Stevie Ray Vaughan: Dallas Guitar God

Today is the birthday of Stevie Ray Vaughan. He would be 72 today.

Stephen Ray Vaughan was born in Dallas, Texas on October 3, 1954. He grew up in Oak Cliff on the south side of Dallas, where his older brother Jimmie was already playing guitar in the clubs. Stevie started playing at seven and never stopped improving. By his mid-teens he was sitting in on sessions at Crossroads, a North Austin club. He moved to Austin at seventeen, played every bar on Sixth Street, and built the kind of reputation that reached beyond state lines through word of mouth alone.

The Night at Montreux That Changed Everything

David Bowie brought Vaughan to the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival, where a hostile audience quieted down the moment Stevie Ray started playing. Bowie hired him for the Let’s Dance album. Then Vaughan formed Double Trouble and signed with Epic Records for Texas Flood in 1983 — an album that resurrected blues guitar as a commercial force. The technique was astonishing; the feeling was more so. He played with a .013 string gauge tuned down a half-step, hitting notes with a weight that left his competitors wondering what they were missing. He died August 27, 1990, in a helicopter crash at Alpine Valley, Wisconsin. He was thirty-five. Find his brother Jimmie’s items on Texas Music Map and learn more at the Texas State Historical Association.