Dr John on Stevie Ray Vaughan

"The first time I heard Stevie, he was working with Angela Strehli, and Doc Pomus called me up and said I gotta hear this guitar player. I was not the most open-minded guy to hear another guitar player.

But I went to see him and when I heard him play, he was tough, but he was real, almost leaning off of Albert King. I was into Albert, so I was into the fact that here was this young kid doing that.

When I met him later, I was impressed because he was already doing more stuff than when I first heard him, and he reminded me of a lot of guys in a lot of ways, and he was growing fast.

He wasn't doing Jimi Hendrix, but you could tell he was listening to some of that stuff. I was digging the fact that he was mixing some Lightnin' Hopkins and a whole bunch of different kind of stuff up.

What amazed me about this kid was that people dug him for totally different reasons. He had some kind of ability to be like different guys in different times, and there's something spectal about that.

1990

For the remaining months of his life, Stevie would send messages to Dr. John through other people around the country, usually dealing with spiritual matters; he would ask questions of Dr. John, as though he were Stevie's personal psychic advisor, and Rebenack would send back answers.

"He sent me a message through his brother Jimmie about six months before he died that was scary shit," Dr. John admitted, his voice shaking.

"I really don't want to say what it was— Jimmie is the only other person who knows, and if he wants to talk about it someday, that would be okay. It wasn't necessarily an 'I know I'm going to die' thing, but it was something spiritual that, me being the superstitious coonass that I am, it was a shock and a half."

Photo Brian Blauser Music

Stevie and Dr. John