Double Trouble (band)

History

In September 1977, Stevie Ray Vaughan put together a revue-style band drawing from Austin's live music talent. The lineup included singer Lou Ann Barton, bassist W. C. Clark, keyboardist Mike Kindred, drummer Fredde "Pharaoh" Walden, and sax player Johnny Reno. They called themselves Triple Threat Revue, a nod to Vaughan's skill on multiple instruments. By May 1978, Clark and Kindred had left, so Vaughan renamed the group Double Trouble, borrowing the title from an Otis Rush song and also pointing to both Vaughan and Barton.

After Clark departed to start his own band, Barton auditioned and brought in Jackie Newhouse, whom she had first met in Fort Worth. In July, Walden was replaced by Jack Moore, a drummer from Providence, Rhode Island who had moved to Austin. Moore left after three months to finish college back in Providence, and Chris Layton took over on drums in September.

When Barton and Reno left in 1979, the band shifted to a power trio with Vaughan taking over as lead vocalist, and they became known as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. In October 1980, during a regular gig at Rockefeller's in Houston, Vaughan jammed with Tommy Shannon, who had played bass for Johnny Winter, and hired him in January 1981.

Over the next year and a half, the group built a following playing Texas clubs like Fitzgerald's and Club Foot. They brought on Chesley Millikin as manager, a former Epic Records general manager in Europe who also ran Manor Downs, a horse racing track near Manor, Texas. The band performed at the track the following year, and the show was filmed for a TV series that never got picked up.

In March 1982, producer Jerry Wexler, after seeing them in Austin, recommended Vaughan and Double Trouble for the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. They played there in July 1982, becoming the first unsigned act to perform at the event. The crowd booed, but their set caught the attention of David Bowie and Jackson Browne. Browne offered them free use of his Los Angeles recording studio.