Remembering the great Stevie Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) - Jas Obrecht | Don’s Tunes

Scuttle Buttin - Live at Montreux 1985 

Vaughan co-produced Texas Flood with his Double Trouble bandmates–bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton–and Richard Mullen, who also engineered the sessions. I met up with Mullen at Austin’s Arlyn Studios in 1996, while he was engineering and co-producing Eric Johnson’s Venus Isle album. During a break, we spoke about the Texas Flood sessions. “Ninety-eight percent of all of Stevie’s records were done straight live,” Mullen explained. “Stevie was relatively fearless in the studio. He was a real performer in the sense that he didn’t think too much about the technical things. Once he got out there and started playing, he was just enveloped in the music. You could see that when he played live, and he wasn’t any different in the studio. If he was into it, you’d see him do his little dance steps all over the studio, just like he was playing for 10,000 people. There were hardly any overdubs at all. Just about the only overdubs were vocals and an occasional rhythm part over a lead, but the basic guitar parts on the studio records were all done live. And they were almost always judged on Stevie’s performance. If someone in the band made a bonk but Stevie played great, we’d say, ‘Well, that’s it. Let’s just go with that.’

- by Jas Obrecht

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Stevie Ray playing acoustic blues . . . . .