Just because!
Scuttle Buttin - Live at Montreux 1985
Vaughan co-produced Texas Flood with his Double Trouble bandmates–bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton–and Richard Mullen, who also engineered the sessions. I met up with Mullen at Austin’s Arlyn Studios in 1996, while he was engineering and co-producing Eric Johnson’s Venus Isle album. During a break, we spoke about the Texas Flood sessions. “Ninety-eight percent of all of Stevie’s records were done straight live,” Mullen explained. “Stevie was relatively fearless in the studio. He was a real performer in the sense that he didn’t think too much about the technical things. Once he got out there and started playing, he was just enveloped in the music. You could see that when he played live, and he wasn’t any different in the studio. If he was into it, you’d see him do his little dance steps all over the studio, just like he was playing for 10,000 people. There were hardly any overdubs at all. Just about the only overdubs were vocals and an occasional rhythm part over a lead, but the basic guitar parts on the studio records were all done live. And they were almost always judged on Stevie’s performance. If someone in the band made a bonk but Stevie played great, we’d say, ‘Well, that’s it. Let’s just go with that.’
- by Jas Obrecht
Stevie Ray VaughanPharoah SandersVan Dyke ParksMaria McKee
One of the more revered moments in Austin musical lore is the night in 1975-76 when a skinny young kid known back then as "Little Stevie" got onstage at Antone's, then newly opened on Sixth Street, to jam with blues master Albert King. Consequently, the two blues slingers were well acquainted when they reunited on Canadian TV in late 1983 for In Session. The resulting album is noteworthy if for no other reason than it brings together the two most influential blues guitarists of the past 30 years. King, long the blues colossus who had influenced several generations of blues players, was in tip-top form at that point, while Vaughan, having already forged his now-familiar style that often quoted King note-for-note, was on the cusp on stardom.After recording In Session, they performed together one last time in 1987 with B.B. King for his “Night of Blistering Blues” in Los Angeles at the Ebony Showcase Theater.The story and enduring legacy of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King proves that sometimes you can—and should—meet your heroes. Even though King influenced some of the greatest guitarists in history, from Jimi Hendrix to Eric Clapton to Joe Walsh, it’s clear that he viewed Vaughan as his worthy successor. “If you play too fast or too loud, you cancel yourself out. Once you lose the feeling, you got nothing but a show going on. It’s not deep,” King said. “No doubt about it, Stevie had what it takes.”
I don’t quite understand how I have not shared any Jeff Healey before and this is truly extraordinary
Here with Dr John playing perhaps his most famous hit. Known mostly from his rock/blues covers, Healy lost his eyes (literally) as a child to cancer and scarcely made it into his forties as it came back to claim him but in the short time he was with us I don’t really understand how he plays with his affliction [of being unable to actually see what he is doing] but also playing with his left hand approaching the fretboard like a ruddy keyboard!
See The Light* - Jeff Healy
Jeff Healey in 1988 on the Jools Holland/David Sanborn hosted, 'Night Music'. Dr. John on piano, Marcus Miller on bass, Omar Hakim on drums... quite possibly one of the hottest bands ever assembled! This clip screams pure joy. It's a blast watching Marcus lose it as Jeff takes it to another level.
Jeff Healey and Stevie Ray Vaughan perform, 'Look At Little Sister' Live on CBC with Double Trouble in 1987!Official Jeff Healey Documentary Teaser -* SEE THE LIGHT: The Jeff Healey Story ...https://youtu.be/TfYmPc997Qo?si=kKRvXJCR83ghXM5n
Two favourites and a favourite song first bought at 13 years old (precocious little freak that I was! ) by Chris Farlowe ( as Little Joe Cook featuring a young Albert Lee on guitar)
Check how Albert plays his guitar here and how it’s strung (if you didn’t know!?) . . . . only Jimi could do that in my experience but hey well he could play it either way up to be fair and was truly ambidextrous and not left handed as many assumed . . . . . . . this with Albert is strung the right way but played left handed and therefore upside down !!!!
STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN - TEXAS 1981 | Heavy Bootz
The good Dr excels again . . . . . . . (wonder where he got his medical degree?!) This is really nice and I didn’t have it, so have at it. It’s a tad ‘light' but none the worse for a bit of knob twiddling! Go on twiddle your equaliser, you know you want to add a bit of bass boost and there you are . . . . .
CD101 Collin's Shuffle *02 In The Open *03 Come On (Part III) *04 Look At Little Sister *05 Thunderbird06 The Sky Is Crying07 I'm Cryin'08 Crosscut Saw09 Shake For Me10 Wham!CD211 Hideaway12 So Excited13 Pride & Joy *14 Tin Pan Alley15 Love Struck Baby16 May I Have Talk With You17 Letter To My Girlfriend *18 Little Wing19 Manic DepressionCD320 Boilermaker *21 Close To You22 You'll Be Mine23 You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now24 Empty Arms25 Slide Thing26 I'm Leaving You (Commit A Crime) *27 Texas Flood28 Rude Mood29 Don't Lose Your Cooltt: 2:35:11
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble - Look at Little Sister
I was reading Stevie Ray Vaughan on guitar influences and amongst the blues masters like BB King, Albert King and others he mentioned Lonnie Mack who I did not know certaonly not from back in the day and don’t think he ‘travelled' to the degree we had heard of him over here like Link Wray and others . . . but this is why Stevie mentioned him
Lonnie Mack - Wham
yesterday was the anniversary of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s birth so post’s included these . . . . . . . . . .
The first time that Buddy Guy, quite possibly the greatest living blues guitarist, heard Stevie Ray Vaughan play, he couldn’t believe it. “He was hitting them notes and made me feel like I should go in the audience and watch so I could learn something,” says Guy in Alan Paul and Andy Aledort’s illuminating oral history, “Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan.”
Lots of people felt the same way. During his brief, blazing time in the spotlight — just seven years passed between the acclaimed debut album that gives this book its title and the 1990 helicopter crash that killed him at age 35 — Vaughan seemed to represent the culmination of the guitar hero era, absorbing the influences of masters from B.B. King to Lonnie Mack to (especially) Jimi Hendrix and spinning them into endlessly inventive, laser-sharp fretwork. “Stevie had the intensity of rock with the deep feeling of the blues,” says Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers Band and Gov’t Mule. “That was a lethal combination.”
It’s hard to think of anyone since Vaughan who has generated the same excitement around the guitar. Maybe those days are gone. But the burning intensity of his playing hasn’t dulled in the almost 30 years since his death. “He was probably the most fierce of the bluesmen I’ve ever heard,” says Bonnie Raitt. “He was playing as if his life depended on it, and it did.”
By Alan Light / NY Times
"Most folks know this song from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s 1983 version titled “Tin Pan Alley (aka Roughest Place In Town).” Surprisingly this song also traces it’s roots back to the 30’s. The first song with the title “Tin Pan Alley” was cut by pianist Curtis Jones for Okeh in 1941. Lyrically this is a different song but the melody is similar. This song is a close kin to “Bad Avenue Blues” which was cut by Jones in 1937 for Bluebird. The song may have been based on an earlier song about a rough neighborhood by pianist Walter Roland as “45 Pistol Blues” for ARC in 1935. The song we know today stems from Jimmy Wilson’s doom laden “Tin Pan Alley” cut for Big Town in 1953 and credited as being written by record man Bob Geddins who operated a number of small West Coast labels. Other notable versions were cut by Johnny Fuller as “Roughest Place In Town” (1956), James Reed’s “Roughest Place In Town” and Ray Agee’s “Tin Pan Alley” for the Sahara label (1963)." Truefire
"Most folks know this song from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s 1983 version titled “Tin Pan Alley (aka Roughest Place In Town).” Surprisingly this song also traces it’s roots back to the 30’s. The first song with the title “Tin Pan Alley” was cut by pianist Curtis Jones for Okeh in 1941. Lyrically this is a different song but the melody is similar. This song is a close kin to “Bad Avenue Blues” which was cut by Jones in 1937 for Bluebird. The song may have been based on an earlier song about a rough neighborhood by pianist Walter Roland as “45 Pistol Blues” for ARC in 1935. The song we know today stems from Jimmy Wilson’s doom laden “Tin Pan Alley” cut for Big Town in 1953 and credited as being written by record man Bob Geddins who operated a number of small West Coast labels
Speaking of guitars, this one is for my son Matthew who has a special edition of this superb Stevie Ray Vaughan album coming from his music club VMP [Vinyl Me, Please - well worth finding out about]
Chris Layton: Countless people have told me how much they loved Stevie’s guitar tone on Texas Flood. There was literally nothing between the guitar and the amp. It was just his Number One Strat plugged into a Dumble amp called Mother Dumble, which was owned by Jackson Browne. The real tone just came from Stevie, and that whole recording was so pure; the whole experience couldn’t have been more innocent or naïve. If we had known what was going to happen with it all, we might have screwed up. We just played. The magic was there, and it came through on the tape.
He touched people in such a way that it was irrelevant that he played the guitar, that he played a Stratocaster, that he played the blues. It had nothing to do with any of that. Stevie was able to grab on to something that people struggle to express in their own lives and do it for them. That connection was there, even if they couldn’t identify what it was about it that moved them so much.
Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan
by Alan Paul, Andy Aledort
Some notes from the ‘tinterwebbie mcthingie!
Nearly forgot Ry Cooder’s birthday alongside this staggering portrait photo
"In my point of view, it’s that when I was younger, let’s say 12 or 13, what I was trying to do was to learn how to play like the records. I heard banjo. Bluegrass. I said, “I’m going to learn to do that.”
Not to copy somebody—you don’t wanna play exactly like Earl Scruggs note-for-note. I never wanted to do that, but just get to where I could play that type of music, which was great because later on, when I was recording, if I felt I needed some skills, I knew I could play blues and I understood open tunings. Therefore, if I want to play a Blind Blake song, I knew exactly what those notes were. So that I could play it, and I could please myself and then hear it back in the recording studio. That’s a key difference because you don’t do that. I knew you never wanted to be somebody who studied source materials, with the idea that you were gonna replicate Uncle Dave Macon on the array mbira.
It’s interpretive, of course, but it’s completely unexampled and completely creative and new. New being a kind of a silly word, but I mean different. A way to re-envision. But somebody like me or somebody like Dan Gellert and Rayna Gellert, for that matter, on fiddle, we learned the original because we liked it. So, when you hear something you like, you want to do it, too. That’s all. I wanted to do it well. But you don’t necessarily stop there. Because I always knew if I was gonna record, there would be very little point in doing all that music, whether it was Charlie Poole or Lead Belly or Blind Blake or somebody, note-for-note wouldn’t work because they already did it, so it was already done to perfection. If you love the record so much, you’re so impressed with this—so imprinted by it—then you had to do something about it. But what was that gonna be? That was gonna be to develop it a little and see how far you could go or see what sounded good. Do you like the playback? Go in the booth and listen. Got to record. Fantastic. Did I succeed? I don’t know. Sometimes I thought the ideas were good, the execution was questionable. But what you did with this record and have been doing for quite some time, is to completely recast the whole entire thing."
Interview By Whalebone
Jerry Garcia in front of the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound” in 1974. The PA system would come to weigh more than 70 tons, and contain hundreds of amps and speakers that stood over three stories tall and 100 feet wide.
and people wondered how rock stars ended up with tinnitus?
Did you think of Jimi as coming out of the blues tradition?
Stevie Ray Vaughan: Some people don’t see it. Some people really do see it. See, I don’t know whether to call Hendrix a blues player along with a lot of the originals, but he did go and play with a lot of those people. He did do a lot of it during that heyday, before he got famous. It’s like he was on the tail end of something.
- That whole R&B movement.
SRV: Yeah. And a lot of it wasn’t even the tail end. A lot of it was the peak of it. He was doing that stuff as it was going on, you know. See, in his music, I hear not just the newer stuff that everybody seems to think was a lot different – and a lot of it is – but to my ears, there’s just as much of the old-style warmth.
- The blues style.
SRV: Yeah! Like “Red House.” I hear it in that. I hear it in just the way he approaches things. Even though he was not ashamed at all of doing some things different, I still hear the roots of the old style. I mean, not just roots, but the whole attitude of it.
I think a lot of it’s his touch and his confidence. I mean, his touch was not just playing-wise, but the way he looked at it, like his perspective. His perspective on everything seemed to be reaching up – not just for more recognition, but more giving. I may be wrong about that, but that’s what I get out of it. And he did that with his touch on the guitar and his sounds and his whole attitude – it was the same kind of thing.
Interview By Jas Obrecht - 1989
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Voodoo Chile Live in Austin Texas
Dr. John:
I would like to have done enough good stuff so that maybe somebody who does remember something will say, "He did the best he could with it all". That’s all anybody can do. I’d like to have that thought somewhere along the line, if there’s a thought at all. I mean I come from the city of spirits. N’awlins has more people in touch with the spirit kingdom than most places. The point is that we respect our ancestors. In day by day livin’ and survivin’, it’s not your first thought. Right? Music keeps things alive in its own way. It’s a powerful thing. That’s why I believe if you touch someone with music, then we’ve done something. I’ve been tryin’ to reach different angles of hittin’ people with some truths, making nice music and hittin’ them with something that’s not really a nice thing to say. If you hit them from both angles, maybe they’ll get something out of it because it doesn’t seem like a real dismal event
Listen, nobody’s perfect. We all make some serious, crucial mistakes. We all do some things that sidetrack us from the direction you was goin’ on. You wind up takin’ a detour somewhere and you didn’t intend that, but it happens. You’ve got to do everything you can that’s possible to make a better world to live in, to get to a point where you can say, "Hey – I feel good about this". It’s hard to do. N’awlins has been through a lot of mess. I’ve been through a lot of mess. Everything goes through a lot of mess. The way to get past all of that is to take action. If you do it right, you’ll get somewhere beyond all that. Sometimes you take a path that feels right and down the line, it turns out not be the path you wanted. It may have wound you up in some place you never wanted to be in the first place. Well, you gotta get a look at that and make an ol’ manoeuvre and so something else. This kind of stuff happens. Freq-uently.
Cian Traynor , June 25th, 2010 - Quietus
Jeff Beck: “I think Stevie Ray was the closest thing to Hendrix when it came to playing the blues,”
When I saw Jimi we knew he was going to be trouble. And by ‘we’ I mean me and Eric Clapton, because Jimmy Page wasn’t in the frame at that point. I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating. He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you’, but he did in such a good package with beautiful songs.
I don’t want to say that I knew him well, I don’t think anybody did, but there was a period in London when I went to visit him quite few times. He invited me down to Olympic studios and I gave him a bottleneck. That’s what he plays on Axis: Bold As Love. We hooked up in New York and played at Steve Paul’s club The Scene.
Stevie: I feel like I’ve gotten more in touch with the blues. It’s usually when I go and see somebody play who’s playing clubs and isn’t used to running around in a fancy tour bus and playing arenas. There’s a difference there. On one side of the coin, it’s like, “The guy sounds that way so we can’t sell him,” but on the other side of the coin is, “I’ve been sold, so I can’t sound like that.” Every time I get to hear somebody sound real, once again I get the chance to come home, inside. That makes me want to play that way even that much more and still snicker when someone says, “Hey, the record sold!”
( From Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan by Alan Paul)
Eric Clapton once said that Stevie Ray Vaughan played guitar as though “it all just came straight from him, seemingly without any effort.” And it did sometimes seem as if performing came as naturally to him as breathing. During a televised concert in 1989, for example, Vaughan broke a string in the midst of a solo—but continued playing for a full half minute, then swapped guitars and finished the song without missing a note.Roddy Colonna: Stevie always had a guitar in his hands—he played all of the time. As soon as he woke up in the morning, he’d get the yogurt, put it on the table, and play to an Earl Hooker or Albert King record, whoever his idols were that day. He was completely dedicated to the instrument, and he’d work on his playing constantly. He was real sincere about it—there was nothing phony-baloney about him. Listening to music and playing guitar were the biggest things in his life. He’d always be saying, “Listen to this!” Whatever he was into, he was into it all the way.
Doyle Bramhall : I had great admiration for Stevie Ray Vaughan as a musician and a person because he always lived life to the fullest. Every time you were around him, he was a constant reminder that today is all we have guaranteed.
Even in the early days, whether he was buying a pair of boots, or trying out amps, he was just completely into it. He was never satisfied with staying in one spot. He wanted to stretch and that is what made him one of a kind. Several times, when it seemed like he couldn’t get any better, he took it to another level. He was always pushing the doors open and never wanted to stay the same.
Dr. John : Stevie started blowing me away one night when we were hanging at his pad. He put on some trippy, difficult Hendrix album and started playing along with it, which impressed me. Then he started playing off it, getting down, improvising and I thought, “Man, this kid is jamming with Jimi Hendrix.” That’s when I saw something real unique in what he was going for, and realized that this guy was something altogether different, someone who was taking the instrument somewhere new, really striving for something big.
Quotes from Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan
by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort
David Bowie and SRV at Voodoo Wagon here
The tour without Stevie . . . . . . .
David Bowie on Stevie Ray Vaughan:
I’m finding writing on an acquaintance who has passed on is not a little daunting. Memory recall is inevitably spotted with “If only” and “What ifs”. My association with Stevie ran a short course of only a few months, our relationship only a few weeks, so my anecdotal resources are limited to just a couple of stories.
Claude Nobs had for many years run the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. As I was living in a small village close to Montreux, the festival was an annual must. One night in 1982 Claude phoned me and told me of a new act he was putting on in a day or so. He knew that I was a big R&B and blues fan and thought I might enjoy this new kid. Come the show, blasting through a short but riveting set, SRV completely floored
me. I probably hadn’t been so gung-ho about a guitar player since seeing Jeff Beck in the early 60’s with his band the Tridents at Eel Pie Island, London. He was so complete, so vital and inventive with the form.Stevie and I had drinks after the show and we talked quite a bit about his influences and American music in general. We got on immediately as we shared a love for the playing of Albert King amongst others and in my
enthusiasm I gave him a full run down of my 45 and 78 record collection which spanned from early Red Prysock, Louis Jordan and the Alan Freed Rock and Roll band through Broonzy, Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf to British Old School like Bond, Mayall and Alexis Korner. I was deeply impressed with Stevie’s knowledge of and interest in British artists like John Renborn and Davy Graham, musicians that I would never have guessed from his playing that he would have had any interest in. I was also hugely flattered when he brought up my own albums Heroes and Scary Monsters, asking how it was working with Robert Fripp and Pete Townshend.At the end of the evening I took my courage in my hands and asked him if he would have any interest in working with me on my next album which was due to start at the end of the year. Although I had had a big hit in the States with “Fame” a few years previously I was not exactly a household name and was more regarded as an Alternative
artist who got lucky. In fact albums like Low, Heroes and Scary Monsters had indeed put me back on a kind of fringe.And as Stevie’s music was such hard core blues I expected and would have understood a polite “thanks but no thanks”.
You can’t imagine how delighted I was when he accepted the offer on the spot and said he’d love to try out a new kind of record just for the experience. When I asked if touring could also be a possibility he again replied in the affirmative,
“‘Hell, yea”, he said, “I tour real good”.December rolled around and after only a couple or so weeks in the studio Nile Rodgers and I had put down the tracks and vocals of my new album, Let’s Dance. All that was left was to overdub the lead guitar. In the third week of December Stevie strolled into the Power Station and proceeded to rip-up everything one thought about dance records. After his blistering solo on the title song he ambled into the control room and with a cheeky smile on his face, shyly quipped, “That one’s for Albert”, knowing full well that I would understand that King’s own playing was the genesis for that solo.
One after another he knocked down solo upon solo, song upon song. In a ridiculously short time he had become midwife
to the sound that I had had ringing in my ears all year. A dance form that had its melody rooted in a European sensibility but owed its impact to the blues.”Tour rehearsals were a fairly disjointed affair for me as I was also being shunted here, there and everywhere to do press for the albums release. By the time I got to Dallas the band had already honed the songs to a near finished state.
Although pretty disjointed himself as drugs were seriously taking their toll, Stevie was pulling notes out of the air that no one could have dreamed would have worked with my songs. In fact there is a bootleg out there somewhere containing one days playing, a gem for those that can find it.Apart from a couple of dreadful hangers-on that had fastened themselves onto Stevie’s coat tails, things swung along pretty well. Stevie’s manager had asked the tour promoter if, while on tour, it was possible for Stevie to fly out and do a couple of German TV shows on our days off. The promoter had specified that as long as Stevie made it to the next gig
we would have no problem with it. All in all, we were really stoked about getting to Europe and the first gig.At the end of our work in Dallas the band made its way to New York and I again left for Europe to recommence interviews and TV and such. Then about three days in front of the first gig I got a heartbreaking call from my office. “Are you sitting down, David? I’m afraid you have a new lead guitar player. Stevie is no longer on the tour.”
At the eleventh hour, literally, Stevie’s manager had pulled an unbelievable trick. One half hour before the coach was due to leave for the airport and while Stevie and the rest of the band were loading their bags onto it, the manager had demanded a meeting with the tour promoter in the lobby of the hotel. He then point blank demanded to renegotiate Stevie’s fee, there
and then, giving him a higher salary than any other musician on the tour otherwise he would pull Stevie from the tour.As I was thousands of miles away in Belgium and with twenty minutes to go, our promoter took it upon himself to make a decision which would change the entire sound of the show. “Arnie,” he called to Arnold Dunn, our tour manager, “take Mr. Vaughan’s bags off the coach, he has decided to pass on this tour.”
When the rest of the party arrived in Belgium, Carmine Rojas, my bass player, told me that it was one of the most heartbreaking moments he had ever witnessed on the road, Stevie left standing on the sidewalk with his bags surrounding him. Carmine was convinced that Stevie had no idea that his manager was going to pull such a scam or, if he did, that this guy had convinced Stevie that he could pull it off. Carlos Alomar, the bandleader, had quickly recommended phoning Earl Slick who learned the
entire show on the flight over to Belgium.At first, I was both devastated and angry. But not really sure who to be angry at. The stupid manager who tried a juvenile blackmail or our tour guys for making such an important decision without waiting to get hold of me. You just have to get over these things pretty fast or buckle under, so the tour kicked off and did its thing around the world, Slickly performing like a trooper with norehearsal whatsoever.
I saw and heard nothing from Stevie till the summer of 1990. We found ourselves both playing gigs in the same city somewhere on tour in America and got together for a while in the afternoon before our respective gigs. The transformation in Stevie was amazing. He had a disposition so sunny and optimistic that he positively shined with happiness and fulfillment. We spent some time talking about our sobriety and the astonishing effect it had had on both our lives. I saw the first twenty minutes or so of his show and then had to leave for my own. Just a few weeks later I heard the news of that terrible crash.
I value the short time we had spent working together as one of the greatest musical experiences of my life and I doubt very much whether that thrill of hearing him slam into my songs with the quiet mastery that was his alone, will ever be repeated quite that overwhelmingly. I’m just so thankful that I got to see him in 1990 in such a high place in his life, contained and truly happy, doing the one thing that he lived for, playing the blues.
