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-[blues guitar music] -[man singing]
[narrator] In March of 2017, the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum held
an exhibition dedicated to Texas guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Although he's been gone for nearly 27 years, Stevie has millions of fans
who were not even born when he was at the height of his popularity.
Stevie's rise to the top was preceded by his older brother Jimmie,
who served as a role model and influenced
the younger Vaughn brother in so many ways.
Their success represented the dreams of many of my fellow baby boomers
to somehow become a rock and roll star, a true guitar hero.
When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show
on February 9th, 1964, the whole world was watching.
For myself and millions of other male baby boomers,
that performance changed our lives and our worldview.
It showed us there was now a whole new way to meet girls.
Because up until The Beatles, you had to play football or be one of the cool kids.
Now you just had to play in a band.
But before the Beatles, that wasn't even a possibility.
Until then, Elvis was rock and roll.
But to be like Elvis, you had to be good looking.
And the only problem was that most of us just weren't that attractive.
But all that changed with Ringo.
Ringo wasn't pretty like John or Paul,
but he was in a rock and roll band.
And the girls loved him.
The next morning, millions of us bought electric guitars
and started practicing in our basements,
garages, or living rooms, dreaming of making it big.
But in the end, only a minuscule number actually got there.
Down in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff,
two brothers were part of this wave.
And from that small home on Glenfield Avenue,
those two brothers went on to win Grammy awards
and perform alongside rock and roll legends like David Bowie,
Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Nile Rodgers and Jimi Hendrix.
There were Jimmie and his little brother, Stevie Vaughan.
And in the words of Lou Ann Barton,
they came from nowhere and went everywhere.
[man] Roll it, and I'll just feel something.
["Hard to Be" by the Vaughan Brothers]
♪ It's hard to be ♪
♪ It's hard for me To keep arm's length From my baby ♪
♪ Whoa, can't you see ♪
♪ When I'm away from her It sho' nuf' drives me crazy ♪
♪ Oh, something inside of me When she's gone I miss her so ♪
♪ I want to tell her How I feel ♪
[narrator] In 1963, America was still enjoying the fruits of the postwar boom.
Millions of GIs had returned from Europe and the Pacific
to marry, settle down and raise a family.
The GI Bill provided them with low-cost home loans, and a housing boom took off.
In Oak Cliff, a neighborhood just south of downtown Dallas,
a businessman named Angus Wynne started a planned development called Wynnewood.
It featured thousands of low-cost, two-bedroom tract homes
that sold almost as fast as he could build them
and one of the country's first shopping centers, Wynnewood Village.
60 years later, most of those homes are still in use, as is Wynnewood Village.
One of these houses was at 2755 Glenfield Avenue
on a side street off of Hampton Road, near Kiest Park.
It was here that Jim and Martha Vaughan settled down
and raised their two sons, Jimmie and Stevie.
There wasn't anything outstanding about the little house.
It looked just like all the others around it.
As a matter of fact, in the 1950s, most of America looked the same.
We all lived in two-parent households,
watched the same three TV channels,
four if you lived in the city that had what they called educational TV,
and we shared one landline telephone
and went to the nearest public school.
And we pretty much looked and dressed the same.
[Jimmie] Our uncles played music, and our parents danced,
and they played dominoes, and they worked every day.
We were like just totally normal kids, going to school
and riding our bicycles, you know, playing in the backyard.
Didn't have any idea about any of this stuff.
You know, we had a great, great childhood.
[narrator] One person who saw the Vaughan brothers grow up was their cousin, Connie Trent.
After losing both parents at the age of seven,
she was adopted by Preston and May Vaughan.
[Connie] They all hung out together, and they went to what they called honky tonks.
And this picture right here, this is my mother.
That's my father.
That's Big Jim, or Jim Vaughan.
And there's my Aunt May and Uncle Preston.
It was pretty much all two-parent families, that's just the way it was.
As far as dressing the same, everyone wore the same styles.
It was a time period when the mothers were still at home,
you know, and they made sure that the kids kept busy,
'cause they wanted to keep them out of trouble.
[narrator] But all that changed with the Beatles.
Boys started wearing their hair longer,
and every town enjoyed a burst of rock bands
that sprang up like mushrooms after rain.
Rock and roll dreams reached all the way, even into rural America.
At the same time, Oak Cliff, Texas was undergoing a transformation.
So many children were born to all of the returning World War II GIs
that a building boom of new schools
took place to accommodate the growing enrollment.
For over 30-- almost 30 years,
there had been no new high schools or junior highs built in Oak Cliff.
And starting in 1952 when South Oak Cliff opened, over the next about 14 years,
there were four large high schools built and six junior high schools built.
So, everything really expanded.
Kimball opened in the fall of '59,
and then Carter opened in the fall of '66.
[narrator] Both Carter and Kimball High
produced a bumper crop of budding guitar heroes.
They drew inspiration from a long list of Oak Cliff artists
and musicians who went before them,
including Michael Martin Murphey, T-Bone Walker,
B.W. Stevenson, Terry Southern and Yvonne Craig.
Yes, Batgirl was from Oak Cliff, Texas.
Oak Cliff was both an artist factory and a band of misfits.
On the one hand, you had Terry Southern and Yvonne Craig,
while on the other hand, you had Lee Harvey Oswald and Bonnie and Clyde.
In that day, Dallas, Texas was also the music mecca of the Southwest.
Elvis had played the state fair of Texas,
while Buddy Holly played the infamous Sportatorium
and then drove over to Oak Cliff with the Crickets to buy his first motorcycle.
So, Oak Cliff was cranking out creative types and criminals.
It was an interesting dichotomy.
In the 1960s, most of us sat glued to our TV sets
to watch shows like Shindig,
Hullabaloo or Dick Clark's Where the Action Is.
We went to the movie theaters to see The Beatles
inA Hard Day's Night orThe T.A.M.I. Show.
Mainly, we wanted to be anywhere else but where we were.
It seemed as if all the action and excitement
was happening out in Southern California
or New York City where everything was cool.
We felt like we were missing out on something.
And because we couldn't get there, we did the next best thing.
We went to teen clubs.
I went to this church
called Glen Oaks Methodist Church on Polk Street.
And they would have sock hops on Friday and Saturday nights
to try to keep us off the streets.
And so, they would have these bands come in,
of all high school bands from Oak Cliff.
And so there was a guy named Seab Meador in one of the bands,
Danny Sanchez was in one of the bands,
Stevie Ray Vaughan was in one of the bands.
Jimmie Vaughan was in one of the bands.
So, all these famous guitar players then,
they were even notable back then-- is we were kids.
If somebody was famous a couple of years older than you, it was a big deal.
We were too young to go out
and go to any of the grown-up clubs, so to speak.
You know, the ones that served alcohol, you just couldn't get in.
So, these were places in Oak Cliff where teenagers could come
and have a good time, and dance and listen to music.
And of course, instead of having deejays then,
we would have live bands or combos of, you know,
little bands that-- garage bands that kids in the neighborhood put together.
And those that had gotten good would play at these places,
and would play at the school sock hops, and we would play it,
at Candy's Flare, we'd play the church dances and things like that.
During the week on Fridays, Stockard, where Jimmie went at the time,
had a sock hop in the gym, 7:00 in the morning every Friday, 10 cents,
you can ask Jimmie. He says, "It's the cheapest 10-cents dance in town."
[narrator] Dallas even produced its own version of American Bandstand,
a weekly dance show broadcast live from North Park Mall calledSump'n Else.
These are the Five Americans with "Western Union,"
would you join me in a welcome
for our own Five Americans, here they are.
[applause]
[music playing]
♪ Things went wrong today And bad news came my way ♪
♪ I woke up to find That I had blew my mind ♪
[narrator] In short, there was a huge scene going on in Dallas and Fort Worth,
but you would have never known it unless you lived there.
The Internet, cell phones, Facebook, texting,
and social media had not been invented yet,
so going viral was out of the question.
All that we had to spread the word were landline phones,
and most of us only had one phone at home
that we had to share with our parents.
The entire teen club phenomenon was our version of Facebook.
This was how you met girls.
You had to get out of your house,
go to wherever the kids were meeting up,
and walk up to a girl and ask her to dance.
You couldn't do it on the Internet.
You had to get off your couch and do it.
But because we were all too young to drive,
we had to have our parents drive us to the club,
and then hopefully drop us off and pick us up.
[Connie] A lot of them had station wagons, so they could pile in
a lot of kids and take them to Oak Cliff Country Club or to the sock hops
at Glen Oaks Methodist Church or to Candy's Flare.
And I personally begged my aunt to take me
whenever I knew Stevie was going to be playing or Jimmie.
[narrator] It was into this rock and roll wave
that an 11-year-old kid in Oak Cliff
got a rather unlikely introduction to the guitar.
My friend at school told me,
he said, "If you want to get a girlfriend
or be popular with the girls, you're going to have to play football."
Said, "There's just no way around it."
He said, "Look at all these guys, this is what they do."
And he said, "Nobody really cares about football.
They just want a girlfriend." I was like, "Okay, that's sounds like me."
[chuckles] You know? So, I went to football practice and, uh...
uh, the guy said, "What do you want to go out for?"
And I said, "Well, I don't know."
I didn't really play football, but I went anyway.
So, they called my name. Finally.
I'm the last guy, they call my name and I have to go out for a pass.
So, I mysteriously catch this pass,
and all the football players jumped on me,
tackled me, and I broke my collarbone,
first day, first practice.
And so I had to go to the doctor,
and they put one of those slings on--
they called 'em a wingie.
So I was at home for three months,
and my dad got a guitar for 50 bucks
and gave to me. It had three strings on it.
It was about like this one.
He said, "Here, I don't know what we're going to do with you for three months."
But he said, "Here, play this, maybe this will keep you out of trouble."
And I've been playing guitar ever since.
The first thing I learned was-- instead of going like this...
...which is what everybody wants to learn
when they first start, if you're a kid.
Back then in the fifties. I did it backwards.
I didn't know, and I went...
and so like the first couple of days, I was like, I was like, "Damn!"
I was thinking, "Man, I'm going to make records and everything."
So, I started getting pretty good on the guitar.
And so, in the meantime,
my dad gave my uncle 50 bucks for an electric guitar.
It had one pickup. It was a three-quarter Gibson,
no cutaways,
and that was my guitar for a couple of years.
My dad knew that I needed a real fancy electric guitar.
So, he said, "Come on, son, look, we're going to get you a new guitar today."
I said, "All right." So, we went down to McCord's Music,
I think it was. Downtown Dallas.
He said-- we went in there and he goes, "Which one do you want?"
I said, "Well, I like those up there."
You know, there was a Gretsch or something.
So they got it down and I played it and everything.
And so, my dad tells the guy, "Come on, let's go back here and sign up for it."
So, they went back there, and they turned his credit down.
And so...
You know, it wasn't a big deal to me, but it was-- he was embarrassed.
So, we went-- we just went to another place,
and we went to Arnold and Morgan Music,
which was the big music store out in Garland.
And we went in there.
They had a whole row of Telecasters.
They said, "What color do you want?"
And they had a whole row of used Stratocasters, everything.
And so I got a Gibson 330, brand new.
I picked out a brand new one,
and they signed him up, and I had it. I was on my way.
[narrator] When he first started playing the guitar, his musical taste reflected
what was going on in Dallas at the time.
While Nashville had its country sounds, and Memphis had Elvis,
Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash,
Dallas had a blend of Black blues and country,
or what was commonly called, "Hillbilly."
And my mother's brothers all played in country and Western bands.
They liked Merle Travis, Hank Thompson, and all that kind of stuff.
That was rock and roll in the early '50s.
There was all kind of music around the house,
on the radio and on the record player.
So, later on, I'm in several bands with Paul Ray over the years.
Paul Ray says, "Hey, tonight T-Bone is playing at Guthrie's."
That was on there on the river, Trinity River area, down there in the bottoms.
Oak Cliff was dry back then.
Everybody had to go over the river to get booze,
and there was a lot of clubs right there,
liquor stores and clubs for a mile.
And so, that's where I saw T-Bone Walker at Guthrie's, and Paul Ray took me.
I already had his records and heard about him,
but I'd never seen him in person.
So, that was a big milestone.
Seeing all these guys
and understanding that you were in a place
where a lot of that music came from and was from there
was very, um, empowering and exciting,
you know, to be from Dallas.
[guitar playing]
[narrator] Oak Cliff was in on this wave.
It also gave birth to the first top 40 radio station in the country,
KLIF 1190, on your AM dial.
[Connie] I mean, it was huge, and everybody knew where KLIF was down in downtown Dallas.
You know, that really unique triangle shaped building.
[narrator] And as a hundred thousand watt AM station,
it could be heard as far away as Midland, Texas and Louisiana.
But one of the most popular radio programs for white kids in Dallas
was Jim Lowe'sKat's Karavan on WRR.
For a whole generation of Dallas baby boomers,
this program was their introduction to R&B
or "race music," as it was called back then.
[Jimmie] Kats Karavan.
I'd listen to that every night, it came on at 10:00,
I think it was. For an hour.
And he would play Jimmy Reed
and Lightnin' Hopkins and... different people.
And then I'd switch it over to WLAC, Nashville would come in.
The Hoss Man, and then later on after that,
it would be Wolfman would come in late at night.
So... and that was all on my little transistor radio, which was under my pillow.
Click! You just click it on, and you could hear it but nobody else could hear it.
'Cause you're supposed to be asleep, right?
[narrator] And one band that took up the idea
of white boys playing Black music was The Nightcaps.
Jimmie Vaughan was an early fan.
The Nightcaps was the first album that I bought with my own money.
This is before I was in a band and went out and bought the Nightcaps,
the whole album, because they had an album, you know.
"Wine, Wine, Wine."
♪ I'm drinking wine, wine Fine wine all the time ♪
[song continues]
And it was all drinkin' songs pretty much, and blues.
It was T-Bone Walker, Jimmy Reed, and Lazy Lester-type songs,
but done by a rock and roll band.
[narrator] It wasn't long before Jimmie was learning songs,
not just by The Nightcaps but other performers.
This was decades before instructional YouTube
guitar videos or even the VHS tape.
Back then, if we wanted to learn to play guitar,
we signed up for lessons at the YMCA,
but they didn't teach us "Sunshine of Your Love" or "Purple Haze."
To play the songs you heard on the radio,
you had to either learn them by trial and error or have a friend show you.
It wasn't easy.
You had to have talent, you had to practice.
It was hard, and so few made it.
I knew Johnny Peebles.
Johnny Peebles was the hot guitar player in Oak Cliff,
and he was playing all around.
He was probably 17 or 18, and he had a gig,
he had a Stratocaster and an Epiphone, and he was a badass.
He showed me how to play all this stuff.
See, if you know that, then, uh...
you can run away from home. No.
I learned how listening to a Jimmy Reed record.
You know, one day my dad had a guitar already,
and I'd lay it in my lap, you know, like this,
and I'll be seeing where to put my fingers, and I finally get it.
And one day I said, "Well, if I'm really going to play,
I need to hold it up like this and try to do it like this," you know?
And so finally, you know, I got it all down,
-[producer] Play a blues lick. -Oh, boy, it's been a long time, you know.
-You know. -The first song I learned
was from my stepbrother, Bruce, which was "Pipeline."
It was just osmosis. I mean, it was just being in the room.
It was going to those sock hops, it was going to Candy's Flare,
it was going to Twilight Roller Rink,
and just-- you'd watch what somebody else did,
then you'd go home, and you'd get the record, and you'd just wear it out.
You'd get a new B.B. King album, and you'd just-- the album would just skip,
'cause you'd move the needle back to get the lick so many times, you know?
So, I would just sit, and I would listen with my ears and try to learn the lick.
And so, most of us were self-taught.
And then when we would rehearse, because you were so young,
there were kind of a rehearsal/learning session,
like somebody would know something and they'd show it to you,
and you'd know something and show it to the guy next to you. It was fun.
Here's the thing about a guitar player,
whatever you play, to a great degree,
it's going to sound like you sound.
So much of your tone is in your hands.
So, Stevie sounded like the Stevie that we all grew to know and love,
even playing through this rig, you know.
[Connie] They were both the most determined people I have ever met in my life.
I still believe that Jimmie and Stevie
were born to be who they were going to be,
because they believed in practice made perfect,
and they practiced.
[narrator] After learning a few songs, Jimmie Vaughan, Phil Campbell
and Ronnie Sterling formed a trio, The Swinging Pendulums.
Back then, the idea of playing records at a dance was considered lame.
You had to have a live band to be cool.
It was much more fun to hire, you know, a couple--
you know, three or four kids to come play a church party or a sock hop
or something like that and pay them, whatever,
ten or 15 bucks each and have them show up.
And it was it was a boon to them.
It was fun for the boys playing because you got the exposure.
You were an early rock star and you have you had all your friends out there
watching you who may or may not have known that you played guitar.
So, it was exciting, and my primary reason was you got to meet girls.
[narrator] But there was just one problem for The Pendulums:
They were all too young to drive,
so they had to have their fathers do it.
The three fathers would switch off,
or they would fight over who got to do it, or they would flip a coin,
because, you know, they would be like,
"Darn, I got to take the kids tonight.
I'm sorry, honey." You know what I mean?
Vroom, you know?
[narrator] Even though Dallas had hundreds of bands,
there was a hierarchy to them with a few of the top commanding
premium prices and drawing the biggest crowds.
And in Dallas, the hottest band in the 1960s was The Chessmen.
When The Chessmen's lead guitar player,
Robert Patton, drowned in an accident
in White Rock Lake, an open audition was held for his replacement.
He was in a fraternity, and his fraternity buddies and him were out in White Rock Lake
real late at night or real early in the morning.
Robert was a good swimmer, but they were out on the lake.
It was windy and the boom-- and it was cold, and wind blew one way and knocked
Robert out the boat, the boom, the sail did, and then it blew the other way.
Pulled him away. And of course, we were thinking, Robert's a good swimmer,
he made it to the shore, but it was too cold.
[narrator] A 14-year-old Jimmie Vaughan came in and blew everyone away.
I remember when I asked him to come down there, he said, "Wow, I play with y'all?"
I said, "Yeah." So, he says, "Are you sure?" I said, "Yeah."
So, we went down-- I remember going to Louanns
and coming in, and he got up there
probably two in the afternoon we got there to try him out.
-And he worked out right. Yeah. -Yeah.
He played everything that we already knew, you know.
[narrator] Jimmie got the gig, but he was still too young to drive,
so the band members had to be his driver,
picking him up for their shows and taking him home
around 2:00 a.m. after the clubs closed.
I'd pick him up or some of his friends that had a license would bring him.
Well, but now we had-- back then
we had a black '50 model Cadillac hearse, that was our band wagon.
And we'd go by and pick up Jimmie.
He was right off to Illinois and Hampton, in Oak Cliff.
And this is the ironic thing.
Now, Johnny said this, and I never saw it but he said
Stevie Ray would stand out on the front porch and cry when we left.
In an interview he had with somebody, he said,
"When they left with Jimmie, I'd do one or two things,
I'd either stand on the front porch and cry
or go in and practice like crazy."
Yeah, well, my parents would take me sometime
when I lost my license,
and we'd drive over there to pick Jimmie up,
and they'd take us where we need to go,
and Stevie would be running out to the car.
And then Jimmie would-- at one time that I know of--
would chase him back up to the porch and run and get in the car and take off.
Stevie wanted to go. We should've let him go, you know?
If he didn't have a brother, Jimmie-- Stevie would have played.
I do think that if the fact that he had a brother
that played like Jimmie, it opened the doors,
it's like the sparrow and the eagle, like, he got to experience
music on a really potent level
at an early-- as a really young kid because of his brother.
We knew Jimmie from The Chessmen.
When I had the Moving Sidewalks out of Houston,
The Chessmen had started their thing up north Texas and Dallas.
And Jimmie was leading the charge.
We admired what they were doing to the point where
if we had a night off and they were playing, we'd seek them out.
[narrator] Without question, the two most revered guitar players of the 1960s
were Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
They completely changed the idea of what a guitar could do.
Now the front man wasn't the singer on the microphone.
It was the guy who could make his guitar talk.
Like every other budding guitar player from that era,
both Jimmie and Stevie idolized Hendrix and Clapton.
And one night, Jimmie Vaughan and The Chessmen
got a chance to open up for Hendrix
at his Dallas concert.
Hendrix, his road man-- his gear guy,
he said that he'd busted his Wah-Wah pedal.
So, they came to me, and I had a brand-new Vox Wah-Wah pedal,
which cost-- I can't remember
if it was $29 or $17, but it was something like that.
And they said, "Look, Jimi has busted his pedal.
If you let us use yours, we'll give you his old one.
And I'll give you 25 bucks." Which is more than I paid for it,
you know, or 50 bucks or something like that,
because we can't go to the music store on a Saturday, you know.
So, that was what the real story was.
And then of course the legend has it that...
we traded Wah Wah pedals or something, you know, something ridiculous.
But what it was was they just wanted mine 'cause they didn't have one.
And so they gave me 50 bucks and his old DeArmond,
which wasn't any good... for that, you know?
-[producer] You still have that pedal? -I think I do, yeah.
But, I mean, you can't tell that it's anything, you know,
you can go on eBay and buy 15 of them, you know? [chuckles]
[Tommy] All I can say is Hendrix, and Noel Redding, and Mitch Mitchell,
they were all three real nice guys.
I mean, I was really kind of shocked,
and, uh-- but, uh-- and they were nice,
and I want to say something here
and it's gonna sound crazy, but I honestly think that night,
we were louder than they were, but they were a lot better than we were.
But they were-- they were playing out of two Sun amps--
Our volume covers that up, right?
Yeah, the volume covers our stuff,
our mess ups, you know, but honestly,
we had more sound equipment on the stage.
But then our booking agent worked this out, Jimmie Vaughan and I flew
with Jimi Hendrix and his band from Love Field to Houston.
I mean, our booking agent got that, and that was so cool.
But what do you talk to Jimi Hendrix
on an airplane about? I just kind of, "Uh..."
[narrator] Jimmie Vaughan and Billy Gibbons had something in common now.
They had both met Jimi Hendrix, but the admiration and respect went deeper than that.
Houston had this place called The Catacombs,
and it was pretty nice, big stage, two stages, actually.
They had a big room, and a small room, and...
The Chessmen and The Moving Sidewalks played a Friday
and a Saturday night together, and we just had a blast.
It was really, really something.
I've known Billy since I was 15,
and The Chessmen would go down and play in Houston,
and Billy Gibbons would be on the same bill with us sometimes at The Catacombs,
which was a club that we used to play down there.
And we actually did one gig where they said, "Jimmie Vaughan from Dallas
meets Billy Gibbons from Houston on the same stage."
And so, one of us was on each side of the stage,
and we were supposed to battle it out, you know, and everything.
It was a big, sold-out deal, you know?
[Johnny] I broke my Epiphone in half that night, so...
-So, was that the night? -Yeah, I was playing on the keyboard,
and we were doing some kind of Who song, you know,
where they broke all their equipment, and I...
my guitar, I slid it off and I was running up and down that organ.
And then I looked down there and saw it, and I walked around the front
and I took my foot and did that. And it did that.
And then I got on my knees, and I started, you know-- make a bunch of racket with it,
you know, and this end of the neck right here laying over here.
[chuckles] So I broke that thing in half.
And then we all went back in the dressing room after that.
And someone came in there, you know how they come backstage.
-Yeah. -He says, "Y'all do that?" I said, "We do that every show."
[narrator] Because he was staying out until 2:00 a.m. every night,
he was missing school.
It finally reached a point where he decided to leave home
and chase his rock and roll dreams.
Doyle Bramhall pulled into his driveway.
Jimmie carried his things to the waiting car, and he was gone,
leaving his family and younger brother Stevie behind.
I was making $300, $350 a week at 14.
That was big money in the mid '60s.
That was more money than my dad made at the time.
And, um, it was kind of weird, you know,
but all of a sudden, I could--
I could go down and sign up
and get any guitar or any amp and I could go buy clothes.
And I had an apartment, you know, and things like that.
So I was, you know, in hog heaven, and all I had to do was play guitar,
which is what I wanted to do, you know what I mean?
And so, about that time, if you look at the old pictures,
there's a picture of me playing a guitar like this with a flat top.
And then Stevie is right there.
He's got a toy guitar, but it had six strings, you know.
We stood next to the stereo because it looked like we had speakers.
If I did something, he would do it.
Uh, guitar-wise. If I bring home a record,
you know, he would watch me learn, so it was really the same.
I put it down, and he would emulate that because, you know, there it was.
When I ran off to be a musician, everything when I got in that band,
my parents kind of clamped down on him,
because they didn't want him-- they knew that he would do the same thing I did, right?
So all it did was jack him up more to even try harder
because he had to beat me. It's the natural thing, right?
If you're going to do something, you have to have the bar set.
So... and so I saw him a few times because I didn't want to go home.
[stammers] I was still afraid they would keep me. Right?
[chuckles] And so, uh...
So they kind of clamped down on Stevie to make sure he wouldn't run away, too,
which made him try harder and harder and harder.
And so by the time he got out of high school,
he was a bad motor scooter, you know, on the guitar. He was good.
When I first heard him play away from one another, I couldn't see the connection.
Because for me,
uh, Stevie was Albert King.
He was, you know, he... [stammers]
it seemed like he was a protégé of Albert King, he played that way.
And I thought, "These are two very, very different styles."
What I think you could be looking at is the fact that
would-- would Stevie be playing at all?
You know, and I think in a way, it was like, well, if you're gonna do it,
I could probably do a better job
it was definitely sibling rivalry, I think, going on.
I don't know whether Jimmie would agree.
Probably-- he probably would.
And I think it's like, well, "Who's the fastest gun?" You know?
So, in a way, it may have reinforced Jimmie's style of playing, too,
to actually really ground that, or, you know, to keep it tight and fundamental
while Stevie was going off into the atmosphere, you know.
[Scott] I first met Stevie in my senior year at Kimball.
He was two years behind me. He was a sophomore when I was a senior.
And I had put together a horn band
with a friend of mine named Jimmy Tremier, who was a saxophone player.
And we were putting together a band in the same genre as Chicago
and Blood, Sweat and Tears, which were hugely popular bands at the time.
I was actually the guitar player for the band, and one Saturday
at rehearsal we realized we didn't--
well, we didn't have a bass player at all.
And for one of these Saturday rehearsals,
I think it was one of the horn players said,
"I know a kid that can come and play bass at rehearsal,
and if he's good, you know, then we'll keep him."
So, this Saturday morning, this skinny, little 15-year-old kid shows up,
brings his bass in, and we started rehearsing.
We learned two or three songs, and of course, he was a good bass player.
And we took a break after we'd gone through about four or five songs.
We were all standing around outside smoking a cigarette or whatever.
And this kid says, "Hey, Scott, do you mind if I play your guitar?"
I said, "No, no, no, sure, go right ahead."
You know, "Help yourself." Anyway, he walks over and picks up--
I was playing a Fender Telecaster at the time,
but he walked over and picked up my guitar
and just proceeded to blow us all away.
I mean, he just cleaned my clock as far as playing guitar.
He was amazing. But that's who it was.
It was Stevie Vaughan when he was 15 years old.
And then after we heard him play guitar,
I immediately became the bass player.
I walked over and took his bass and gave him my guitar
and said, "You're now the guitar player, I'm bass player for the band."
The best advice I ever got-- two things that I got from Stevie, he said,
"Always, when you're playing, play from your heart and soul."
The mechanics are good, but if you can't play
with your soul or from your heart-- that's where he came from.
He played-- and another thing is for as far as the mechanical side, you know,
because he had incredibly strong hands,
I can remember watching him play
and I would pick up a guitar and say,
"Stevie, show me how to do that."
And he would play these incredible licks.
I can't remember, but let's see...
You know, something like that. And I would watch him when he was--
I couldn't get the concept down of how to stretch strings at the time.
And Stevie was-- to him, it was just, "This is how you do it."
And he would just show it to me, and I would watch his fingers,
and I'd try to duplicate it. And there was just no way.
But I asked him, I said, "How do you manage that? How did you get the string?"
And he said, "Always, when you rehearse, when you practice by yourself,
if you have an acoustic guitar, play an acoustic guitar,
don't play your electric, play your acoustic
because it'll build up your hand strength."
Well, when we were in high school,
we heard about a project that a guy was doing,
and it was called "A New High."
It was a play on high school and getting high.
And so we submitted a picture,
and we wrote a bio and where we played and the whole thing,
and you know, you're back to, once again,
there was no Facebook, so it had to be public opinion.
In other words, they would talk to two or three people.
I guess he had some sort of panel.
And so, "Yeah, I saw them at Candy's Flare,
I saw them at Glen Oak sock hop
or Twilight Roller Rink," or whatever.
So we were the band that was picked. It was called The Mint.
That was the band I grew up in, and we were the band from Carter.
Stevie was in a band called a Cast of Thousands,
which he was the band from Kimble.
A good friend of mine, Mike McCollough was in it,
and the character actor Steve Tobolowsky.
Somehow Bobby, through his connections, whatever those were,
got us this opportunity
to record songs on this album.
The album, which I happen to have right here, A New High.
This is the real thing, and it's still sealed in plastic,
which means it is collector quality.
This is the first recording Stevie Ray Vaughan ever made.
When we were brought into the studio,
Bobby said he got this little kid,
Stevie Vaughan, to play lead guitar for us.
He was 14 years old.
And I said, "Bobby, come on!"
"I mean, why can't I play some guitar? You're bringing in a 14-year-old?"
And Bobby said, "Well, he's actually really good,
and he's going to make us sound like we know what we're doing."
And Stevie was sitting on a metal folding chair
with his Gibson with the double humbuck and pickups.
Stevie said, "Well, what are you guys going to do? Let me hear a little bit of it."
And we played like one measure. He says, "Okay, I got it."
And so he kind of played along with us to begin with.
And then the engineer said, "Well, Steve, we're ready, do you want to do a solo?"
And Stevie said, "Well, sure." So, Stevie said,
"Do you want me to do one like Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix?"
And I said to Bobby, "Who's Jimi Hendrix?"
And Bobby said, "Shut up, just shut up, man. Shut up.
Just stand over there and pretend you're playing the guitar."
And the guy said, "Your choice, man, do whatever you want."
So, Stevie kind of threw his head back and went into this lead
that was blistering.
[Stevie playing guitar]
On this album. Blistering back then at 14.
[narrator] Now the younger brother was following
in his older brother's footsteps.
Dallas and Fort Worth had a circuit of nightclubs that needed bands.
So, if you were good, you could find work.
Arthur's was kind of the Playboy Club of Dallas.
It was kind of low-key, dark, very moody place.
[stammers] But it was pretty cool
because they enjoyed having live music,
which was kind of unusual for that type of highbrow joint.
But I remember Stevie was just getting his feet on the ground.
He had started that group called Liberation.
And later, ZZ Top got hired to play at that same place, Arthur's.
And then Stevie repaid the favor.
He dropped through, and we had him play a couple of numbers with us.
It was a glorious couple of nights.
That was a good scene.
I guess that must have been 1970, '71.
[narrator] Both Vaughan brothers were now
in a sort of competition with the hottest
guitar players in the southwest
like Bugs Henderson, Mace Maben, Seab Meador.
Getting started on this crazy thing called
getting in a band and making music,
that was an entertaining excursion.
There wasn't any blood, sweat, there was no toil.
It was something that we enjoyed doing pre-Internet
pre-MTV, pre-cell phone.
It was basically word of mouth, and that is where it gets honest.
Because if somebody came to see you then,
you know, it's because they really made an effort to come.
They didn't see something on Facebook or anything like this.
I mean, they literally came to see you because they'd heard about you.
They'd honestly heard about you through your reputation.
[narrator] Without a record deal, they were unknown in L.A., New York, or Chicago,
and it was almost like they were living on an island,
a very big island called Texas.
And you can make a very good living just playing in Texas.
Back then, a record deal was considered the pinnacle of success in rock and roll.
But the big record labels were only signing bands from New York or L.A.
Bands like The Doors were getting discovered in a club on the Sunset Strip
or The Young Rascals in New York City.
They were signed to Elektra or Atlantic, major labels on both coasts.
But in between was a huge area of America
where the A&R men never ventured.
You could only get on a record in one of the small local labels back then.
They had some success with B.J. Thomas and Bruce Channel,
but they didn't have the distribution or the clout
of an RCA, Columbia, or Warner Brothers.
Their sound or style from back then was loud,
with a lot of distortion and some effects.
Most of the rock stars played a Gibson Les Paul and relied on its sustain
to get those long, searing notes that held on forever.
[note continues]
-Still going. -[producer] Yeah.
[Jimmie] Stratocasters are the coolest guitar they ever made
because everything about it--
the way it looks, it looks like a combination--
You can't tell whether it's a lamp
or a machine gun or a ray gun or a--
it's part ashtray. I mean, what is it?
It's the wildest looking thing you've ever seen, isn't it?
I mean, it's got horns, and it was just really trebly and cool.
And so when you put it on, you feel special because it's so cool.
And it will do anything that another guitar will do.
And it's got a twang bar. It'll do stuff that, uh--
like Hendrix came out, and he would just dive the twang bar down,
and, you know, pull on it, bash it, and do things you weren't supposed to do.
[narrator] But down in Texas, the guitar player that everybody was copying
was the Texas Cannonball, Freddy King.
Freddy King, um, was the first guitar player I heard
bend a note and then even put a little vibrato on it. I'd never heard that before.
In fact, Jackie and Freddy and I, we had the house band at the--
or the early band at the Chicken and the Basket Club where Freddy King would play.
It's pretty cool. Freddy would show up in his Cadillac, would drive from Dallas.
You know, his amp, you know, that tall--
and take up the whole back seat of his Cadillac
and he'd drag that out and put it on stage and wail away
with Little Al and The High Fives.
So there was, you know, nothing like it, yeah?
-[producer] Really. -[laughs]
Well, Freddy King-- when I first started trying to play,
before any of this British invasion stuff or any of that, I had, uh...
I had The Nightcaps and Freddy King, you couldn't, uh--
you had to play "Hide Away" if you were in Dallas.
If you got hired for a birthday party,
somebody was gonna come up and say, "Can you play Hide Away?"
And if you can't play Hide Away, then you may not,
you know, you may not last the rest of the night.
[Freddy King, "Hide Away"]
I bought the single "Hide Away."
Someone told me about "Hide Away,"
and I was playing "Hide Away" before I joined John Mayall.
And so, that was it for me. [stammers] I started--
and then I had to get a Les Paul, you know, like Freddy's,
and I found out a lot about why he sounded like he did from playing that guitar.
So he was instrumental in me learning how to play the guitar.
When I was growing up, I was in that band, Lynx,
and we-- for a couple of months we had this Sunday night gig,
Burger Night at Mother Blues.
You pay cover and you eat all the burgers you wanted.
And I'll never forget, Freddy would come in there and he had a girl on each arm,
and he'd sit down in front of me. And I remember one night
he sat down right in front of me, literally right in front of me,
he looked up and he goes, "Impress me, boy."
Yeah, that's a bit intimidating, you know?
[narrator] Freddy King's style of blues was different than Muddy Waters or B.B. King.
It was what came to be known as the Texas Roadhouse Blues,
more up tempo and driven.
Texas guitar players like Steve Miller and the Vaughan brothers
flocked to his shows to absorb King's style
and in turn use it on their songs.
This brought a whole different style in Texas than they played in New York or L.A.
And it was what some called "Blue-Eyed Soul"
or white boys playing the Black man's music.
But it was really taking the Black roots of rock and roll
and making it palatable for white college kids.
You can hear it in the early songs of The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.
At the height of his success, Jimmie became a father.
His then girlfriend, Donna Powers, became pregnant,
and Jimmie got married at the age of 18.
Jimmie's marriage was followed by a desire
to drop the British rock and roll sounds of Cream,
Led Zeppelin, and the Yardbirds, and return to the blues
and hillbilly music he grew up with.
But at the same time, Dallas was not the most hospitable city
for a long-haired rock and roll guitar player.
This idea that Dallas was a hotbed of extremism certainly is accurate.
This is the city that had come out of having the Klu Klux Klan
here in the 1920s, one of the largest chapters in the country.
In fact, in 1960, the Mayor of Dallas, R.L. Thornton, was a former Klansman.
[narrator] Austin, Texas, a college town only about 180 miles
south down the road, was a bit more tolerant of creative types.
When I lived in Dallas, they didn't want you playin' blues.
They wanted the stuff that was on the radio. So, if you wanted to get a gig,
you had to play what was on the radio or something like it.
And so-- and down here
they had, you know, weird bands, like...
Beatnik bands, and they had The Conqueroo,
and they had The 13th Floor Elevators,
and then The Vulcan Gas Company, we had places like that.
So I figured if they would let them play,
they would let me play blues.
And just-- mainly just to get the you-know-what out of Dallas.
Oh, much less crowded. Very, very cheap to live here.
When I first moved here, I lived with Keith Ferguson for a few months.
Then I got another place that had kind of been handed down
from musician to musician.
The room was like $79.50 a month,
so even if you're like a slacker musician
and didn't wanna get a day job, you could kind of make it, yeah.
One of my first houses was right here, but it's gone.
It's like right there.
[Mike] The cost of living was much cheaper, and I don't know,
it just had more of a small-town feel,
and, of course, the artists' bohemian community here,
musicians and artists, it was kind of an oasis from the rest of Texas.
So I don't think they left Dallas because of its politics.
I think they left Dallas for Austin
because Austin was a hipper place to be.
Austin had the outlaws, it had the rebels, it had the dopers.
It had all the things that Dallas didn't really have because Dallas was a place
that vehemently frowned on it.
Dallas' roots were not quite as liberal at the time as Austin's were,
and I think it reflected in its policing policies,
and the fact that people were getting beat up for smoking dope in Lee Park.
[narrator] So Jimmie packed up and headed that way,
determined to play the kind of music he wanted, playing it his way.
I went over to the One Knite Lounge
and the only guy that played there was Blind George.
He played by himself, and he played on Sundays. And it was an old junk shop.
And they had-- the whole ceiling was junk hanging from the ceiling.
And so all they did was put a bar in and get draft beer.
And so I went down, I said, "Look, you got Blind George
playing here on Sundays, and we'll play Blue Mondays."
I was telling the guy, you know.
He's like, "Okay, well, we'll let you try it out."
And so, I came down there, and we played down there for five years every Monday.
Where we are, Red River and Eighth Street.
Uh, this was called The One Knite.
It looks pretty much the same,
except it didn't have this front cover here.
But, uh, the, uh-- the motorcycles used to park in the front,
and we would go in the One Knite right here.
-[man] Where was the stage? -The stage was down here, but, uh...
[bartender] It's still downstairs if you wanna go ahead and go downstairs.
-[Jimmie] Is it the same stage? -[bartender] Same stage.
-It's just downstairs? -[bartender] Right down the stairs.
So here's the stage. You've all seen a stage.
This was the stage at the One Knite, except it was up there.
It was upstairs.
And that's the One Knite for you.
[narrator] His dedication to the Texas Roadhouse Blues
led to Jimmie forming one of the best loved
and most influential bands of the 1970s and '80s,
The Fabulous Thunderbirds.
The lineup included Jimmie Vaughan on guitar,
Keith Ferguson on bass, and Mike Buck on drums.
To round things out, they picked up a guy named Kim Wilson on harmonica.
I guess Jimmy met him here in Austin at this place
in far south Austin called Alexander's.
It's off Brody Lane, which back then was just farmland.
Of course, now it's all strip malls, and...
[Jimmie] Kim Wilson came to town and played on a Sunday night.
Kim showed up and sat in with us, and he sounded great.
He had a great tone, and he was a rea-- really... uh, into all that stuff.
And he knew all the Little Walter songs,
and he was very much like a George Smith disciple.
I saw Kim. He was great. We got together and next thing you know,
we had a band called The Fabulous Thunderbirds.
And I thought of the name. I--
There was, uh-- it just-- I don't know why.
It just sounded good... to me.
And so I thought, "We'll be The Fabulous Thunderbirds.
Why would you want to be The Thunderbirds when you can be fabulous?"
[narrator] The decision to go with a stripped down, back-to-the-basics sound
went totally against what was selling records in that day.
Radio was dominated by groups like Foreigner, Boston, Journey, and Cheap Trick.
Those bands weren't really on our radar.
We didn't really think about it. It's not what we liked and...
um, not what we listened to, you know? So.
[narrator] It was now all or nothing.
The Fabulous Thunderbirds are going to play the kind of music they wanted,
even though they were swimming against the tide.
I think the main thing for The Thunderbirds or one of the main things,
of course, Jimmie's guitar playing was very influential. And Kim.
But the fact that most of the blues bands before them were like hippies, you know?
So we came out, you know, suits and nice clothes,
and sharp haircuts, what have you.
We kind of emulated the Chicago and Louisiana guys
and Texas guys like Frankie Lee Sims.
["Walking with Frankie" by Frankie Lee Sims]
♪ Well, I can walk that walk ♪
♪ I walk my fool self down ♪
♪ I'm lookin' for my woman You know she can't Be found... ♪
So there weren't a lot of guitar histrionics.
It was all pretty--
you know, every note counted and was played with feeling.
And, you know, it wasn't like just guitar wanking, you know,
like a lot of bands, which there's a place for that, too, of course, but... [laughs]
[narrator] But it was not an easy row to hoe.
They couldn't even get a booking in Dallas, Jimmie's hometown.
So they played Austin and, of all places, Providence, Rhode Island.
They later became regulars at Antone's where they opened for Muddy Waters.
Muddy Waters was so taken with the T-Birds that he immediately
made some calls to get them booked into the blues clubs he played.
Antone's had been going on for a long time, and it was a whole big scene.
But Albert King came to play, and he--
he would come and play five, six nights in a row.
And it was packed. It was like on a Friday or Saturday night...
[engine revs]
My Ford pisses off the little hot rod guys around here
because they hear the cam, and they want to show me what they got.
[man laughs]
So that was just an example of that, I hope you got that.
The original Antone's was here on this corner
before they tore it down and built this building.
It was across the street from the Driscoll Hotel right here.
And it was a grocery store.
And, uh, this was it right here.
But it's gone, as you can see.
Albert King, he's got a sold-out place,
rocking, he's got his band there, his whole big band.
And he, uh-- so he's playing several nights.
So Clifford goes to him, he says, "I got this kid. He wants to sit in with you."
And, you know, nobody asked Albert King to sit in.
You gotta understand, Albert is a big, menacing, badass guy.
Like, there's nothing you could do
if you sat in with Albert King except suck, you know,
because Albert King is Albert King.
So Clifford goes to Albert King and says,
"I want you to let Stevie Vaughan sit in."
Albert goes-- okay, you can imagine what Albert says.
So this happens three or four times.
And finally, he goes-- just to get Clifford to stop,
he goes, "Okay, let's get him up here."
Finally. And so, um...
Stevie got on the stage.
I was there. Everybody was there.
Stevie got up there, started playing Albert King licks...
With Albert King. And so Albert King liked him
because he was playing Albert King licks.
And, I mean, we used to sit around the house and, uh, copy Albert King.
We're on 6th Street, by the way.
So Albert King takes a liking to Stevie, so that's when they met.
So they became, uh, friends.
And Stevie, in the meantime, became kind of a hot rock star.
One of his first gigs was here.
He would play here on a different night.
This was a great little honky-tonk.
We played here for years and years...
so we must've played here five years, too.
Thunderbirds played here, though.
["Lowdown in the Street," by ZZ Top]
♪ Oh ♪
♪ Well, there comes Lola Out of control-a ♪
♪ She just loves those rhythm And blues ♪
♪ And miss Ivy will be Arriving... ♪
There was a pizza joint called the Rome Inn,
and they would close
on Sundays and Mondays, and Mondays became Blue Monday,
and The Thunderbirds were putting their act together.
Jimmie had just left Storm, and those Monday nights were epic.
That was probably, uh, telling
of what set the stage for other bands
that wanted to call themselves a blues band could follow.
[narrator] Billy Gibbons became so enamored with the T-Birds that he wrote a song
about their weekly gigs at the Rome Inn, for ZZ Tops'Deguello a lbum.
On any given Monday night for the first year,
there may have been, at the most, 40, 50 people. That was a good night.
I remember we got really excited the first time we made $200 at the door.
So, "All right, $50 a guy!" We went and bought Italian shoes or something.
Yeah. So it was pretty cool. And it just kept building from there. And we'd--
[narrator] At that time, ZZ Top was dominating the radio and record charts.
Once I got to Dallas, every jukebox in the place was ZZ Top.
-It was all that was there. -[narrator] So think about that for a moment.
The Fabulous Thunderbirds were so cool
that Billy Gibbons wrote a song about them.
[stammers] I was taken with the clientele. Um...
We'd fall through, and one by one, I'd say, "Now, who was that?"
And of course, I'd hang out with Jimmie on the breaks.
And describe some of the people that were hanging around.
Miss Ivy was one of the-- one of the scenesters and, um...
[inhales, exhales] Lola out of control-a was this woman named Lois
we knew and...
I don't know, it's kind of-- it was a lot of fun.
Pretty deboshed, I guess, in a lot of ways.
But we were having a great time, and...
The lyrics, um, chronicled all of the characters.
And, uh, sweet M.B., that was Mary Beth Greenwood.
Little GB was Gretchen Barber. Lola out of control-a, Miss Ivy.
I mean, these were some real stalwart characters
that didn't miss a Monday either.
We were all there and held down that corner.
[chuckles] It was great.
["Lowdown in the Street," by ZZ Top]
♪ There's Jimmie and JoJo ♪
♪ There's Kim and Keith ♪
♪ Way outside the eyes Of cool... ♪
I was so convinced that these guys were gonna bust out and-- and really
s-set this blues trail ablaze.
I decided, uh, to share the secret,
and a buddy of mine and I went down to Continental Trailways
and did some inquiring how we went about chartering a bus.
It was pretty simple. We just had it all set up,
put the word out a couple of weeks in advance, and, uh...
the bus at that time held 80 people, and it was packed.
People were driving in from Victoria, Texas, San Antonio, Texas,
all the way from the Mexican border
to be part of this Blue Monday night.
And it was pretty, pretty rowdy. [chuckles]
[narrator] At the same time, younger brother Stevie had made the move to Austin.
Stevie had formed a band with Fort Worth blues singer, Lou Ann Barton.
They billed themselves as the Triple Threat Revue
and started playing small clubs around Austin
before picking up a following.
["Good Texan," by Stevie Ray Vaughan]
♪ Say things to me Like a cowgirl would ♪
[narrator] Things were so hard early on
that Stevie was sleeping on pool tables and nearly starving.
[Connie] He would tell me where he was going to be,
he'd call my friend, Vickie Vernelson, and we'd head down to Austin.
And I went down to Austin most weekends that I could.
So we went down there for one of our trips
and just realized that Stevie was just practically starving to death.
And he needed clothes,
and so Vicki and I took him out shopping. [chuckles]
and we actually went to some, you know, secondhand clothing stuff
and just bought him some clothes and took him out to eat and went and got him some groceries.
[narrator] He was soon playing the Rome Inn every Sunday night
while Big Brother Jimmie and the Thunderbirds played every Monday.
[guitar intro of "Pride and Joy"]
[narrator] During this time, he got married to Lenny Bailey at the Rome Inn,
a union that was both inspiring, codependent,
and tragic all at the same time.
Stevie came down-- this was on a Blue Monday night.
And, uh, the band had taken a break, and we all gathered.
There was a balcony upstairs and, uh...
Stevie strolled over and he said,
"You're sitting with Gretchen and Mary Beth. Would you guys come upstairs?"
He said, "I'm gonna get married. I'd like you to be there."
[narrator] While Jimmie and the T-Birds were on
what looked like a track to success,
brother Stevie was gaining a dedicated following
but also fighting a drug and alcohol addiction problem.
One night, Stevie was cutting up a gram of coke
in front of an open window at a club in Houston,
when he was spied by a Houston police officer who just happened to be walking by.
Stevie was promptly arrested and charged with felony drug possession.
He was in a downward spiral that seemingly no one was able to pull him out of.
His addiction issues had reared its ugly head early in his career.
We played for an SMU fraternity party, Liberation did,
and that night, after the party was over, as all the guests were leaving,
and we were tearing down our equipment, getting ready to load out,
Stevie was walking around to all of the tables
where the audience had been, where the fraternity guys had been out there
with their girlfriends, and was picking up still, you know, cocktails
that still had something in them or whatever and was drinking.
And that was the first sign that Stevie was a drinker.
[Jimmie] My father was an alcoholic.
He would go out and drink too much and get in trouble,
get pulled over and do things.
And I said, "Well, I'm never going to drink!"
And then-- until I got my first drink,
and then I did the same thing.
Over and over and over.
And then I got into some other stuff,
and I got in some other stuff and, uh,
and then I--
well, my little brother did what I did, usually.
Uh, and so he heard that I was getting high
and playing all night and doing all this stuff.
And I'm sure he went and tried it and, um...
You know, but he collapsed in Europe, uh...
always trying to take it further than the next guy.
[narrator] Despite his addictions,
Stevie was always able to show up
and play blistering sets that left people slack-jawed.
No matter how wasted he was, he still put on
an incredible performance, hitting all the notes.
I saw this in person when he played a free show in Lee Park for us
while I was atBuddy magazine.
One look into his eyes, and you can tell that he was on something,
but he put on a great show that day,
even though he wasn't getting paid for it.
And he didn't miss a lick.
The original Double Trouble lineup featured Stevie on guitar,
drummer Chris Layton, and bassist Jack Newhouse.
One night, during a gig at the Houston nightclub, Rockefeller's,
Buddy magazine had sponsored the show,
and as part of the evening, we gave away a free Hamer guitar.
Tommy Shannon came in to see the band that evening
and immediately wanted to be a part of it.
Once he joined on bass,
the lineup that most people know was sealed.
Double Trouble embarked on a tour of nightclubs
and bars looking for their big break.
♪ Well, I'm lovestruck, baby I must confess ♪
♪ Life without you, darlin' Is a solid mess ♪
♪ Thinkin' bout you, baby Gives me such a thrill ♪
♪ I gotta have you, baby Can't get my fill ♪
♪ I love you, baby, and I know Just what to do ♪
♪ I still remember And let it be said ♪
♪ The way you make me feel'd Take a fool to forget ♪
♪ I swore a ton of bricks Had hit me in the head ♪
♪ And what you do, little baby Ain't over it yet ♪
[narrator] And it came during a performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival
where David Bowie got a taste of Double Trouble in action.
It also introduced him to Jackson Browne.
I was at Montreux, and I played, and we were done playing--
As a matter of fact, I was doing an interview like this.
They were doing a set in the artists' area for other musicians,
and it was astonishing, you know, what he was doing was just--
he just blew everybody away, and the guys in my band particularly.
So I went down there and heard him
and listened to the rest of what he was doing,
and at some point, they took a break, you know.
It led to him inviting me to sit in.
The show wasn't a matter of playing, you know, I barely hung onto my guitar.
It was just like, hang on, you know?
[narrator] This chance encounter led to Stevie being asked to perform
on Bowie's comeback album Let's Dance.
I walked into a newly opened after hours club called The Continental.
I was with Billy Idol one night, and we walked in, and Billy went,
[imitates accent] "Bloody hell, that's David effin' Bowie!"
[normal voice] And we saw David sitting all by himself at the back bar,
drinking a glass of orange juice. He and I started talking.
We decided that we'd work together, and, uh--
and it all just happened very, very quickly.
Basically, David just dumped the project in my hand.
He just said, "Hey, you see it, you understand what I'm talking about.
You deal with it."
The only thing that David introduced
to the record that, um--
other than being David Bowie and choosing great songs,
was this interesting new guitar player named Stevie Ray Vaughan
that he had only heard once in Montreux Jazz Festival.
So when Stevie walked into the studio,
the first thing we played for him was Let's Dance.
I'll never forget this, man.
We became friends for the rest of our lives.
He walked into the studio,
he looked at the speakers, and he listened to the track,
and he was just blown away.
He knew that he was hearing something magical.
And as with all good musicians that I respect,
I could see him trying to compute
how he's gonna fit in this thing that's already magical.
Like, "This is already great. What do I do?"
Um...
He did very little.
But boy, that little bit he did was amazing.
It was like unbelievable.
["Let's Dance" playing]
[narrator] His guitar work gave the LP a different sound
than Bowie had shown on previous records,
and it was a huge hit with both the public and critics.
[Nile] These are all one-take solos.
I mean, it took me no time to make that record.
And with the injection of Stevie,
which added a completely different dimension,
a whole other way of looking at the song,
it was really-- it was just something magical,
something really...
I don't think I've ever had a recording session
like that since... um, or before.
It was just one of those really crazy things that makes no sense.
[narrator] As hard as it may be for people today to understand,
a record contract was the Holy Grail for a rock band at that time.
With no iTunes, Internet, or free downloads,
a record deal meant your album would be displayed in record stores across America,
bringing in millions of dollars in royalties if you had a hit.
So when The Fabulous Thunderbirds got picked up by Tacoma Records,
a division of Chrysalis, they'd finally "made it" in many people's eyes.
[Jimmie] We played for five years before we ever had a record.
Ray Benson would play at--
from Asleep at the Wheel-- we would play shows with him sometimes,
and he said, "Hey, I know a guy that does the blues,"
uh, a record company.
And he told Denny Bruce about us.
Denny Bruce came from L.A. to Austin,
heard us play and got us a record deal on Tacoma.
[narrator] They went into Sumet-Bernet Studios in Dallas
to record their breakout LP "Girls Go Wild."
[Jimmie] By the way, Mike Buck thought of Girls Go Wild.
I don't know where he got it, but we made our album,
and we said, "Okay, what are we going to name it?"
And everybody had something, you know, said something.
And Mike goes, "Why don't we call it Girls Go Wild?"
And we're like, "What?" He said, "Girls Go Wild,"
and we were like, "You can do that?" You know?
It's like, "That's the coolest name we've ever heard of!"
It has nothing to do with anything, but we're gonna say it anyway.
Keith and I both had, uh, pretty large record collections, a lot of 45s.
It'd usually be...
one of ours, you know.
One of us will bring the song in,
like I had the record "Marked Deck" by this guy from Dallas, Mercy Baby.
He was a drummer for Frankie Lee Sims.
And of course Jimmie had a lot of good stuff, too.
He was-- Everybody had pretty good taste, you know.
[narrator] It was recorded live, meaning that the band
played as a unit with very few overdubs.
Although it did not top the Billboard charts
at the time of its release, Girls Go Wild gained a reputation
as the album that introduced the Texas Roadhouse Blues
to a white suburban audience.
♪ She walk past a clock ♪
♪ The clock won't tell time ♪
♪ She walk through The college ♪
♪ Professor lose his mind ♪
♪ But she's tough ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, she's tough ♪
♪ My baby's tough ♪
♪ She's rough and tough ♪
[laughter] ♪ And that's tough enough ♪
[narrator] A short time later, Jimmie and The Fabulous Thunderbirds
received what was basically a fan letter from Carlos Santana
when he asked them to record an entire album with him titledHavana Moon.
He came to a couple of our gigs, and, uh--
and we said, "Hey, Carlos Santana, sit in with us."
And so he would sit in with us and we would play.
And he said-- he said, "Man, I like you guys because..." he said,
"From the audience, you can smell the tubes burning in your amp."
You know, it's just a very Carlos thing to say, you know?
[narrator] Meanwhile, brother Stevie was discovered
by the man who had signed Bob Dylan to his first record contract.
Hammond had become aware of Double Trouble
and persuaded CBS Records to sign the trio.
As evidence of his influence, Hammer was photographed with the band
on the back of the album cover.
Jack Chase, the head of CBS Records in Dallas,
facilitated the signing of the contract with Stevie.
He also personally committed to sell 25,000 units
of Stevie's new album from the Dallas branch alone.
The entire LP was recorded in Jackson Browne's studio.
"Hey, if you're ever in L.A., you know, come by and we'll do some recordings,"
something like that, and the same thing with them.
Like, a month later, they're like, "We're here.
We're here to make our album." Okay.
I was in the studios right before Thanksgiving, and it was Stevie, he said,
"Well, we're almost there."
[stammers] He was like in Bakersfield or someplace, Victorville.
He said, "We're on our way there." And...
And the timing is pretty good
because we were about to stop recording for Thanksgiving.
Everybody had stuff to do. Everybody had things planned with their family.
So they came, and they set up, you know, and we started recording.
And I thought... [clicks tongue] Uh...
[stammers] Well, I asked my engineer, Greg LaDonis,
so like, "Do you want to, like, stay?" And I mean...
I could give him the week, you know,
"Do you want to stay and do this?"
[stammers] He had family, too. He had stuff to do, to plan, like that.
And my second engineer, James Geddes said,
"I can do it."
And after Texas Flood came out,
-they gave me a horse. -[horse grunts]
They gave me a horse, which I named Rave On.
It was beautiful paint from some breeder at Manor Downs.
It was like a gift from them, like a thank-you gift for this time in the studio.
So I don't know if anybody's ever given you a horse, but it's like the gift is,
you know, it's something you have to feed for the rest of its life.
I called Chris and Tommy and said, "You want this horse back?"
And they were like, "No, we don't want a horse.
No, that's your horse." [laughs]
Stevie and Chris and Tommy were great, great pe-- colorful people
and, like, just so badass.
[narrator] The timing somewhat ironic
because Stevie had been tapped to play guitar
on Bowie's upcoming Serious Moonlight tour
in support of Let's Dance.
Rehearsals were underway in Irving, a suburb near Dallas
at a soundstage located in the Studios at Los Colinas.
During these rehearsals, Bowie made it known that once he embarked on the tour,
Stevie was not permitted to promote his new album.
He was to be the guitar player for Bowie's band, period,
and help promoteLet's Dance.
Faced with a tough decision, Stevie chose his album over Bowie's
and was dismissed before the tour even started.
The rock press had a field day speculating that Stevie
had made a cocaine decision and a big mistake,
but it turned out that it was the right move.
Texas Flood was a breakout album.
It thrust Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble into the spotlight,
earning accolades from both blues and rock fans alike.
Now both of the Vaughan brothers had hit the top.
It was a stunning achievement for two kids
from a working-class Dallas neighborhood.
With success came more money, and with more money came more opportunities
for an addictive personality like Stevie.
He and Lenny were now doing large amounts of cocaine
along with heavy drinking, and it wasn't pretty.
By now, Jimmie had reached the end of his run with The Fabulous Thunderbirds.
Jimmie felt like he had done all he could do,
so he left the band that he had founded and embarked on a solo career.
Meanwhile, brother Stevie was getting higher,
both literally and figuratively.
His subsequent LPs were selling well,
and his live shows were the stuff of legend.
But the daily intake of cocaine and liquor were taking a toll.
When you're in the top ten, you're selling 150,000 a week, something like that,
and you get really fat gigs.
Everybody wants you.
-[guitar playing] -[no audible dialogue]
The Grammys, everybody wants you.
George Thorogood and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
-Do you idolize them? -[crowd cheering]
You idolize them just like the rest of us to make this presentation.
Ladies and gentlemen, once again, Mr. Chuck Berry.
You know, so, it's a good time in that sense,
but it's hard to keep it up every day, drinking and drugging
and trying to medicate yourself so you can get to the next gig.
And do good and, you know, all this stuff.
So it all sort of-- it's like a snowball going down the hill.
You know? [grunts] It gets faster and faster
and faster and faster. And sometimes, you know...
[smacks]
[narrator] Some of his closest friends were worried.
Others tried to placate him with the phrase,
"It's a Stevie world, and we're all lucky to be here."
After collapsing during a tour in Europe, he went into rehab.
I think either the next day I heard that he had taken a fall
or that he was, you know-- and he was in the hospital
and that he was--
and what he told me was that Eric had come to see him.
I called my friend Eric Clapton, who was down the road.
Eric came over and visited him
that same day.
And they started talking about getting sober.
[stammers] And they had kind of a meeting of the minds.
I think Eric sort of--
Eric Clapton, uh...
was able to...
to help him understand that it wasn't being high that let him play.
He's playing in spite of being high, and that he was, you know,
and that was not a way-- that was not a way to go.
For those guys to get clean, you know, Jimmie and Stevie,
was like an affirmation to me that I was on the right road.
You know, I didn't-- I felt a little bit lonely.
And I only had like a year in front of either of the guys.
I mean, but not many other people were getting straight when I was getting straight.
And-- but I got straight because I was convinced they were going to lock me up.
And I didn't want to be in a mental asylum.
I didn't really want to be in an institution,
you know, uh, sanitariums they used to call them.
And, uh, I could see that was on the cards.
And so when those guys got clean,
I thought, "Well, I got company now."
Stevie caught the bug and got sober to everyone's amazement.
Like, when I was a kid, my dad's friends, they would drink.
They were just called "drinking men."
You know? Nobody would admit or--
I never heard of anybody getting sober.
You know, when I was a kid, I was like,
like you couldn't handle it or something.
You know? Who wants to admit that?
That was the thinking.
And so Stevie actually went to treatment
and got sober.
Five years later, I got sober.
[narrator] Now that he had licked his addiction,
Stevie wondered if he could make music the same way again.
He was reassured that he had not lost any of his chops when he recordedIn Step.
Once the album came out, it was the biggest selling record of his career
and earned him a Grammy Award.
With his addiction issues apparently beaten,
a divorce from Lenny and a new outlook,
Stevie moved back in with his mother in Oak Cliff
at the family home on Glenfield Avenue.
It was back to his roots in his old neighborhood near Kiest Park.
During this time, he met a young model named Janna Lapidus.
The Vaughan brothers were now part of Texas guitar royalty,
ranked in alongside other legendary players like Billy Gibbons,
Johnny Winter, and Steve Miller.
Years earlier, Jimmie confided toBuddy magazine
that he wanted to make an album with Stevie, and now he had the chance.
The album would be recorded with the man behind
Chic'sFreak Out and Bowie's Let's Dance at the helm,
legendary producer Nile Rodgers.
♪ Aw, freak out! ♪
♪ Le freak, c'est chic ♪
♪ Freak out! ♪
-♪ Aw, freak out! ♪ -[narrator] It was an odd combination.
A producer with disco hits like "Freak Out"
and two white boys playing the blues, but it worked marvelously.
Family Style came together in such a great way,
because now I already have a relationship with Stevie,
and I have a separate relationship with Jimmie.
This is really interesting,
because these are two brothers who adored each other,
loved each other, but never made a record together.
[narrator] After all the songs were recorded,
before the final touches were made,
Stevie and Jimmie went to play an outdoor festival in Wisconsin
with longtime fan and friend, Eric Clapton.
[Eric] I remember sitting in my dressing room
listening to him play that night,
and it was also on the TV.
It was like-- they had a setup when I was sitting in my dressing room.
I didn't go out on the wing, because sometimes it's better
when you're in the dressing room.
You hear it better and you don't have to talk.
Nobody gonna talk to you or bother you.
And I was sitting, watching him on TV and thinking,
I don't really want to go on after this.
This is, uh...
you have to either ignore this,
or just, you know, give it up or whatever.
I mean, it doesn't happen.
In the end you go on-- I go on and do my thing,
even though I think it's whatever.
But I mean, he nailed it, you know.
Absolutely.
[narrator] When the show was over, Stevie took a seat
in one of the helicopters while brother Jimmie stayed behind.
It was foggy that night when the copter took off.
It never made it.
The night I was there,
there was some weather, and...
Stevie comes in the room and says...
this is before cell phones.
There was one seat open. And Stevie said,
"I'm going to go home early,
and I'm going to go call my girlfriend."
And I said-- I did the big brother thing on him.
I said, "Look..."
I said, "I came all the way up here to see you.
You're going to go home early?"
I did one of those things on him.
And he looked right at me and he says,
"You don't understand. I gotta go."
So then he went and got in the cart,
and they drove him to the helicopter.
They all got in there, and they lifted off,
and crashed right into the ski mountain.
Because it was a ski resort, Alpine Valley.
Crashed right into it. Killed them all.
I didn't know about it.
The concert's still going on.
Somebody knew.
But we didn't in the dressing room.
So anyway, we flew home,
went to our hotel rooms,
and I was kind of mad at Stevie because he left.
Thinking, well, you know, I came all the way up here and then he goes off and...
The way you can get mad at your brother or something, but not big, but just, you know.
I found out when I woke up in my hotel room.
I got a call from the guy who was managing me then
saying Stevie didn't make it back. And I said, "What do you mean?"
He said the helicopter-- his helicopter flew
into a kind of ski slope mountain thing.
So at 6:00 in the morning, I get a phone call.
"Well, we found Stevie and them. They crashed in the helicopter, and they're all dead."
Is what they tell me.
So you can imagine the rest.
-[news jingle] -There's been a major blow to the rock music world.
A deadly helicopter crash early this morning in Wisconsin.
Five people have been killed,
including rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan
and other members of rock star Eric Clapton's band.
Clapton, however, was not aboard the helicopter.
[Christian] It was about 2:00 in the morning.
I got a phone call from a lady who said that he had passed away.
Of course, I didn't believe it.
And as the news broke that day,
my phone just rang off the wall.
Somebody said something about let's all get together in Kiest Park,
and I said, "Let's have a candlelight vigil."
And that's what we did. We came out here, and we sat at this tree.
And we came here just to celebrate his life
and a place where we all could mourn.
And this is where we ended up being.
And it's...
kind of surreal being here, actually.
And Stevie also died on the same day as my father,
four years later.
And I had to call my mom and tell her.
And she thought I was calling to tell her that--
'cause it was the anniversary of my father's death.
You know, she thought I was just calling her and to say, "I'm sorry.
You know, I know you're-- it's bad day for you."
But I had to tell her, you know, Stevie died, too.
The worst bit for me was going with Jimmie
to identify the crew, and I couldn't do it.
I was required to help identify the guys that we lost.
And Jimmie had to go and identify his brother.
And I, you know, I can't imagine what that was like.
[narrator] Stevie was laid to rest in the family plot
in Laurel Land Cemetery in Oak Cliff next to his father.
Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder sang at his funeral.
♪ I once was lost ♪
♪ But now I'm found ♪
I didn't come there to sing, you know, it was very spontaneous.
I mean, at one point, Bonnie and I were standing next to Stevie Wonder,
and he just sort of like...
like leaned over and was like, "We're going to sing Amazing Grace."
"Okay, here we go." You know, he just started singing.
So we sang it with him, you know.
♪ Was blind ♪
♪ But now I see ♪
[Jimmie] When we had the opening of the display over there at the Bob Bullock,
I finally said, and it occurred to me days before that,
that I'm not going to get over this,
and it's okay if I don't get over it.
You always think as a human, you're going to grow up
and accept whatever it is, right?
But it ain't going to happen.
It is completely unfair. It's unbelievably--
it's a loss for everybody that he was cut short.
And I mean, I lost another friend in that crash, too,
Bobby Brooks was a friend of mine. My agent and Stevie's agent.
And, you know...
you know, it's just a tragic, tragic loss.
I was devastated
when they went off to do that gig with Clapton,
and two brothers left, and one brother returned.
[narrator] For Jimmie, the loss of his brother
almost brought his life and career to a standstill.
He oversaw the final production ofFamily Style,
watched its release, and saw one of the songs, "Tick Tock,"
climb up the Billboard charts.
♪ Remember that tick-tock Tick-tock ♪
♪ Tick-tock people ♪
♪ Time's ticking away ♪
[narrator] Then he crawled back into his own world
and didn't come out for two years.
He was finally brought out of his funk by Eric Clapton.
I just couldn't picture myself going out and playing a gig
with all the people wanting to know
what I thought about it...
you know?
So I just waited a couple of years, three years,
I don't know how long it was, but I waited until I couldn't stand it anymore.
And then I-- Eric invited me to go play at Royal Albert Hall.
And I thought to myself, "If I don't do this, I'm a chickenshit."
I had the chance to get a big chunk of time at the Royal Albert Hall.
And we got 24 nights and I-- and I just,
I was thinking, "What-- what am I going to do?"
I didn't realize that he hadn't worked before that. I mean, that wasn't my motive.
It wouldn't have been--
I don't think it was my motive to get him out.
I hadn't realized, actually, that for all of that time,
he wasn't doing anything at home.
So it was purely a musical idea.
I thought he ought to be there.
The point was he was the representative
of my kind of experience of the blues.
You know, Jimmie had to be a part of it. Had to be.
[narrator] A newly energized Jimmie started recording again,
then touring with a group of musicians he called the Tilt-a-Whirl Band.
After a while, he started performing a song
he dedicated to Stevie called "Six Strings Down."
Art Neville and his brothers wrote it.
They wrote the first verse,
and they sent it to me.
And I was trying to figure out what in the world...
what in the world could I tell my mother
to ease her mind?
Right? What do you tell them?
There's nothing you can tell them.
So when Art Neville and the Neville Brothers
sent me this song...
"Alpine Valley in the middle of the night,
six strings down on the heaven-bound flight,
he's got a pick, a strap, and a guitar on his back.
Ain't gonna cut the angels no slack.
Heaven done called another blues stringer back home."
And I was like-- when I played that, I was like,
"There it is!" They had another verse.
"See the voodoo child
holding out his hand?
I've been waiting on you, brother.
Welcome to the band.
Good blues stringin', heaven fine singin',
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph been listening to their playin'.
Heaven done called another blues stringer back home."
So I thought, "Okay, this is it."
So I called him and said, "Look, can I just make my own verses
for the end and not use the bridge, is that okay?"
And they said, "Sure, whatever you want to do."
So, I made up the rest of the song,
and I put all those blues singers in there.
So it was-- it was sort of like blues heaven. You know Hillbilly Heaven?
We've all heard that. Maybe some of us have.
And it's about all the country singers
that have gone to Hillbilly Heaven.
So-- And so--
When I heard the song by the Neville Brothers,
I thought "Six Strings Down," that's, you know--
and then I put all these other guys in there with Stevie.
So then I can play it for my mom.
♪ You know, Albert Collins Is up there ♪
♪ There's Muddy and Lightning Too ♪
♪ Albert King and Freddy ♪
♪ They're playing the blues ♪
♪ There's T-Bone Walker Guitar Slim ♪
♪ Little Shawn Jackson And Frankie Lee Sims ♪
♪ Heaven done called another Blues stringer back home ♪
♪ You know, James Cotton's Up there ♪
♪ He's with Muddy Waters Too ♪
♪ I've been waiting on you Brother ♪
♪ Welcome to the band ♪
♪ There's good blues stringin' Heaven's fine singin' ♪
♪ Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Been listening to their Playin' ♪
[Jimmie continues playing]
♪ Lord, they called Another blues stringer Back home ♪
♪ Lord, they called ♪
♪ Another blues stringer Back home ♪
♪ Lord they called ♪
[crowd] ♪ Another blues stringer Back home ♪
[cheering]
[mellow music]
[narrator] Back in the 1970s, there was a guitar dealer
in Dallas named Tony Dukes.
He sold vintage guitars to Billy Gibbons,
Elliot Easton of The Cars, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick,
and a 1959 Gibson Les Paul that Don Felder used
for the guitar solo on "Hotel California."
Tony once said, "There are two kinds of people in this world,
those who are hip to the Vaughan Brothers and those who aren't."
Well, that pretty much sums it up.
I kind of miss Tony, he was quite the wordsmith,
and he could put expressions in such a hard-hitting manner.
That pretty much sums it up: two types of people,
those that know the Vaughan Brothers and those that don't.
Stevie just worshipped Jimmie.
I mean-- and I think Jimmie was probably a little--
felt a little competitive of his little brother.
But you could tell they loved each other,
but there was definitely a rivalry there.
I think everyone pretty much knew that.
So... But obviously he loved Stevie very much.
And they kind of got sober together. And I think they bonded then.
The thing that was so peculiar to me is that there was, like,
not even a hint of animosity.
It was exactly the opposite.
It was almost hero worship.
Like, it was clear that Jimmie
was Stevie's big brother and Stevie idolized him.
And, you know, Jimmie was the guy who started playing guitar first.
And as Jimmie would say, it was cool,
he says like, "He picked up my guitars and whatever.
And then he went off somewhere and he came back, and he was like,
"God!" He was like, "Man, where did that come?"
[Jimmy Wallace] Seeing Bugs, seeing Seab Meador, seeing Jimmie Vaughan,
I mean-- and Stevie as he grew up,
it was an incredible experience to see all these guys,
because that's a pretty high standard, you know?
[Mike] A lot of folks kind of like-- since Stevie's style was a lot flashier,
they said, "Oh, Stevie plays circles around Jimmie."
Jimmie played like he played, and it was perfect.
It was what it was supposed to be.
Jimmie made every note count. Yeah.
So that's my that's my take on it.
[Jackson] I can't imagine either one of them not having been a guitarist.
If it wasn't Stevie, you know,
glomming on to Jimmie's guitar and, you know,
it would have been someone else's guitar.
I think with Stevie and I, we were just desperate.
And, you know, If you want to do something real bad,
you can have talent, and you can have gumption and means and everything else.
But if you really want to do something, you got to be desperate.
I once asked Jimmie, I said, "Where did it all start?"
And, uh, it was a family thing.
But then, like so many musicians that were leaning
to improving their style or their skill,
it seems that so many of us were drawing from the similar influences.
I mean, the list of blues players that...
laid the way for us to follow would be lengthy.
And Jimmie and I still talk as if it were the day we were starting,
because the originators of the blues allowed us to become interpreters.
And I think that Stevie fell right into that same groove.
And to this day, I think it would be fair to say
that a lot of guitar players...
are attempting to traverse that same path,
and very few make it with such technical dexterity as Jimmie and Stevie.
They have cracked the code. They know how to do it.
I think because he really was one of us.
He went other places, he traveled the world,
but when Stevie got out of rehab,
he came back to Dallas, and he lived with his mother in Oak Cliff.
And how many people who played at Carnegie Hall, and won Grammys
and all of the awards that he's won, world renowned,
would intentionally come back
and live in this little frame house in Oak Cliff?
[indistinct chatter]
[narrator] Just recently, the city of Dallas approved funds to erect an artwork
honoring both Jimmie and Stevie in Kiest Park,
only four blocks away from their childhood home.
On this very spot right here, I don't know how
the people that put this artwork here knew this,
but when my mother and father were dating,
he pulled his brand-new car-- it was a couple of years old, '47 Ford Coupe.
He pulled it right here, and I got a picture of my dad standing on the front bumper.
[narrator] For two boys who came from nowhere, they both wound up somewhere,
and now they will be immortalized in their hometown of Oak Cliff
near their childhood home forever more.
[Eric] Look out for the Vaughan brothers,
'cause they're seriously dangerous people. [laughs]
They just got that thing, man.
That Texas thing.
Just so badass, you know, just such great players.
And, you know...
[chuckles]
["Life by the Drop" by Stevie Ray Vaughan]
♪ Hello there, my old friend ♪
♪ Not so long ago It was till the end ♪
♪ We played outside In the pouring rain ♪
♪ On the way up the road We started over again ♪
♪ You're livin' our dream As though you're on top ♪
♪ My mind is aching Lord, it won't stop ♪
♪ That's how it happened Living life by the drop ♪
♪ Up and down the road In our worn out shoes ♪
♪ Talking 'bout good things And singing the blues ♪
♪ You went your way And I stayed behind ♪
♪ We both knew it was just A matter of time ♪
♪ Livin' our dreams As though you're on top ♪
♪ My mind is aching Lord, it won't stop ♪
♪ That's how it happens Living life by the drop ♪
♪ No wasted time We're alive today ♪
♪ Churning up the past There's no easier way ♪
♪ Time's been between us A means to an end ♪
♪ God, it's good to be here Walking together, my friend ♪
♪ Livin' a dream ♪
♪ My mind starts achin' ♪
♪ That's how it happened Livin' life by the drop ♪
♪ That's how it happened Living life by the drop ♪
[blues music]