portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Wednesday, October 04, 2023

Remembering the guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990)

 yesterday was the anniversary of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s birth so post’s included these . . . . . . . . . . 



The first time that Buddy Guy, quite possibly the greatest living blues guitarist, heard Stevie Ray Vaughan play, he couldn’t believe it. “He was hitting them notes and made me feel like I should go in the audience and watch so I could learn something,” says Guy in Alan Paul and Andy Aledort’s illuminating oral history, “Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan.” 

Lots of people felt the same way. During his brief, blazing time in the spotlight — just seven years passed between the acclaimed debut album that gives this book its title and the 1990 helicopter crash that killed him at age 35 — Vaughan seemed to represent the culmination of the guitar hero era, absorbing the influences of masters from B.B. King to Lonnie Mack to (especially) Jimi Hendrix and spinning them into endlessly inventive, laser-sharp fretwork. “Stevie had the intensity of rock with the deep feeling of the blues,” says Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers Band and Gov’t Mule. “That was a lethal combination.” 

It’s hard to think of anyone since Vaughan who has generated the same excitement around the guitar. Maybe those days are gone. But the burning intensity of his playing hasn’t dulled in the almost 30 years since his death. “He was probably the most fierce of the bluesmen I’ve ever heard,” says Bonnie Raitt. “He was playing as if his life depended on it, and it did.”


By Alan Light / NY Times




Stevie Ray Vaughan performs Tin Pan Alley at Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ

This wonderful video from the marvellous Don’s Tunes on Facebook


"Most folks know this song from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s 1983 version titled “Tin Pan Alley (aka Roughest Place In Town).” Surprisingly this song also traces it’s roots back to the 30’s. The first song with the title “Tin Pan Alley” was cut by pianist Curtis Jones for Okeh in 1941. Lyrically this is a different song but the melody is similar. This song is a close kin to “Bad Avenue Blues” which was cut by Jones in 1937 for Bluebird. The song may have been based on an earlier song about a rough neighborhood by pianist Walter Roland as “45 Pistol Blues” for ARC in 1935. The song we know today stems from Jimmy Wilson’s doom laden “Tin Pan Alley” cut for Big Town in 1953 and credited as being written by record man Bob Geddins who operated a number of small West Coast labels. Other notable versions were cut by Johnny Fuller as “Roughest Place In Town” (1956), James Reed’s “Roughest Place In Town” and Ray Agee’s “Tin Pan Alley” for the Sahara label (1963)."  Truefire


"Most folks know this song from Stevie Ray Vaughn’s 1983 version titled “Tin Pan Alley (aka Roughest Place In Town).” Surprisingly this song also traces it’s roots back to the 30’s. The first song with the title “Tin Pan Alley” was cut by pianist Curtis Jones for Okeh in 1941. Lyrically this is a different song but the melody is similar. This song is a close kin to “Bad Avenue Blues” which was cut by Jones in 1937 for Bluebird. The song may have been based on an earlier song about a rough neighborhood by pianist Walter Roland as “45 Pistol Blues” for ARC in 1935. The song we know today stems from Jimmy Wilson’s doom laden “Tin Pan Alley” cut for Big Town in 1953 and credited as being written by record man Bob Geddins who operated a number of small West Coast labels 

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