VAUGHAN, STEVIE RAY (1954–1990). Stevie Ray Vaughan, blues musician and guitar legend, was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas on October 3, 1954, to Jim and Martha Vaughan. Stevie's exposure to music began in his childhood, as he watched his big brother, Jimmie, play guitar. Stevie's fascination with the blues drove him to teach himself to play the guitar before he was an adolescent.
By the time Vaughan was in high school, he was staying up all night, playing guitar in clubs in Deep Ellum, a popular alternative nightspot in Dallas. In his sophomore year he enrolled in an experimental arts program at Southern Methodist University for artistically gifted high school students, but the program did not motivate him to stay in school, and he dropped out before graduation in order to play music full-time.
By 1972, at the age of seventeen, Stevie moved to Austin, in an attempt to become involved in the music scene. Over the next few years he slept on pool tables and couches in the back of clubs and collected bottles to earn money for new guitar strings. He played in various local bands such as Cobra and Nightcrawlers, but recognition outside of Austin eluded him. Finally, in the late 1970s, Vaughan formed Triple Threat with Lou Ann Barton, Chris Layton, and Jackie Newhouse. This group evolved into Double Trouble, with Tommy Shannon and Reese Wynans replacing Newhouse and Barton.
By the early 1980s the group had built a solid following in Texas and was beginning to attract the attention of well-established musicians like Mick Jagger, who in 1982 invited Vaughan and the band to play at a private party in New York City. That same year Double Trouble received an invitation to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. They were the first band in the history of the festival to play without having a major record contract. The performance was seen by David Bowie and Jackson Browne, and Stevie gained even more acclaim as a talented and rising young musician. Browne invited Vaughan to his Los Angeles studio for a demo session, at which Stevie and Double Trouble recorded some tracks for what eventually became his 1983 debut album, Texas Flood. Bowie had Vaughan play lead guitar on his album Let's Dance.
Vaughan's fame immediately soared. The band signed a record contract with CBS/Epic records and came to the attention of veteran blues and rock producer John Hammond Sr. Texas Flood received a North American Rock Radio Awards nomination for Favorite Debut Album, and Guitar Player Magazine Reader's Poll voted Stevie Best New Talent and Best Electric Blues Guitarist for 1983. A track off the album also received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental performance.
Vaughan's subsequent albums met with increased popularity and critical attention. Double Trouble followed Texas Flood with Couldn't Stand the Weather (1984), Live Alive (1985), and Soul to Soul (1986). All of the albums went gold and captured various Grammy nominations in either the blues or rock categories. Throughout the 1980s Vaughan and his band also became consistent nominees and winners of the Austin Chronicle's music awards and Guitar Player Magazine's reader's polls. In 1984, at the National Blues Foundation Awards, Vaughan became the first white man to win Entertainer of the Year and Blues Instrumentalist of the Year. At the Grammys that year he shared in the Best Traditional Blues honors for his work on Blues Explosion, a compilation album of various artists.
Although he rapidly gained prestige and success in the music world, Stevie also lived the stereotypical life of a rock-and-roll star, full of alcohol and drug abuse. On his 1986 European tour he collapsed and eventually checked into a rehabilitation center in Georgia. He left the hospital sober and committed to the Twelve Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Following his recovery, he released his fifth album, In Step, in 1989. It won him a second Grammy, this time for Best Contemporary Blues Recording. In 1990 Vaughan collaborated with Jimmie Vaughan, his brother and founding member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, on Family Style, which was released after Stevie's death. This last album brought Stevie's career total of Grammys to four. After his death Epic records released two more albums of his work, The Sky is Crying (1991) and In the Beginning (1992). The Sky is Crying went on to win a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
Stevie married Lenny Bailey in 1980, and they divorced in 1986, when he was at the low point of his struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. At the time of his death, he had a girlfriend, Janna Lapidus. Vaughan died on August 27, 1990, in a helicopter crash on the way to Chicago from a concert in Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin. The location of the concert was difficult to reach, so many performers stayed in Chicago and flew in before the show. Dense fog contributed to the pilot's flying the helicopter into the side of a man-made ski mountain. All on board were killed instantly. Over 1,500 people, including industry giants such as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder, attended Stevie's memorial service in Dallas. He is buried at Laurel Land Memorial Park in South Dallas.
Governor Ann Richards proclaimed October 3, 1991, as "Stevie Ray Vaughan Day." The city of Austin erected a memorial statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan on November 21, 1993. It is located on Town Lake, near the site of his last Austin concert. On May 11, 1995, musicians, including B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, and Double Trouble, filmed "Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan" for Austin City Limitsqv. The PBS program also released a posthumous video titled Stevie Ray Vaughan: Live From Austin, Texas, which contained excerpts from Vaughan's two previous appearances on the show. From 1995 through 2007 Sony Music issued several Vaughan and Double Trouble albums, including a box set, live performances, and previously unreleased material. In 2000 Vaughan was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. He is also in the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Craig Hopkins, Stevie Ray Vaughan: Day By Day, Night After Night (Craig Hopkins in Texas, U.S.A., 2008 Keri Leigh, Stevie Ray: Soul to Soul (Dallas: Taylor, 1993 Joe Nick Patoski and Bill Crawford, Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993 Vertical Files, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
