Yesterday marked twenty years since the death in a helicopter crash of Texas blues guitar god Stevie Ray Vaughan. I always enjoyed watching Vaughan play. There was a sheer physicality in his playing that seemed to bond him to the guitar body. There was also a concentration in his playing that made it seem as though at that moment the only things that existed for him were himself and that Stratocaster, giving his work a sense that it was more than mere playing. It gave everything he played an added layer of depth.
With his death, he’s forever frozen in the public’s mind as he was when he died, a 35 year old at the height of his talents. His growth and continuum ended that day and we’ll never know how his career and work might have evolved, for better or worse. I haven’t followed his legacy through these years so I can’t comment on his influence in the world of music. I don’t know how many 19 year olds out there even know who he was or if they’ve ever heard a single song by the man.
I guess it doesn’t matter. The music’s out there and it’ll always be there, alive and above the whims of what is new and of the moment. It will influence someone in some way at some point.
Here’s one of my favorites, Riviera Paradise…
Redtree Times 
Twenty years. Man, doesn’t seem like it can be that long.
Stevie Ray is one of my all-time favorites, in part for the reason you list here. A haunted, bedeviled man – but he sure could lose himself in his music and when I watched him, I could see those demons driving him to play and create. Wasn’t scary, just made me wonder if that’s what made him so darn good or if he was that darn good in spite of it all.
I sure am grateful I’m not one of those nineteen year olds who have never heard him. Every now and then I hear a riff that makes me think of him…as you said, who knows.
Nice tribute, Gary. Thanks for bringing back some good, if wistful memories.
I can’t speak for the nineteen-year-olds, but here in Texas he’s not forgotten, and sometimes it’s as though he isn’t even gone.
I got to see him live a few times, and the best was in Luckenbach, out under the oaks. That was in the early 80’s, and I remember he did Texas Flood.
I saw him once in the mid-80’s in a small theatre in Utica, NY. The sound, as was the case with many of his shows, was garbled and filled with feedback but couldn’t hide the brilliance of his playing. “Texas Flood” is a great song…
Trust me, SRV lives on in the hearts of aspiring blues players everywhere. I saw a 14-year-old kid channel Stevie one night. It was truly incredible. The kid had been playing for just a couple years.
One of curses of the blues jam is getting on stage with a guy who knows the entire SRV canon. They play way too loud and because they always play with recordings of SRV in their lugholes, they ignore all the other musicians on stage.
Oh, yeah, Stevie lives on. It’s not always a good thing.
I met him once after a show. He’d just blown away a bunch of music industry people for an hour, himself channeling Jimi, and I was invited to the party. We got into a conversation about Hendrix, and then about all the old guys we liked and he was just a really sweet guy who loved talking the blues. This went on for about 20 minutes before someone came and dragged him away. But for that 20 minutes, he and I talked as if we were old friends. I’ll never forget that.
I just wish I’d had a harp in my pocket. I might have gotten a chance to play with him.
So glad to hear that your personal experience with him was a good one. It’s good to hear a story about someone with so much talent being accessible. I think being grounded in the blues plays a part in that, so much of it being based in its forms and traditions and its legendary players.
Yes, I can imagine a jam with a SRV wannabe is not the best. I do realize that he is still a god to blues fans and many Texans. I was just thinkiing about the general population, kids who aren’t exposed to his music (or the music or any other artform of so many others that lived befor their lives) on a regular basis. Kids who think the world started twenty years ago and everything before it falls into a gray area that extends back to their furthest knowledge of history.
It’s hard to know, Gary. I think the blues will always attract a certain kind of musician, and for those people, SRV and the greats who went before are our teachers. I learned how to play harp to recordings of James Cotton, Paul Butterfield, Little Walter and Sonny Boy.
As for those who think the world began with their birth, I doubt if anything that happened before will make any cranial inroads and those kids will be much poorer for it. Those are the people who will vote Palin/Bachman in 2012, if they vote at all.
Sorry, slipped into politics there. Didn’t mean to.
Hard to avoid politics. Biggest source of the blues lately…
You touched on the blues innovators who went before you. That’s one of the beauties of the blues, the fact that it allows, encourages and honors open homage to the pioneers of the genre. In that aspect SRV will certainly always be alive.
I think I’ll put on some Buddy Guy just to keep the mood going and try to wipe out the vision of a Plain/Bachman presidency. There ain’t enough Tanqueray in the world to make me stop dreading that possibility…
It’ll be 20 years on August 27th but you wrote a very nice tribute. Here’s another one:
http://middleofthefreakinroad.com/2010/08/26/stevie-ray-vaughan-srv-twenty-years-gone-alpine-valley/