by Alan Paul
TIMOTHY DUCKWORTH Stevie’s friend; toured with Double Trouble in 1986.
RONNIE EARL Roomful of Blues and solo guitarist, friend of Stevie’s and Jimmie’s.
JAMES ELWELL Friend of Stevie’s.
KEITH FERGUSON The Fabulous Thunderbirds bassist, an important mentor to Stevie during their time together in the Nightcrawlers; died 1997.
DENNY FREEMAN Guitarist, fellow Dallas native, bandmate of both Stevie’s and Jimmie’s.
JIM GAINES In Step producer.
GREGG GELLER Epic Records executive.
BILLY F. GIBBONS ZZ Top guitarist.
MINDY GILES Alligator Records marketing director.
BOB GLAUB Bassist with Jackson Browne’s band.
DAVID GRISSOM Texas guitarist, Stevie’s friend.
BUDDY GUY Chicago blues guitar legend; friend and hero to Stevie.
WARREN HAYNES Allman Brothers Band, Gov’t Mule guitarist.
RAY HENNIG Owner of Heart of Texas music; sold Stevie his “Number One” Strat.
ALEX HODGES Stevie’s booking agent, 1983–1986; manager, 1986–1990.
BERT HOLMAN Allman Brothers Band manager.
RAY WYLIE HUBBARD Acclaimed Texas singer and songwriter, best known for “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.”
BRUCE IGLAUER Founder, president, Alligator Records.
DR. JOHN New Orleans blues pianist and guitarist, Stevie’s friend.
EDI JOHNSON Classic Management bookkeeper.
ERIC JOHNSON Virtuoso Austin guitar player.
STEVE JORDAN Drummer with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, the Blues Brothers, and others.
MIKE KINDRED Oak Cliff native, Triple Threat Revue pianist, composer of “Cold Shot.”
ALBERT KING Blues guitar great. One of Stevie’s top influences and heroes; died 1992.
B. B. KING King of the blues; godfather to all electric blues guitarists; died 2015.
RUSS KUNKEL Drummer with Jackson Browne’s band and many others.
JANNA LAPIDUS Stevie’s girlfriend, 1986–1990.
HARVEY LEEDS Epic Records head of album promotion.
HUEY LEWIS Musician, leader of Huey Lewis and the News.
TERRY LICKONA Producer, Austin City Limits.
BARBARA LOGAN Wife of Doyle Bramhall, “Life by the Drop” cowriter.
ANDREW LONG Photographer.
MARK LOUGHNEY Fan.
RICHARD LUCKETT Stevie’s merchandise manager, 1989–1990.
RENÉ MARTINEZ Stevie’s guitar tech, 1985–1990.
TOM MAZZOLINI Founder and director of the San Francisco Blues Festival.
JOHN McENROE Tennis legend, guitarist.
MIKE MERRITT Bassist for Johnny Copeland.
PAUL “PAPPY” MIDDLETON Dallas guitarist, soundman, and mixer.
STEVE MILLER Guitarist and songwriter.
CHESLEY MILLIKIN Stevie’s manager, 1980–86; died 2001.
RICHARD MULLEN Engineer and producer, Texas Flood, Couldn’t Stand the Weather, Soul to Soul.
JACKIE NEWHOUSE Triple Threat and Double Trouble bassist, 1978–1980.
DEREK O’BRIEN Austin guitarist, member of Antone’s house band.
DONNIE OPPERMAN Stevie’s guitar tech, 1982.
JOE PERRY Aerosmith guitarist.
SCOTT PHARES Bassist in Liberation, Stevie’s high school band.
JOE PRIESNITZ Stevie’s booking agent, 1979–1983.
MARK PROCT The Fabulous Thunderbirds / Jimmie Vaughan road manager and manager, 1981–1998.
JACK RANDALL Booking agent.
BONNIE RAITT Blues great, friend of Stevie’s.
DIANA RAY Major player in the Austin blues world; wife of Paul Ray.
PAUL RAY Leader of the Cobras; died 2016.
MIKE REAMES Singer in Liberation, Stevie’s high school band.
SKIP RICKERT Tour manager, 1986–1990.
NILE RODGERS Producer, David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and the Vaughan Brothers’ Family Style.
CARMINE ROJAS Bassist on Let’s Dance.
JAMES ROWEN Canadian A&R representative.
PAUL SHAFFER Keyboardist, Late Night with David Letterman bandleader.
AL STAEHALEY Bassist in Spirit and an Austin lawyer who represented Stevie early in his career.
JOHN STAEHALEY Austin guitarist in Krackerjack and Spirit.
MIKE STEELE Stevie’s friend.
JIMMY STRATTON Photographer.
ANGELA STREHLI Austin blues singer; taught Stevie “Texas Flood.”
JOE SUBLETT Saxophonist, member of the Cobras.
GUS THORNTON Bass player for Albert King.
JIM TRIMMIER Saxophonist, member of Liberation and the Cobras.
CONNIE VAUGHAN Oak Cliff native; Stevie’s high school friend; Jimmie Vaughan’s girlfriend and wife, 1972–2000.
JIMMIE LEE “BIG JIM” VAUGHAN Father of Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan; died August 27, 1986.
LENORA “LENNY” BAILEY VAUGHAN Married to Stevie, 1979–1988; died 2018.
MARTHA VAUGHAN Mother of Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan; died June 13, 2009.
RICK VITO Guitarist with Jackson Browne’s band and many others.
DON WAS Producer, bassist.
MARK WEBER Photographer.
KIRK WEST Photographer, Allman Brothers Band’s “Tour Mystic.”
BRAD WHITFORD Aerosmith guitarist.
ANN WILEY Martha Vaughan’s sister, Jimmie and Stevie’s aunt.
GARY WILEY Vaughan cousin.
1
IN THE BEGINNING
Baby blues: Stevie at seven months, playing in his crib. (Courtesy Joe Allen Cook Family Collection)
Stephen Ray Vaughan was born October 3, 1954, in Dallas, Texas, three and a half years after his brother, Jimmie Lawrence. Their mother and father, Martha Cook Vaughan and Jimmie “Big Jim” Vaughan, had been married since January 1950 and were striving to establish themselves as part of the growing postwar middle class. Their tenuous grip on working-class stability was a big step up from Big Jim’s childhood. He grew up a sharecropper’s son, picking cotton in Rockwall County, thirty miles east of Dallas, the youngest of eight children. His father died when Jim was seven, on the eve of the Great Depression.
Big Jim and Martha Vaughan. (Courtesy Joe Allen Cook Family Collection)
Stevie and Jimmie on the front porch of their Oak Cliff home, with Martha watching over them. (Courtesy Joe Allen Cook Family Collection)
Big Jim dropped out of high school at sixteen and enlisted in the U.S. Navy with the help of his mother, who lied about his age. “It sounded better to run off to the navy than to pick cotton,” Jimmie Vaughan says of his father’s decision. Big Jim served during World War II on the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier in the South Pacific.
After returning to civilian life, Big Jim got a job at a 7-Eleven in Oak Cliff, Dallas. He worked as an attendant, running out to the cars of drivers who pulled in and honked their horns, to take and deliver orders. He soon had a regular customer in Martha Jean Cook, who lived with her family in Cockrell Hill, just west of Oak Cliff, and worked as a secretary at a lumberyard. Though they met in that parking lot, their romance blossomed on dance floors.
“Once they started dating, they went to dozens of the dance halls around Dallas,” says Ann Wiley, Martha’s sister. “They both loved to dance.” Big Jim and Martha were married on January 13, 1950, and Jimmie was born fourteen months later, on March 20, 1951.
With a new family to support, Big Jim left 7-Eleven and became a union asbestos installer, mixing the “mud” to insulate pipes and ducts in commercial buildings. He had no way of knowing that breathing in asbestos fibers can cause asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma, a correlation noted in medical texts as early as 1906 but not widely known until the late 1970s. Vaughan’s job required constant travel and kept the family moving throughout the South and Southwest. As Steve and Jim, as they were known, grew older, they had to deal with being constantly uprooted from elementary school.
“We trailed around as my dad’s job
required him to travel all over the South,” says Jimmie. “It was real tough always uprooting, going to schools for two weeks at a time. In a way, it was perfect training for the life we eventually lived as musicians on the road all the time. We eventually settled back in Oak Cliff.”
In 1961, when Stevie was seven and Jimmie was ten, the Vaughans bought a two-bedroom ranch home at 2557 Glenfield Avenue, which would remain the family abode for more than three decades. Jim and Steve shared the back bedroom. Big Jim had a volatile temper, especially when he was drinking, and could turn violent, leaving his family ever wary. Their Oak Cliff neighborhood was growing, filled with the young families of World War II and Korean War veterans. Oak Cliff became internationally known on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested at the Texas Theatre in downtown Oak Cliff, after shooting and killing police officer J. D. Tippit.
“It’s incredible that we lived in the town where all of that happened,” Jimmie says. “I had been to the Texas Theatre with my parents many times. Oak Cliff was a real rough place. Pretty much everyone we grew up with is either dead or in jail.”
First cousin Gary Wiley recalls that on Halloween 1962, the boys were mugged and robbed of their masks and candy. Wiley was one of nine first cousins from Martha’s side who got together frequently with Steve and Jim.
Big Jim, an intimidating presence with wide shoulders and bulging forearms, was proud of his navy service, telling his boys about seeing kamikaze planes and proudly displaying the “outfit” book of his photos and mementos from the war on the TV stand. “That’s where the most important book in the house went,” says Jimmie. “He’d show me pictures of where he’d been during the war.”
Yet despite his love of music, Big Jim never really shared his own musical background, that as a kid he had a natural ear and could pick out tunes on the piano. He did, however, tell them of a harsh lesson learned when he was ten years old. He had picked cotton for an entire season to save the few dollars required to buy the beautiful string bass he saw advertised in a magazine. After he mailed in the money, he waited anxiously for his instrument to arrive. “He said that six months later, a #10 washtub came, with a broomstick and a string,” says Jimmie. “He was pretty disappointed.”
Still, Stevie and Jimmie didn’t have to look far for musical inspiration; there were musicians on both sides of the family. Martha’s two guitar-playing brothers, Joe and Jerrell Cook, were the boys’ most direct role models and early influences. When Stevie and Jimmie got their first starter guitars at seven and ten years old, the uncles spent time with the boys regularly, teaching them their first chords and licks.
Along with the influence of their musical uncles, members of the country and western swing legends the Texas Playboys, who were major innovators and stars, visited the Vaughan family home often for card games and dominoes. These gatherings often included off-the-cuff performances that young Steve and Jim watched and soon participated in themselves.
Stevie Ray Vaughan vividly recalled those parties in 1986. “When I was real young, my parents played domino games, like 42, Low Boy, and Nello, and the Texas Playboys hung out at our house all the time. They’d do some playing, and we’d hear their stuff. Mainly, we’d hear them talking about it. I was a little beefheart. Every once in a while, my dad would yell, ‘Hey, Jim, Steve, come out here and show them what you can do!’ We were little midgets, with guitars hangin’ on us that were this big!”
As Jimmie’s and Stevie’s interest in and proficiency on the guitar grew, their parents continued to encourage them. Big Jim and Martha understood what it was to be profoundly moved by sound, and they were enthusiastic and encouraging of Jimmie’s and Stevie’s growing interest in music and guitars. They did not object when their sons’ passion for music grew into obsession.
STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN: I got my first guitar when I was seven. It was one of those Roy Rogers guitars; it had pictures of cowboys and cows on it, some rope. I had a blanket with the same shit on it, too.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: I think Stevie and I latched onto the guitar as a way out of Oak Cliff pretty early. My mother’s brothers Joe and Jerrell Cook played guitar and were into Merle Travis, who was the epitome of a cool guitar player, riding a Harley with a guitar strapped on his back. My dad always told me stories about his cousins Sammy and Red Klutts, who played drums and bass in western swing, country, and rock-and-roll bands, and another cousin who played trombone with [big band leader] Tommy Dorsey in Los Angeles. My dad’s favorite was Jack Teagarden, a Texas jazz trombonist whose style was rooted in blues and New Orleans music.
CIDNEY COOK AYOTTE, Vaughan first cousin: There was always music playing in their house, and both Jimmie and Stevie picked up the guitar really, really young.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: There were thousands of bands everywhere, and music was a huge part of our lives. There was the Big D Jamboree, a weekly Louisiana Hayride: Town Hall Party–type show from the Dallas Sportatorium with all the great country stars and great guitar players, and we went to these incredible music contests at the Yello Belly Drag Strip [in nearby Grand Prairie], where country, Mexican, swing, and blues bands played. There were huge crowds, and we’d walk from stage to stage.
SRV: We were exposed to every kind of music, and if you listened, you could hear feeling in every style of music we were listening to. Jazz, rock and roll … it all goes back to the feeling of the blues.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: My parents were dancers, and my dad was a honky-tonk man who used to hang out with Bob Wills. Our daddy also worked with a guy who played with Chuck Berry and would come over with his guitar—a big hollow body, with his name in the neck in mother-of-pearl—and show us John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed songs. It was a big deal!
RAY BENSON, Asleep at the Wheel founder, guitarist, and friend of Stevie’s and Jimmie’s: Bob Wills was like Elvis in Dallas. Having those guys over at the house would have been something else.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: When I was twelve, I broke my collarbone playing football, and I was laid up at home for a couple of months. A friend of my dad’s gave me this old broken-up guitar, and that’s when I really learned how to play. The first thing I learned was Bill Doggett’s “Honky Tonk,” but I learned it backwards because I didn’t know any better.
SRV: I was eight or nine, and I was learning “Honky Tonk,” too.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: I went straight for the blues, because that’s what sounded best to me, and I can’t tell you why. A lot of my relatives were country musicians, and I never even tried to play country. They were looking at me like, “What in the world are you doing?” I just said, “I like this.” And I never thought about it again.
SRV: Jimmie turned me on to a lot of different stuff, and I just watched him play. I remember him bringing home Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, and B. B. King. It was like, “Here comes Jimmie with the Record World, right under his arm!”
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: About a year after I started, Daddy bought me a 3/4 Gibson with no cutaway, about as thick as a 335 with one pickup [a 1957 Gibson 125-T hollow body, serial number U142221], and a little brown Gibson amp. Fifty bucks and I was on my way! School went to hell after that; I just played guitar all of the time and listened to Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio.
SRV: I wasn’t listening to the radio that much. I was just stuck off in my own little world. When I did listen to the radio, it was a little crystal set, and I listened to Ernie’s Record Mart. With a crystal radio, you could pick up like … forever. I’d lay there at night and listen to all these blues specials, and they’d advertise thirty-eight record sets! They played stuff that I don’t even think was available anywhere except through these Record Mart deals. They had things like Little Milton, B. B. King, Albert King, Jimmy Reed, and on and on. There wasn’t very many of us white guys on it.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: The very first record I ever bought was Wine, Wine, Wine by the Nightcaps, young white guys from Dallas playing blues and rock
and roll. Stevie and I both learned to play “Thunderbird” from that record. I listened to Jimmy Reed, too. I just always liked that low, deep boogie thing, and I’d get the records of anybody doing that shit. I saw Lonnie Mack on Dick Clark, and he played so fast, I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing.
SRV: The first record I ever bought was Lonnie Mack’s “Wham!” I played it over and over and over and over so many times, my dad got mad and broke it! Every time he broke it, I just went and got another one. I’m glad the first record I bought wasn’t the Monkees. I got a lot of inspiration from Lonnie Mack. When we started off, I knew how Jimmy Reed sounded, but I couldn’t play it right. And Jimmie would set me straight. When I didn’t think it could be any louder, I borrowed somebody’s Shure Vocal Master PA, put mics in front of the stereo speakers, and then turned the PA up! It was loud in my room.
GARY WILEY, Vaughan cousin: One time, Steve was listening intently to the radio and playing along on Jim’s guitar, which he had inherited [the Gibson 125-T]. My brother and I were bugging him to jump on our bikes, but he had to nail that part first. After a while, he went, “I’ve just about got it,” and started playing along perfectly. There were multiple guitars, and he was picking each one out, and at the same time putting them into one guitar part, just by listening. He was about eleven. My brother and I were more interested in Stevie’s car magazines than his music. He loved cars and had all kinds of Hot Rod magazines, which we’d look at while he played guitar.
First cousins, March 1960: Jimmie in back, Stevie on front left. (Courtesy Gary Wiley)
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: I spent all of my lunch money on records and Hot Rod magazines. I loved [revolutionary car designers] Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and George Barris. There wasn’t really a difference between that and music; it was just cool stuff. I’ve never been the same after hearing The Best of Muddy Waters and The Best of Little Walter. It was just soul and feeling, wild as shit. Hearing the guys screaming in the background of Muddy’s “Mannish Boy” was scary! It goes right in your toes and all the way up to the back of your neck. Booker T. and the MG’s “Green Onions” hit me the same way. It just made you feel wild to listen to that before you went to school.
