Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Born	October 3, 1954 Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.
Died	August 27, 1990 East Troy, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Alias(es)	SRV (initials)
Genre(s)	Blues
Affiliation(s)	Double Trouble
Label(s)	Epic Records
Notable guitars	"Number One", his 1962 Fender Stratocaster
Years active	1983 - 1990

Stephen ("Stevie") Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990), born in Dallas, Texas, was an American blues guitarist. His broad appeal made him one of America's most influential electric blues guitarists. He was the younger brother of Jimmie Vaughan.

1 Life and career
- 1.1 Death
- 1.2 Posthumous events and recognition
2 Musical influences and style
3 Vaughan's guitars and musical equipment
4 Discography
5 Notes and references
6 External links
7 Categories

Life and career

Vaughan was born and raised in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, but dropped out of Kimball High School and moved to Austin to pursue music. Vaughan's talent caught the attention of guitarist Johnny Winter, and blues-club owner Clifford Antone.

Vaughan's first recording band was called Paul Ray and the Cobras. They played at clubs and bars in Austin during the mid-1970s, and released one single.^[1] Vaughan later recorded two other singles under the band name The Cobras.^[2] Following the break-up of The Cobras, he formed Triple Threat in late 1975, which included bassist Jackie Newhouse, drummer Chris Layton, and vocalist Lou Ann Barton. Barton left the band in 1978 to pursue a solo career, and the three remaining members started performing under the name Double Trouble, inspired by an Otis Rush song of the same name. Vaughan became the band's lead singer.

Tommy Shannon, the bass player on Johnny Winter's early albums, replaced Newhouse in 1981. A popular Austin act, Vaughan soon attracted the attention of musicians David Bowie and Jackson Browne, and played on albums with both. Bowie first caught Vaughan at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival, where some members of the audience booed the band, probably because they disliked Double Trouble's hard blues sound. (The crowd response was quite different when they were invited to headline "Blues Night" at the festival again in 1985.) Bowie then featured Vaughan on his 1983 album Let's Dance.^[3]

The critically acclaimed Texas Flood, produced by John Hammond, featured the top-20 hit "Pride and Joy" and sold 500,000 copies, earning the band a Gold Record. The band's next albums, Couldn't Stand the Weather (1984) and Soul to Soul (1985), also "went gold", but did not receive as much critical acclaim as their debut.

Drug addiction and alcoholism took a toll on Vaughan in the mid-1980s, and after becoming acutely ill in Germany while on tour, Vaughan managed to struggle through three more shows before entering a drug rehabilitation program in Atlanta, Georgia. He eventually recovered fully from his addictions and became a teetotaler.

Upon his return from rehab, Stevie Ray Vaughan, still with bandmates Double Trouble, recorded In Step (1989), which is praised by some as the band's best work since Texas Flood. The album won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Vaughan shared a headline tour with guitarist Jeff Beck in 1989.

Death

In the early morning of August 27, 1990, Vaughan died in a helicopter crash near East Troy, Wisconsin. After a concert at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre, where earlier in the evening he appeared with Robert Cray, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and his older brother Jimmie Vaughan, the musicians expected a long bus ride back to Chicago. Stevie was informed that three seats were open on one of the helicopters returning to Chicago with Clapton and his crew, enough for Stevie, Jimmie, and Jimmie's wife Connie. It turned out there was only one seat left, which Stevie requested from his brother; Jimmie obliged. Taking off into deep fog, the helicopter crashed moments later into a ski slope on the side of a hill within the Alpine Valley Resort. Vaughan, the pilot, and two members of Clapton's crew died on impact. No one realized that the crash had occurred until the helicopter failed to arrive in Chicago, and the wreckage was only found with the help of its locator beacon.^[4] The main cause of the crash was believed to be pilot error.^[5] The next morning Stevie's brother Jimmie and good friend Eric Clapton were called to identify the body.

The media initially reported that Vaughan and his band had been killed in the crash. Chris Layton saw this on the news and had security let him into Vaughan's motel room. Layton saw that the bed was made and the clock radio was playing the Eagles' song, "Peaceful, Easy Feeling", which includes the lyrics "I may never see you again". Layton and Shannon then called their families to let them know they were okay.

Stevie Ray Vaughan is interred in the Laurel Land Memorial Park, Dallas, Texas.

Posthumous events and recognition

Vaughan memorial at Town Lake, in Austin, Texas.

September 1990 saw the release of Family Style, an album that Vaughan had recorded with his brother Jimmie. The 1991 compilation album The Sky Is Crying was the first of several posthumous Vaughan releases to achieve chart success. Jimmie Vaughan later co-wrote and recorded a song in tribute to his brother and other deceased blues guitarists, entitled "Six Strings Down". Many other artists recorded songs in remembrance of Vaughan, including Eric Johnson^[6] and Buddy Guy.

In 1991, Texas governor Ann Richards proclaimed October 3, Vaughan's birthday, to be "Stevie Ray Vaughan Day." An annual motorcycle ride and concert in Central Texas benefits the Stevie Ray Vaughan Memorial Scholarship Fund.^[7]

In 1992, the Fender company released the Stevie Ray Vaughan Signature Stratocaster, which Stevie had helped design. It was a reproduction of his battered 1962 Fender Stratocaster, which he had affectionately named "Number One" (and sometimes referred to as his "first wife"). As of 2006, the model is still in production. It depicts "Number One" as it would have been brand-new in 1962, though when Stevie bought it in 1974 it was already badly weathered. In 2004, Fender also released a limited edition exact replica of "Number One".^[8]

In 1994, the city of Austin erected the Stevie Ray Vaughan Memorial Statue at Auditorium Shores on Town Lake, the site of a number of Vaughan's concerts. It has become one of the city's most popular tourist attractions.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine placed Vaughan at number seven on their list of the "100 greatest guitarists of all time".^[9] Musicians such as John Mayer, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, Los Lonely Boys, and Eric Johnson have cited Vaughan as an influence.

In 2008, Stevie Ray Vaughan will become eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.^[10]

Musical influences and style

Vaughan's blues style was strongly influenced by many blues guitarists. Foremost among them were Albert King, who dubbed himself Stevie's "godfather", and Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, and Jimi Hendrix. He was also strongly influenced by Lonnie Mack. Stevie is recognized for his distinctive guitar sound, which was partly based on using heavy thirteen-gauge guitar strings that he tuned down one half-step. Vaughan's sound and playing style, which often incorporated simultaneous lead and rhythm parts, drew frequent comparisons to Hendrix; Vaughan covered several Hendrix tunes on his studio albums and in performance, such as "Little Wing", "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", and "Third Stone from the Sun". He was also heavily influenced by Freddie King, another Texas bluesman, mainly in the use of tone and attack; King's heavy vibrato can clearly be heard in Vaughan's playing. Another stylistic influence was Albert Collins.

Vaughan preferred to make use of the immediate tonal capabilities of his guitar amplifiers, adding few effects. His effects included the Ibanez Tube Screamer, a wah-wah pedal, the Octavia, and occasionally a flanger/chorus. He also used volume as a dynamic, coaxing effects from the natural performance of his amps when overdriven.

Vaughan's guitars and musical equipment

For guitars, Stevie used some acoustics and a Hamiltone Custom, but he mainly used Fender Stratocasters. His most famous was a Strat with a Brazilian rosewood "veneer" fingerboard; it had "1962" stamped on the neck and body, but "1959" written on the pickups. Unlike what was widely believed, he never used bass frets, but did use Dunlop 6100s, the largest frets made at the time. On this particular guitar, he also had a left-handed tremolo installed and was known as "Number One". It had a D-shaped thick neck that was perfect for his large hands and thick fingers. It possessed a deep, dark growl of a tone that was immediately identifiable. Even though it used all "stock" Fender Strat parts, about the only "original equipment" parts it possessed by 1990 were the body and the pickups. Over the years, Stevie and Rene Martinez, his guitar tech, replaced the pickguard, tremolo, and neck. The guitar was meticulously examined by Fender Custom Shop workers to gather specifications for a run of 100 exact copies in early 2004.^{[citation needed]} The pickups were never overwound purposely, but were from a batch of pickups made at Fender in 1959 that had been mistakenly overwound, producing Number One's distinctive sound. The neck was damaged during a stage accident, and a spare was used from another of Stevie's Stratocasters. After he died, the original neck was put back on and the guitar was given to his brother.

"Lenny" was a 1963 maple-neck that was named after his wife, Lenora. It had a very bright, thin sound. Supposedly, Stevie found this guitar in a pawnshop, but couldn't afford to buy it. One of Stevie's roadies, Byron Barr, bought it and he and Lenora presented it to Stevie for his birthday in 1976. According to the story, Lenora was supposed to pay Byron for the guitar; she started a pool with her friends to collect the money, but it was Stevie who eventually settled the debt, with cash and a leather jacket. Its neck was originally a thin rosewood, but Stevie replaced it with a thicker non-Fender maple neck. "Lenny" can be seen and heard on "Live at the El Mocambo". He plays it at the end of the set during the encore, playing the song of the same name; Lenny. Stevie also used the guitar during the song "Riviera Paridise", this can also be seen and heard on the DVD "Live From Austin Texas".

"Charley" was a Stratocaster built for him by the late Charley Wirz, a friend and owner of Charley's Guitars in Dallas, Texas. Three Danelectro "lipstick tubes" are the pickups, and it had a hardtail bridge.

"Red" was a 1964 with a lefty neck that let him emulate the sounds of Otis Rush and Jimi Hendrix. This setup was able to give Stevie not only the sound he wanted, but the feel that lacked from a right hand neck.

Vaughan also played a guitar made by deceased Minneapolis, Minn., luthier, Roger Benedict. A semi-hollow, Alder-built guitar called the "Groove Master" was a model of choice for Vaughan. It is a seafoam-green Stratocaster-shaped guitar with three lipstick pickups.

Jimmie Vaughan has possession of all of Stevie's guitars, save for the only one released to the public, "Lenny". It was sold in the Eric Clapton guitar auction for more than $600,000.

He used a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, many different Ibanez Tube Screamers (most notably the TS-808, but he also used a TS-9 for solos sometimes), Vox or Dunlop Cry Baby wahs (one of which was owned and used by Jimi Hendrix), and at one point a Univibe, though he usually used his rotating Leslie speaker cabinet. Sometimes he used two wahs duct-taped together, so they moved in unison.

His amps were a blonde '62 Fender Twin, a 100-watt Marshall JCM 800 half stack, a 150-watt Dumble Steel String Singer, two '64 Fender Vibroverbs (they are consecutively numbered: 5 and 6; Stevie was very proud of having obtained such low serial numbers). He also had a pair of 4x10 Fender Super Reverbs. At some venues he also had several Marshall full stacks for volume.

Discography

Studio albums

Texas Flood (1983)
Couldn't Stand the Weather (1984)
Soul to Soul (1985)
In Step (1989)
Family Style (with brother Jimmie Vaughan as "The Vaughan Brothers", 1990)
The Sky Is Crying (posthumous compilation) (1991)

Official live audio releases

In the Beginning (recorded 1980)
In Session (with Albert King, recorded 1983)
Live at Carnegie Hall (recorded 1984)
Live Alive (recorded 1985 and 1986)
Live At Montreux 1982 & 1985 (recorded 1982 & 1985)

Compilations

Greatest Hits (1995)
The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble (1995)
The Real Deal: Greatest Hits Volume 2 (1999)
Blues at Sunrise (2000)
SRV (box set, with early recordings, rarities, hits, and live material) (2000)
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues - Stevie Ray Vaughan (2003)