by Alan Paul
Layton says that Tommy’s arrival eliminated all thoughts that they were a traditional blues band, bound by any genre restrictions. Millikin, who had originally hesitated to sign off on the change, quickly understood what was happening. He came to Shannon’s first rehearsal and happily proclaimed, “Night and day, the difference is! Night and day!”
“Things started to roll with Tommy,” Brandenburg said. “We now had a rhythm section that was intense, tight, full, and rich, and Stevie’s confidence level as a front man grew with every single show. Stevie could really soar, and Whipper and Tommy were his wings.”
With Cutter’s encouragement, Vaughan also further developed his sartorial style, dressing in a more flamboyant, personal way that matched the music’s increasing originality and aggression. Both onstage and off, his clothes became more outlandish and Hendrix-inspired, heavy on the kimonos and scarves, and topped off with the gunslinger’s bolero hat that would soon define him. “He needed an image to get beyond making a little living on the Austin blues scene,” Brandenburg explained.
LAYTON: Cutter thought that Stevie was downplaying himself too much. He’d say, “Stevie, you are one of the fucking greatest guitar players ever! You need to start dressing that way and acting that way!” He had the hat made for Stevie at Texas Hatters and said, “Here, man, put this fuckin’ thing on!”
One of the first Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble business cards. (Courtesy Denny Freeman)
BRANDENBURG: Stevie was wearing applejacks or berets while I had been wearing a large black cowboy hat for years. One night at some funky honky-tonk, he had misplaced his cap, so he used mine—with a scarf on to make it fit his little head—and we all liked the gunfighter image. Stevie also liked how the broad brim helped shield his eyes from the lights.
LAYTON: Cutter also said, “You should use your middle name; Stevie Ray Vaughan has a ring to it. A few years from now, people will be saying “‘Stevie Ray’ this,” and “‘Stevie Ray’ that!” Stevie just went with it. It wasn’t part of his personality to think, “How can I promote myself and present myself as a flashy guitar badass?”
BRANDENBURG: I was the only person who called him Stevie Ray, and I just thought it sounded good—as did “Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.”
PRIESNITZ: They were playing a series of Steamboat shows, and he changed his name and the name of the band. Chesley thought it was ridiculous to have Double Trouble as part of the billing.
LAYTON: People did pick up on the name thing right away. “Stevie Ray!” And “Rave on!” for Ray Vaughan. People dug the hat, too, and distinguishing himself through what he wore kind of opened the door to everything else.
BRANDENBURG: Now Stevie had an image that we all felt good about. Besides the talent, we had a good name, a look, and they were working hard on songs and communicating with an audience. I also wanted them to get out of the “bar gig” attitude. All the tours I had been on had shown me that this was show business and it was showtime. I felt we could really stand out if we presented ourselves differently than other bands in Austin with a more polished look and approach.
SHANNON: Some of the confidence he began to feel about his playing started with the clothes. He believed he could really break out and develop his own vision.
One of the first promo posters for “Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.” (Courtesy Joe Priesnitz)
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: We always made jokes about the way that Stevie liked to dress crazy. He just liked to dress up. He would wear anything but the kitchen sink. He wore all the scarves because of Hendrix, of course.
SHANNON: Hendrix’s example inspired him clothes-wise, too. He got some shit from the blues purists for that, but who cares? Being a purist is like being a religious fundamentalist. If you can’t see beyond the little circle you draw around yourself, how are you gonna move out of it?
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: I don’t know who these “purists” were that didn’t like Stevie; probably some guy who was jealous in the corner that nobody paid any attention to. You had guitar players standing around having a big dick contest. Most of those guys shouldn’t be there. People get playing mixed up with ego, and it’s not always the same thing.
SUBLETT: I don’t recall Stevie ever being disrespected. Every time he stepped into Antone’s, Clifford had him onstage with whomever was there. Clifford always loved him and had open arms to anyone with talent and the right intent.
DAVID GRISSOM, Austin guitarist: Stevie was at Antone’s a lot, sitting in with everybody: Albert Collins, Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Taylor. One of the greatest things I’ve ever witnessed was him and Otis Rush going toe to toe, full on. They were staring at each other, just going at it. The roof was blown off that night. It doesn’t get any more intense than that.
ANDREW LONG, photographer: Stevie was around a lot. What a gift to be able to witness him over several years go from student to master as he played with his teachers. But to say “student” is a joke and disrespectful. Was Yo-Yo Ma ever really a student? Genius is genius, and it was all there from the beginning. That was obvious to anyone. He didn’t need to learn what to play, just what not to. All the greats he sat in with—Hubert Sumlin, Otis Rush, Albert Collins—Stevie became one of them.
BENTLEY: Stevie’s abilities were beyond scrutiny, but there was always a stuffy, too-cool-for-school clique who made a point of saying, “I like real blues, and Jimmie is the real thing.” Jimmie, on the other hand, would be the first to tell you how great Stevie was.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: Stevie loved playing so much, and that came through in everything he did. That was infectious, and no one who knew anything criticized Stevie for trying different things.
Austin’s Auditorium Shores, 7-15-81. (Watt M. Casey Jr.)
LICKONA: Stevie was such a sweet kid with no attitude, and there never was any skepticism about whether he had talent. Even when he was basically a kid, he was the talk of the town as much as anyone I can remember. He was sensational, and there was such a charisma about him and a magic about the way that he played and his whole onstage persona. He was completely consumed by his music. Everyone knew he was the real deal as soon as they heard him, including people like B. B. King and Buddy Guy.
BONNIE RAITT, singer / slide guitarist: Long before I met Stevie or saw him perform, I had heard all about him from guys like Albert Collins and Buddy Guy, who kept running into him and being blown away.
BUDDY GUY, Chicago blues legend: I’m from Louisiana, which is close to Texas, and I had no idea white people there would come out to hear you play blues, so I was astounded as soon as I walked into Antone’s the first time. Last I knew, those guys were listening to Hank Williams and Bob Wills, who I liked, too. Then they slipped Stevie up there behind me. I’m like, “Wait a minute, man. Who the hell is this?” He was hitting them notes and made me feel like I should go in the audience and watch so I could learn something ’cause he had that Albert King tone and attack. I was just thinking, “I gotta know who this guy is.” I really couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
SHANNON: A neat thing happened when younger people started to come to see Stevie, because they didn’t think of what we were playing as blues. They responded to it as a new sound. It had more of the rock energy to it. He wanted to put his foot over the line but for a long time was afraid of people asking, “Who does he think he is, playing Jimi Hendrix songs?” I kept bugging him to work up “Voodoo Child.”
LAYTON: He’d get kind of quiet and shy away from it, like it would just go away as an issue.
SHANNON: We also played “Red House” and “Spanish Castle Magic,” and one day, he played me the whole “May This Be Love” solo, note perfect. The cool thing was watching the transformation happen. When he began to trust his instincts and finally became comfortable in that role, he really took off, and I saw the biggest change in his playing. And it wasn’t just about playing Hendrix stuff, because it translated to the way we played everything. That’s when he became the Stevie that everybody knows.
BENSON: I remember standing side stage the first time I heard him play “Voodoo Chile” and thinking, “Holy shit! Stevie’s channeling Jimi now.”
ELWELL: Double Trouble had a box van with dual fuel tanks, and one day, the switch underneath wasn’t working. Stevie asked me to take a look at it, so I jumped underneath and started wrenching around. He comes out with a long orange extension cord and his Fender amp, which he sits down on and starts playing “Little Wing,” “Manic Depression,” and a few other Hendrix songs. He’d just started adding this stuff to his sets and asked if I thought people would like it or feel he was “infringing too much.” I was rocking out under the truck and said, “Hell no! You are killing it!”
DR. JOHN: Stevie started blowing me away one night when we was hanging at his pad. He put on some trippy, difficult Hendrix album and started playing along with it, which impressed me. Then he started playing off it, getting down, improvising, and I thought, “Man, this kid is jamming with Jimi Hendrix.” That’s when I saw something real unique in what he was going for and realized that this guy was something altogether different, someone who was taking the instrument somewhere new, really striving for something big.
STEELE: Stevie liked to jam to Jimi Hendrix records. He’d sit on the couch with his guitar, headphones on, eyes closed, zoning out while playing along to Band of Gypsys. I also saw him lift the needle on “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” a thousand times, wearing out Electric Ladyland.
One Halloween, Stevie took his infatuation with Jimi Hendrix to the hilt, transforming himself into his hero for a night. It was a heartfelt tribute from a guy who long carried a Polaroid photo of Jimi and a Hendrix autograph in his wallet. Stevie wore a ruffled shirt, a sparkly vest Shannon lent him, and an Afro wig that was a gift from Hendrix impersonator Randy Hansen.
“He looked so much like Jimi Hendrix, it was eerie,” says Shannon. “I think it was a lot of fun for Stevie to get out there with a good excuse to ‘be’ Jimi Hendrix for the night. He admired and deeply respected guys like B. B. and Albert King, but he was awestruck by Jimi Hendrix, who Stevie considered in a category of his own.”
With the incorporation of more Jimi Hendrix songs into his set, Stevie decided to tune his guitar down a half step all of the time, just as Hendrix had done. Detuning the instrument facilitated the move to even heavier string gauges, all the way to .013s, several steps thicker than the norm. Detuning serves to decrease the tension and make the heavy strings easier to bend while yielding a better tone and a meatier sound. Playing them required enormous hand and arm strength and a level of sacrifice in terms of ripping up his fingertips that few would be willing to embrace.
SRV: I started getting into using different fret wire because I noticed that I had an easier time playing when I had a little bit more fret. With normal guitar frets, I was wearing them out so fast, and I found out that I could put bigger frets on the guitar, raise the action, and use bigger strings. For me, all that made it feel easier to play. This works better for me because I can play hard with both hands.
The gauges vary because it’s based on the shape my fingers are in. I go from an .011 to an .013 on the high E, which is the only one I lighten up on. As a rule, the others are .015, .019, .028, .038, .054 to .056 or even .058. The good thing about such heavy strings is that you can hit ’em hard and they don’t move—when you pop ’em, they stay there.
BRAMHALL II: He paid a price for being as committed as he was to the kind of string bending he was known for. He had a “callus kit” to make new calluses on the spot: a wallet with compartments for nail files, manicure scissors, super glue, and baking soda. He often had massive holes, like a quarter-inch deep, in his fingertips. Before shows, he would fill the holes with baking soda and put super glue over it and stick it to the other palm of his hand let it dry and rip a new piece of skin off to form the new callus. Then he’d file it down smooth so it wouldn’t catch on the strings. He was very ingenious and inventive.
SHANNON: He would literally glue his fingers back together after burning them up. His method was very scientific. He would make this concoction of glue, put it on the end of the finger he wanted to fix, and the finger he was taking the skin off of, push the two fingertips together, and then slowly pull away the finger that he was grafting the skin from.
LAYTON: He would also add some skin oil to help the skin peel away, like peeling back a sticker real slow, so that it won’t rip while you’re pulling it off.
SHANNON: You’d be sitting there talking to him, and he’d suddenly rub his finger on your face to get some skin oil. This would last most of the gig, but by the end, he’d worn through it.
DONNIE OPPERMAN, guitar tech: Stevie was a brutally physical player. I sometimes changed his strings two or three times the same night! When I first met him, he would push extra high E and B strings through the bridge and he’d tape them to the face of his guitar. If he broke one of those strings, he’d just grab one of the new strings, pull it straight, and wind it himself onto the peg. He had this technique where he could bend the very end of the string down and then snap it off in one move before sticking it in the tuning peg. Super strength in his hands. I can’t do that, and I’ve tried hundreds of times.
BONNIE RAITT: Just when you thought there wasn’t any other way to make this stuff your own, he came along and blew that theory to bits. Soul is an overused word, but the fire and passion with which he invested everything he touched was just astounding, as was the way in which he synthesized his influences and turned them into something so fiercely personal.
DR. JOHN: He took something where there wasn’t much space to be unique and made it his own.
ERIC JOHNSON: You forge your own voice by combining all of the heroes who have an emotional impact on you, and finding an original way to put it all together into an original voice, with your own concept, attitude, and influence. You can hear Stevie’s influences—Albert King’s microtonal bending, the power of Freddie King and Otis Rush, Jimi Hendrix, T-Bone Walker—but his own personality, attitude, and intention overshadows that. He also loved jazz guitar players like Wes Montgomery, George Benson, and Kenny Burrell, and organ trio stuff by Jimmy Smith and Groove Holmes.
SHANNON: Stevie loved organ jazz and horn players like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman as well as rockabilly and old rock and roll like Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
LAYTON: He loved to play horn lines on the guitar, instead of just copping cool guitar licks.
SRV: Kenny Burrell was big for me. We play [Burrell’s] “Chitlins Con Carne.” I also listened to Wes Montgomery a lot. Django [Reinhardt]. Grant Green’s Live at the Lighthouse; he’s got some tone, man. [Willie Nelson’s guitarist] Jackie King. [Austin jazz guitarist] Fred Walters. The Wes stuff is his recordings with trios and quartets. My favorite Wes record, In the Wee Small Hours, had an orchestra on it. God! Sometimes it sounds like Muzak, but what he played on it …
Every once in a while, something just comes out. I can’t read music; I can’t read a note. But every once in a while, I feel the “Wes” thing coming. I can’t do it just sitting here. I’ve got to be groovin’ out!
BRAMHALL: I had great admiration for him as a musician and a person because he always lived life to the fullest. Every time you were around him, he was a constant reminder that today is all we have guaranteed. Even in the early days, whether he was buying a pair of boots or trying out amps, he was just completely into it. He was never satisfied with staying in one spot. He wanted to stretch, and that is what made him one of a kind. Several times, when it seemed like he couldn’t get any better, he took it to another level. He was always pushing the doors open and never wanted to stay the same.
SHANNON: Stevie was a very funny, spontaneous person. He could be acting like Brady, just completely goofing off, then pick up the guitar and immediately go into that other mode. He couldn’t play the guitar without doing it right. One time we were imitating heavy metal bands at sound check, and Stevie was trying to play all nervous and hy
per, doing all of these weird vibratos. But it didn’t really work; he was too good to sound bad.
BRANDENBURG: A very cool thing happened one night at Skip Willy’s. We had a $300 guarantee, but there were only about twenty people there in a new club for us, and I wanted to make sure they would want us back. Stevie agreed and told me to make a deal, so I told the guy we would not hold him to the guarantee. He said, “What do y’all want to do?” I said, “Give us fifty dollars and this dang milk bottle.” He says, “You nuts? That milk bottle is from 1890, and Pancho Villa shot a pellet through it!” He showed me the hole. I said, “Okay, just fifty dollars, then.” He said, “Okay, and here’s some draft beer.”
We played a great show for those twenty people, with the owner out there having a great time. Stevie said, “It was a great live practice, and we will eat this one,” so I told the guy that we didn’t even need the fifty bucks. It would be good for us in the long run. We shook hands and said goodbye, and when I opened the door to the truck, there in the driver seat was the milk bottle with three hundred-dollar bills in it. I looked back, and the guy was smiling and said, “Great show! Thank you, guys.” I walked back to him, dumbfounded, and said, “Man, you don’t have to do this.” He said, “I want you to have the milk bottle, and Stevie and the guys deserve the money. What a great show.” It was again one of those things where people wanted to help us, and losing money was not a point of contention. So I ended up with this 1890 milk bottle with a hole in it from Pancho Villa.
MINDY GILES, Alligator Records marketing director: Denny Bruce told me about Jimmie’s kid brother, a sizzling guitar player who loved Jimi Hendrix and Albert Collins. He said Stevie was a wild child, more flamboyant than Jimmie—and loud! I finally saw him perform in February 1981 in San Antonio, where I was showcasing Son Seals at a college talent buyers convention. After a long, frustrating day—Gallagher busting watermelons onstage was the rage, and there were plenty of college boys wearing bedsheets as togas and pretending they were in Animal House—at 11:30 p.m., a kid said that he loved real blues and added, “You should go see Stevie Ray Vaughan at Skip Willy’s tonight!” I ran around and told my like-minded friends, we packed up our display tables, ran out, hailed two cabs, and set out to find this raggedy-ass dive bar on the outskirts of town.