Stevie Ray Vaughan

Did You Know?

• Vaughan and four others died in a helicopter crash in East Troy, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1990; an investigation concluded the cause was pilot error.
• His musical influences included Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Lonnie Mack, B.B.
• Vaughan was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 along with Double Trouble bandmates Chris Layton, Tommy Shannon, and Reese Wynans.

Family and early life

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s family roots trace back to his grandfather Thomas Lee Vaughan, who married Laura Belle LaRue and worked as a sharecropper in Rockwall County, Texas. His father, Jimmie Lee Vaughan, was born on September 6, 1921, and quit school at sixteen to join the U.S. Navy during World War II. Stevie was born on October 3, 1954, at Methodist Hospital in Dallas. His father, known as Big Jim, worked as an asbestos handler, and the family moved often through Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma before landing in Oak Cliff, Dallas.

Vaughan later said he was a victim of his father’s violent temper, which was fueled by alcohol abuse; Big Jim died on August 27, 1986. For his seventh birthday in 1961, Vaughan got a toy guitar from Sears with a Western design. He taught himself by ear, copying songs by the Nightcaps, and absorbed the sounds of bluesmen Albert King, Otis Rush, and Muddy Waters, rock players Jimi Hendrix and Lonnie Mack, and jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell. In 1963, he got his first electric guitar, a Gibson ES-125T handed down from his brother Jimmie.

Music career

In May 1969, after leaving the Brooklyn Underground, Vaughan joined the Southern Distributor. At age fourteen he auditioned by playing the Yardbirds' 'Jeff's Boogie' note for note. Though the band played pop rock covers, Vaughan wanted to add blues; he was told he could not earn a living playing blues, and they parted ways. Later that year, bassist Tommy Shannon heard Vaughan in a Dallas club and jammed with him; within a few years they performed together in Krackerjack.

In February 1970, Vaughan joined Liberation, a nine-piece group with a horn section, after briefly playing bass with Jimmie in Texas Storm. He originally auditioned as bassist, but impressed the guitarist Scott Phares, who became bassist. In mid-1970 at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, ZZ Top asked them to perform; during a break Vaughan jammed with ZZ Top on 'Thunderbird'. Attending Justin F. Kimball High School in the early 1970s, his late-night shows led him to neglect his studies, and he often slept in class.

School administrators disapproved of his musical pursuit, but his art teacher encouraged him toward a career in art. He attended an evening experimental art class at Southern Methodist University but left when it conflicted with rehearsal.

Equipment

Vaughan's primary guitar was a Fender Stratocaster, his favorite being a 1963 body with a 1962 neck and pickups dated from 1959, which he called his 'first wife' or 'Number One'. He said it had a big, strong tone that could handle anything he did. Another favorite Stratocaster, a 1965 model refinished in red with original sunburst peeking through and a 1910 Mandolin inlay below the bridge, he named 'Lenny' after his wife Lenora. The pawn shop asked $300 for it; Lenny had six friends each chip in $50 and bought it for his birthday in 1980.

That night he wrote the song 'Lenny'. He also used a custom guitar nicknamed 'Main', built by James Hamilton of Hamiltone Guitars in Buffalo, New York, a gift from Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. Gibbons commissioned it in 1979; delays included redoing the mother of pearl inlay of Vaughan's name when he changed his stage name from Stevie Vaughan to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Hamilton presented it on April 29, 1984, and Vaughan played it that night at Springfest on the University of Buffalo campus.

He replaced the bronze Gibson knobs with white Fender knobs and had the pickups changed after they were ruined when the guitar was drenched with water during the 'Couldn't Stand the Weather' video.

Legacy

Stevie Ray Vaughan brought blues rock back to life and opened doors for countless musicians who followed. His influence still shows up in the work of artists like John Mayer, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Mike McCready, Albert Cummings, Los Lonely Boys, and Chris Duarte. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called Vaughan the leading force in American blues, praising his fiery, one-of-a-kind style that crossed genre lines. In 1983, Variety dubbed him the guitar hero of his time. After his death, his album sales in the U.S. topped 5.5 million copies. On September 25, 1990, Epic put out Family Style, a joint album he made with his brother Jimmie. The Sky Is Crying, his first posthumous release with Double Trouble, came out on October 29, 1991, pulling together studio tracks from 1984 and 1985.