly ignored by the success of Country-Rock, Glam-Rock, Progressive-Rock and other sub genres, but SRV and Double Trouble were the face of Blues-Rock in the 80s, its not that Blues artists like Clapton or Beck had stopped producing records, they were just more focused on tours. Stevie Ray Vaughan was in whole new level. With the popularity of MTV, the band had also recorded live sessions and official music videos at the time, one for Crossfire from Stevie Ray’s album In Step for which he won a Grammy Award. He was finally an established blues musicians like his brother Jimmy was. But, his major enemy was drugs and alcohol. He was into alcohol before he was a teenager, his dad’s alcoholism attracted him to try all kinds of liquor, while growing up he was eventually introduced to marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine. But Cocaine and Alcohol became his major drug. In 1979, when Double Trouble was supposed to be backing band for the legendary Muddy Waters, SRV was bailing out of jail after being arrested for cocaine possession. Muddy Waters, who observed Vaughan's substance abuse commented: "Stevie could perhaps be the greatest guitar player that ever lived, but he won't live to get 40 years old if he doesn't leave that white powder alone."  Not only Muddy, many of Stevie’s colleagues who realized that he was highly dependent into alcohol and drugs had commented that he won’t live for long and that will be a great tragedy, another great musician washed away by narcotics. Stevie couldn’t live without alcohol and cocaine, during the height of his addiction he was completely engulfed by alcohol and cocaine, he used quarter ounce of cocaine every day. Vaughan recalled his days, "It got to the point where if I'd try to say "Hi" to somebody, I would just fall apart crying. It was like solid doom.” In September 1986, Double Trouble traveled to Denmark for a one-month tour of Europe. In September 28, 1986 Vaughan became sick after a performance in Ludwigshafen, Germany, he suffered from near-death dehydration, for which he received medical treatment. He checked into The London Clinic, the Doctor warned him that he was a month away from death. After staying in London for more than a week, he returned to the United States and entered Peachford Hospital in Atlanta, where he spent four weeks in rehabilitation.

Jimmy Vaughan with Stevie Ray Vaughan

After the rehabilitation, he was a changed man, he was back healthy rehearsing with the band for the next Live Alive Tour, On August 6, 1987, Double Trouble appeared at the Austin Aqua Festival, where they played to one of the largest audiences of their career. In May 1988, which included a concert at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, the band was booked for a European leg, which included 22 performances, and ended in Oulu, Finland on July 17. This would be Vaughan's last concert appearance in Europe. In 1989, In Step was released that turned out to be the band’s final studio album. After all the success and fame, Stevie was back in Dallas, living in Dallas and finally getting a chance to make a record featuring his big brother Jimmy Vaughan. In 1990, Jimmy Vaughan and SRV were recording together for the album “Family Style”. In the same year, SRV was invited to a concert featuring all the great Blues musicians at Alpine Valley

Robert Cray, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan &Jimmy Vaughan

Music in Wisconsin. There was Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray and Jimmie Vaughan. On August 26, 1990, after performing in the event, just after midnight, Stevie hopped on a helicopter bound for Chicago. Contending with dense fog, the helicopter crashed into hilly field just minutes after take-off, killing everyone on board. The other people included agent Bobby Brooks, Clapton’s entourage Nigel Browne, and assistant tour manager Colin Smythe. At 4:30 am, Civil Air Patrol was notified of the accident, eventually locating the crash site almost three hours later. Meanwhile, Clatpon and Jimmy Vaughan were jamming alongside, after they heard about the accident both Clapton and Jimmie Vaughan were asked to identify the bodies; a Coptic cross necklace, worn by Vaughan, was given to Jimmie Vaughan. It was a tragic day, the death of another blues guitarist, maybe the finest one and the drugs didn’t took him away, and that was a surprise. 

Remembering Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan Memorial, Austin, Texas

 

No matter how he died, Stevie Ray Vaughan is remembered for his days, his concerts in which he stunned the world with his guitar skills and voice, he somehow managed to revive the blues and showed the world that guitar solos and riffs were not yet dead, his skills influencned and inspired so many new musicians and guitarists. He had his own personality and people don’t remember him as a guitarist who died in a tragic accident, they remember man who lived in a time when people had forgotten how crazy and face melting guitar solos are, he wasn’t like AC/DC, nor he was like the Cream or Aerosmith, he and the Double Trouble were the band who kept the blues alive till this day, leaving behind such performances and skills that cannot be compared. Every new blues artist we see now like John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr, Albert Cummings, guitarists like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or even Rock artists, they were all at some point inspired to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Since his death, many compilation albums, early recording and biographies/videos of him has been released as a tribute. Stevie Ray Vaughan Memorial, a bronze sculpture of Stevie Ray Vaughan by Ralph Helmick is located at the intersection of Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail (South Bank at South 1st and Riverside Drive) in Austin, Texas, in the United States. The work was installed in 1994 and is maintained by Austin Parks & Recreation.

2015 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame

In 2015 Rock Hall Of Fame, the young artists gave SRV a beautiful tribute, the artistson stage took turns singing verses on "Pride and Joy." John Mayer kicked the run of solos off, followed by Doyle Bramhall II and the brilliant Gary Clark Jr., whose bluesy tone was easily the best fit for the song. Jimmie Vaughan, the older brother of the late SRV got in on the act with his own solo, honoring his brother. There are lots of books and documentaries still being produced in honor of the Texas legendary bluesman and guitarist.

  

2015 Rock Hall of Fame Tribute To Stevie Ray Vaughan