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  Stevie played with the Southern Distributor in the spring of ’69, covering the Doors, Beatles, Yardbirds, Byrds, Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Rolling Stones, and other popular rock hits. Playing in a band provided Stevie the opportunity to escape his home environment as much as possible.

  COLONNA: Stevie had a difficult home life; his dad was pretty rough on him. From when I first met him, he always talked about how mean his dad was.

  BRANDENBURG: Mr. Vaughan was rough on Jimmie about all the music, and now his other son was following along, which made Mr. Vaughan very tense. He sometimes held that against Jimmie, and Stevie got it from both his brother and his dad.

  JIM TRIMMIER, saxophonist, member of Liberation and the Cobras: I was scared of Big Jim. He came out and looked me over, wondering, “Is this guy gonna fuck my son up, or is he gonna be okay?” My hair was getting long, which was not cool in ’69 Dallas. Mean dads were pretty common, including mine.

  COLONNA: I only sat down with Big Jim once, and he started bringing out mint-condition B. B. King 78s that had belonged to one of Stevie’s uncles, and I was blown away. It wasn’t always grim over there. But there were a few times Stevie called me up and said, “Hey, Roddy, my dad hit my mom. Can you come pick me up?” He’d be crying. There were nights when he didn’t want to go back home.

  SRV: I learned how to be afraid all the time, because it wasn’t very constant at home. I don’t know if everybody else in the family perceived it the same way. Probably not. But I learned real quickly not to know what to expect, so therefore I’d just stay out of the way, keep my feelings out of the way. If I did have feelings, it must have been my fault, ’cause that’s what I heard when the fights were going on.

  2

  LEARNING TO FLY

  Intoxicated by success, the Chessmen fell apart by the end of 1968. Jimmie had had enough of playing the hits of the day, and as soon as Bramhall regained his strength after contracting hepatitis, the two formed Texas, focusing on blues and R&B. The band’s name fluctuated; Texas became Texas Storm and eventually just Storm. Bramhall was sometimes both drummer and singer and sometimes just the front man.

  Stevie was continuing to make a name for himself, a fifteen-year-old guitarist astounding people who often checked him out simply because he was Jimmie’s brother. He used this fact as a badge of authenticity, a secret entrance code into clubs and onto bandstands.

  BRANDENBURG: A friend told me I had to hear this kid who was playing at Candy’s Flare. I walked in, and he was whipping through Freddie King’s “Hideaway” like warm butter on hot pancakes. In that moment, my life truly changed. I was twenty, and this skinny fifteen-year-old kid with a guitar that almost covered him just knocked me over. After the show, I told Stevie that I had traveled all over to see Jimi [Hendrix] eighteen times. We just fell into each other, and I started driving him to gigs and sometimes even to school.

  COLONNA: When I met Stevie, he loved Clapton. He’d put on an album and play air guitar, putting his fingers exactly on the right frets of the imaginary guitar. Later on, he’d study different people just as intently. Stevie asked to borrow Albert King’s Live Wire: Blues Power, then refused to give it back! He learned that record inside and out.

  BRANDENBURG: I worked at an old folks’ home, and Stevie would sometimes go with me to pick up my paycheck. He wanted to meet a few great patients I had told him about, and he’d bring his guitar and play for some of the old-timers, who would yell for him to come to them. There was this old black man, Jefferson Seedman, who had a guitar he always carried but couldn’t really play because his hands were so crippled. Stevie would play for him, and he would rear back, slap his leg, and say, “Now dat boy has got it!” Once, he started to cry, and Stevie hugged him and said, “Come on now, you know I’m coming back. I ain’t ever gonna not come see you.” Mr. Seedman said, “Oh, I know. I just like the way you play so much; it sure makes me feel good.” Stevie said, “Well, that’s what music is supposed to do, make ya feel good.”

  COLONNA: I had a Dodge van, and Stevie would call me up and ask me to pick him up. We’d go cruising through Dallas, and he was already known around town as a great guitarist—at fifteen! We’d make the rounds of clubs, and they knew him everywhere. He’d sit in at the Fog, the Aragon, and the Cellar, which was a rock-and-roll strip club that was open till daylight and had girls walking around in bras and panties.

  BENNO: I was playing at a place called the End of Cole Avenue, and a kid who looked like he was eleven came up and said he wanted to sit in. I was like, “Not really,” and he said, “I’m Jimmie Vaughan’s little brother,” and I said, “Oh, man. Okay.” Because Jimmie was already a legend who everyone agreed was the best guitar player in Texas.

  I asked Stevie if he wanted to borrow a guitar, and he said he had one and went out to a car and came back carrying a ’51 Broadcaster, which was Jimmie’s guitar, no case. He plugged into a borrowed amp and just made it happen. He had real pure tone and was fast and smooth; he really played pretty. He hadn’t put it all together yet, and his motor skills weren’t all there, but his vibrato and tone were right on, and he would hit certain licks that made everyone scream like a bolt of lightning had hit. What he was playing combined with how he looked—maybe eighty-five pounds in his shorts and T-shirt—just made people go crazy.

  Already feeling burned out at seventeen, Jimmie took Janis Joplin up on her offer, showing up at her door in Haight-Ashbury; she escorted him to the Fillmore to see Chuck Berry and Tony Joe White. “It was the first time I’d ever been there, and I got to go with her,” he says. “It was a trip. I was just a little kid.”

  Joplin had assured Jimmie in Texas that if he came west, she could get him a record contract, and he returned with the whole band in tow.

  “I kept going out to LA and walking up and down Sunset wishing that I had a gig there. There was always the big record deal around the corner that was gonna make you a big star,” he says. “Texas Storm ended up getting a gig opening for Junior Walker at the Whisky A Go Go, and we got booed off the stage and fired, and nothing ever came of it.”

  He soon moved back to Dallas where his wife, Donna, was pregnant with their daughter Tina. Disillusioned with the music business, he started working as a garbage collector for the city of Irving.

  “I thought that you practiced real hard and got a record deal because you were good, and that a deal was the reward for being a good musician. It was a real rude awakening when I found out that it had more to do with the way you look and who’s your manager.

  “I had to get a job, so I became a trash man. I did that for a few months but didn’t like it too much. Then I got a job at a lumberyard, saved enough money, and said, ‘We’re moving to Austin and playing blues.’ I wasn’t interested in any other music.”

  The full-time move to Austin would take a bit more time, but the switch to blues was immediate and pronounced, and Jimmie and Storm started spending more time driving to the capital city, about two hundred miles south.

  BENNO: A lot of people were honestly disappointed when Jimmie began playing just blues and no rock. With his creativity and songwriting, he could have gone to the moon. Him dropping rock was like Bob Dylan going electric to those of us who knew and loved his playing. People were shocked and upset. He could have developed that direction and been a very creative hit guitarist, but he just wasn’t interested. Playing fast didn’t impress him the way it impressed the rest of us. He was only interested in Jimmy Reed and other black blues artists.

  JIMMIE VAUGHAN: Part of it was seeing Muddy Waters the very first time, at the Family Circle in Dallas. I decided right then that what I really liked was the music, and the rest of it was bullshit. Really, it was totally selfish, and I’m sure I neglected my family, totally focused on music as only a kid can do.

  BENNO: People like Steve Miller and Don Henley were coming out of a blues background and making a mark. We had all played clubs together, and they all knew Jimmie and how great he was, but he wasn’t interested in a
ny of that pop business. He wasn’t going for it at all.

  JIMMIE VAUGHAN: I used to try to play fast, but I got bored with all these guitar players going “hidla-hidla-hidla, didlee-didlee-didlee.” So I started thinking of the instrument differently and listening to how saxophonists phrase solos. When someone like [saxophonist] Gene Ammons plays, it’s like having a conversation with somebody who’s real comfortable with themselves. Guys like B. B. King or Junior Walker, when they play, they talk. So that’s all I want to do, with my own voice. It’s about communication.

  In late ’69, Texas found themselves in need of a bass player, and Jimmie asked his little brother to fill in. The fifteen-year-old Steve played bass in the band and was soon being called Stevie, the first time that became his name.

  “We got a gig at the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin [October 31–November 1, 1969], with Phil Campbell on drums and Paul Ray and Doyle Bramhall singing, but we didn’t have a bassist, so Stevie played bass, sort of,” recalls Jimmie. “We tuned a Barney Kessel hollow-body guitar down to D, so it sounded more like a bass. All we ever did around the house was us trading back and forth between playing the lead parts and the rhythm parts and bass lines.”

  Still, Stevie’s tenure in the band was brief. “I was ‘little brother,’ especially then,” Stevie told Guitar World’s Bill Milkowski in 1984. “He was moving ahead a little faster than me, and I guess I was dragging it down a bit, so that didn’t work out too well. But I think with any brothers there’s a period of time when the little brother always gets in the way. That’s just brother-to-brother shit.”

  Stevie next auditioned to be the bassist in the nine-piece horn band Liberation, but guitarist Scott Phares suggested they switch instruments as soon as he heard Vaughan play.

  “One of the horn players said he knew a kid who would be a good fit on bass if his mother would let him do the gigs,” Phares recalls. “This skinny fifteen-year-old shows up and plays a few songs, and we all agreed he was very good. Then we took a break, and Stevie asked if he could play my guitar. I was a decent guitar player, but he cleaned my clock, blowing us away on my white Telecaster. We all immediately decided that we’d switch instruments, and he handed me his ’60s sunburst Fender Jazz bass.”

  Liberation played a lot of Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears material, as well as some Led Zeppelin and Jeff Beck and a handful of blues, mostly to appease Stevie. “We knew about Jimmie, but he was way up there in a different stratosphere,” says singer Mike Reames. “He’d already done things like hang out with Janis Joplin!”

  In addition to the horn section, led by saxophonist Jim Trimmier, the band had several lead singers, including Reames and Christian Plicque, a handsome, charismatic African American.

  MIKE REAMES, Liberation singer: Stevie was very shy and seemed nervous, with that little shit-eating grin, like a jackass eating briars. He was fifteen, and I was a freshman in college, and he could be frustrating to deal with, like we’d be trying to get work done and he was messing around. There were other issues with having a kid in the band.

  PHARES: Stevie loved to get high. He liked to do speed and play guitar. He liked methamphetamine pills like Desoxyn—“Yellow Ds”—and Dexedrine—“White Crosses” or “Crossroads.” He would do speed, drink Colt 45 or Schlitz Bull malt liquor, and play guitar all day long.

  In 1970, we played an SMU fraternity party at a Marriott, and at the end, Stevie drank all the half-empty drinks left on the tables. We all thought we were bulletproof.

  JIMMIE VAUGHAN: Stevie was aware I had gotten into drugs. I was in Austin for a fraternity gig, and I went over to some guy’s house to smoke weed and listen to blues records. He said, “You know what these guys are doing, right? They’re shooting speed.” So I started shooting speed, only on the weekends. You’d smoke marijuana on top of it and could play nonstop for a couple of days. You would get so high, and so tuned in that if someone dropped a pin across the room, you knew what the pitch was—in your mind anyhow.

  TRIMMIER: Stevie transfixed me; the first time I heard him, he was the best guitar player I had ever heard. He was fleet of fingers and just in joyful control of the instrument. He did not practice—he played guitar, which was Jimmie’s old Broadcaster with “Jimbo” carved in the back.

  Stevie had stripped this 1951 Broadcaster, serial number 0964, of its clear finish and fitted it with two volume controls instead of one volume and one tone.

  COLONNA: I was over at Stevie’s house one day, and he said, “Check this out,” and showed me the Broadcaster. He said, “This was in the closet, all in parts, and I put it together.”

  TRIMMIER: Stevie would play records for hours. He’d pick the needle up, play a lick, then run it back and play it fifty or a hundred times trying to get everything precisely right. He was listening intently and on a high level—and he listened with his fingers. I know that sounds mystical, but his fingers were part of his senses. They were in tune with his ears.

  PHARES: Stevie could play anything note for note exactly like the records. He could sound just like Clapton on “Crossroads” and Jeff Beck on “Jeff’s Boogie.” Learning those songs note for note was a rite of passage for every Dallas guitar player.

  SRV: If you played at the Cellar, you had to know “Jeff’s Boogie.” And nobody knew that it was really the Chuck Berry song “Guitar Boogie.”

  TOMMY SHANNON, Double Trouble bassist: In 1969, Uncle John [Turner, drummer] and I played Woodstock and recorded three albums with Johnny Winter. When that band broke up, I flew back to Dallas and went to the Fog, the same club where I had first met Johnny. Walking up, I could hear the guitar from outside, and it sounded really special. I knew from those first few notes that I was hearing something great. Stevie’s inner dynamic was coming through, with the exact same spirit everyone would know eventually. A bunch of people were talking to me, and I ignored them, looking to see who was making this big sound and was shocked to see a scrawny fifteen-year-old kid. He was awkward and shy and had real big feet. When we spoke, I told him the truth: “You’re already better than all these other guys you’re looking up to.” He gave me a big smile, and we made friends right then and there.

  PHARES: Many of our gigs were dances, but people would stop dancing to watch Stevie solo. At the high school, people would sit around the stage to get a close look at him. He had a long, white curly patch cord and he’d take a flying jump off the stage right into the middle of the dancers, walking around and playing his ass off. He was a showboat, but he could pull it off.

  TRIMMIER: He just boogied. Everybody was older than him in all his early bands—and he made them all. Even at that age, there were no false notes. He was always true to the music.

  PHARES: One night, ZZ Top walked into Arthur’s with instruments in hand and said, “Hey, we’re a South Texas band fixing to release an album, and we want to take two of your sets tonight to get some exposure.” Mike said, “Are you guys any good?” and Billy Gibbons said, “We’ll play, and if you don’t like us, we’ll leave.” They got up there, and Stevie just about wet his pants—he couldn’t wait to play some blues with Billy. They squared off and traded licks, and it was amazing.

  BILLY F. GIBBONS, ZZ Top guitarist: Frank and Dusty and I had just teamed up, and Arthur’s was a swanky nightclub. A young gunslinger announced, “I’m Jimmie Vaughan’s brother, and I’d like to sit in. My name’s Steve.” And play he did! That was the first encounter of many.

  TRIMMIER: I had a car and would drive Stevie around, often with him playing guitar in the passenger seat. He would talk about John Lee Hooker, trying to get those licks just right.

  REAMES: I never needed to have a radio in my car. He’d sit in the back playing his acoustic guitar.

  BRANDENBURG: Stevie would often ask me to drive him to Arnold and Morgan Guitar Shop, where he would buy three picks or a set of strings while breaking six or seven strings. He’d break one, hand me the guitar to put back, get another one, break a string. He’d also blow up tubes and speakers on amps pl
aying so loud. Larry Morgan knew Stevie was never gonna buy anything. He’d always say, “I’ll handle it,” only occasionally asking Stevie to play a little quieter. The man was in business, but he and his techs would extend themselves to Stevie. This was something I saw all through Stevie’s life; people just wanting to help him.

  Vaughan was often sleeping through classes at Justin F. Kimball High School after late-night, speed-fueled gigs. He struggled in most classes, including music theory; an inability to read music kept him out of the school’s stage band. The only class where he showed real promise was art, and he was proud to have some cartoons published in the school newspaper. His art skills were good enough to earn him a scholarship to Imagination’s Growing Place, an experimental art class at Southern Methodist University.

  In September 1970, Stevie cut two songs for a compilation album of Dallas teen bands with the group Cast of Thousands, fronted by Stephen Tobolowsky, who would go to become a successful character actor, notably playing Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day. They were his first studio recordings. By January 1971, Vaughan had dropped out of school just months away from graduating, quit Liberation, and after short stints in several groups, including Lincoln and Pecos, formed his own band. Blackbird focused on psychedelic blues/rock and was fronted by Christian Plicque. Roddy Colonna was on drums, along with keyboardist Noel Deis, second drummer John Hoff, the well-established David Frame on bass, and Kim Davis on second guitar, often playing harmonized Allman Brothers lines with Stevie.

  COLONNA: Stevie, Christian, and I would go listen to records at Cutter’s house, who would tell us what songs we should play in the dream band we hadn’t formed yet. By fall ’71, we were gigging as Blackbird, and a big influence was the Allman Brothers, which is why we added a second drummer. Stevie started playing slide on songs like “Statesboro Blues,” and he even sought out a Goldtop Les Paul like Duane Allman’s. He found a trashed-out Les Paul for about $200 with frets that were turning green.