Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan (1989)

Stephen "Stevie" Ray Vaughan (born October 3, 1954 in Dallas , Texas ; † August 27, 1990 in East Troy , Wisconsin ), also known under the acronym SRV , was an American blues - and blues rock guitarist or - Musician who is named in the same line as influential guitarists like Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton . For example, the respected music magazine Rolling Stone placed him 12th among the best guitarists in music history. He was instrumental in reawakening interest in the blues in the 1980s (and far beyond).

Life

Stevie Ray Vaughan was born in Dallas, Texas, the second son of Martha and Jimmie Lee Vaughan, and began playing guitar like Jimmie in 1963 under the influence of his older brother Jimmie . At the age of 17 Vaughan dropped out of school and in the spring of 1972 moved with his band Blackbird to Austin , Texas, where his brother had lived since 1969. In Austin, in addition to the country scene, there was also a blues scene in which both Vaughan brothers were active, Stevie first with his band Blackbird and then in the local bands Crackerjack, Nightcrawlers and Cobras. In 1977 Vaughan founded the band Triple Threat Revue with WC Clark and singer Lou Ann Barton , from which the successor band Double Trouble emerged in 1979 . In 1982 Double Trouble (now in the cast Tommy Shannon - b, Chris Layton - dr) played at a private Rolling Stones party at Club Danceteria in New York.

In 1982 Vaughan was invited to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival , which ultimately made him his first breakthrough. Jerry Wexler was responsible for this move, having heard the band at a club in Austin, Texas. David Bowie first heard him in Montreux and engaged him for his 1983 album Let's Dance and for the Serious Moonlight tour . However, Vaughan left the tour band during rehearsals for the tour, probably to devote himself to his own projects.

Jackson Browne had also heard Stevie in Montreux and had offered him the opportunity to use his recording studio for free. There Vaughan and Double Trouble recorded their first album Texas Flood in a few days in November 1982 . John Hammond , who was instrumental in the discovery and a. by Charlie Christian , Billie Holiday , Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan heard live recordings of the band and got their first record deal with Epic. The Texas Flood album sold well. The second album Couldn't Stand the Weather (1984) was even more successful. In 1985, keyboard player Reese Wynans joined the band's lineup, with whom they recorded their third album, Soul To Soul . Vaughan's drug and alcohol use became increasingly excessive as his success grew. In 1986 a tour had to be canceled prematurely after Vaughan's collapse in Germany. In the same year, however, the double live album Live Alive was released . The withdrawal was followed by the fifth album In Step , which Vaughan claims was the first album that was made without the influence of drugs. Vaughan received a Grammy for In Step . "In Step" means the steps that are necessary to overcome addiction. He did not live to see the release of the Family Style album with his brother Jimmie Vaughan . The album The Sky Is Crying was compiled by Jimmie Vaughan from recordings from various periods.

style

His style was shaped by the influences of black blues musicians, especially Albert King , but also two other "kings": BB King and Freddie King , who also came from Texas like Vaughan . Vaughan also cites Texan Albert Collins as well as Otis Rush and Buddy Guy as sources of his inspiration. His earliest influences include the white rock guitarist Lonnie Mack , who made some instrumental hits in the 1960s such as B. Memphis or Wham! placed in the American charts and whose title Chicken Pickin ' Vaughan inspired his own Scuttle-Buttin' , as did Stevie's older brother Jimmie Vaughan . He also counted jazz guitarists like Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery among his influences. But next to Albert King Jimi Hendrix was probably his most important role model, whom Stevie Ray Vaughan himself described as his greatest influence.

Vaughan worked almost exclusively with traditional rock'n'roll equipment from the 1950s and early 1960s, enhanced by the "psychedelic" (analog) effects of the Hendrix era. Its unmistakable, at the same time clear and "fat" tone was characterized by overdriven old Fender tube amplifiers and guitars with single coil pickups. In connection with the thick guitar strings that he pulled up and which he - like Jimi Hendrix before him - tuned lower, this enabled him to play extremely dynamic and expressive, which still had "acoustic" qualities despite all degrees of distortion. With his (apart from pure solo passages) guitar, which was rather slightly distorted, he played a hard-hit mix of solo and rhythm, combined punched chords with complex, technically demanding runs, sometimes switching between the two bars. His solo playing is characterized by strong bendings (strings drawn from the original tuning) based on BB King and above all Albert King , which achieve dramatic effects with sometimes minimal, finely graduated pitch shifts . From a limited vocabulary of blues phrasing, he apparently effortlessly created any number of variations, which earned him the recognition and admiration of numerous, especially Afro-American, blues greats, whose judgment and recognition he attached great importance to. He himself preferred to call his music rhythm & blues rather than blues rock, always strived for a “black” sound and style of music and always explicitly acknowledged his Afro-American role models.

At a time when digital synthesizers and drum machines were in , longer guitar solos were out , Vaughan's style of music meant a return to the roots, to the blues. Vaughan was the initiator of the blues revival of the 1980s. Whole generations of guitarists have turned to blues-oriented playing styles and sounds again (including Kenny Wayne Shepherd , John Mayer , Philip Sayce).

Equipment

Stevie Ray Vaughan Signature Stratocaster from Fender

Like his style, Vaughan's equipment bucked the trend of the early 1980s: his standard guitar was a worn-out Fender Stratocaster called Number One . Stevie saw the guitar in Ray Hennig's Heart Of Texas Music Shop in Austin, Texas in 1973. According to his own statement, he knew even before he had tried it out that he wanted to trade it in for the 1963 Stratocaster that he had bought in 1969. "Number One" had previously been heard by Christopher Cross . Aside from the heavy wear and tear on the finish, which became increasingly extreme due to Vaughan's special use of his main guitar during his live shows, the guitar was characterized by a strong neck profile and a rather dark timbre. The fingerboard made of domed glued rosewood (veneer) was retrofitted with the highest available jumbo frets . In Vaughan's setup, the guitar had a very high string action to allow the strings to fade away freely with every note. According to the Fender Custom Shop, the neck is from 1962 and the body from 1963. The pickups have a handwritten date from 1959 on the back. This is why Stevie regularly referred to his "Number One" guitar in interviews as a 1959 Fender Stratocaster . Other modifications included the installation of a five-way switch for pickup selection (instead of the original three-way switch), a black pickguard instead of the white, gold-plated hardware instead of the chrome / nickel-plated, and a left-handed vibrato that Vaughan built in even though he was right-handed. Rene Martinez, Vaughan's guitar technician since 1985, also built in a switchable air-core coil (dummy coil), which was used to suppress the littering hum typical of single-coil pickups.

After several repairs and an accident as a result of a falling part of the stage shortly before Vaughan's death in July 1990, Number One had been given a new neck at his request by Rene Martinez. The guitar is now owned (again with the original neck) by his brother, Jimmie Vaughan. Since 1992 the Fender company has been producing a signature Stratocaster based on “Number One” (see illustration), the prototype of which Stevie Ray Vaughan himself played in 1990. This guitar model is one of the well-selling Fender models within the Signature range.

In the early days of Double Trouble, Stevie usually played two Fender vibroverbs, each with a 15-inch loudspeaker, and a Marshall 4140 Club and Country 2 × 12 amplifier with 100 watts for undistorted sounds. He later used two Fender Super Reverbs, each with four 10-inch speakers , in addition to the vibroverbs . In his stage setup, a vibroverb was played over a Fender Vibratone (loudspeaker with a rotating drum in the style of a Leslie cabinet). For the album Texas Flood, however, Vaughan mainly used Jackson Browne's Dumble amp , in whose studio this LP was recorded. From then on, in addition to the Super Reverbs and Vibroverbs, one or two Dumble amplifiers and a Marshall Major 200W amplifier (each with a Dumble 4x12 box) were part of his live equipment. Shortly before his death, according to Guitar Player magazine, he was in touch with Michael Soldano to add a Soldano SLO-100 amp to his setup.

Before the amplifiers, he usually used the following floor effects: a wahwah pedal (usually a Vox Wah from the 1960s), one or two Ibanez tube screamer (each the current model: TS 808, later TS 9, finally TS 10 classic.) Later came a Fuzz Face (from Dallas Arbiter) and an Octavia (from Roger Mayer or Tycobrahe) are regularly added. At times he also used a Univox Uni-Vibe with an attached expression pedal.

death

See also : Journeyman World Tour

On August 27, 1990, at 12:40 a.m., Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash with a Bell 206 en route to Chicago. After a concert with Jimmie Vaughan , Robert Cray , Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton on Clapton's Journeyman World Tour at the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin, he decided to board the helicopter, which still had a seat. This crashed shortly after takeoff in hilly terrain, with fog playing a role. In addition to Vaughan, the pilot and three crew members of Clapton died in this accident.

Honors

1991 October 3rd was declared "Stevie Ray Vaughan Day" for the state of Texas. In 1994 the City of Austin, Texas erected a Stevie Ray Vaughan Memorial statue in the Auditorium Shores Park on Lady Bird Lake. Vaughan was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2000 . Guitar World readers voted Vaughan 8th on a list of the 100 best guitarists, and Rolling Stone magazine placed him twelfth of the 100 best guitarists of all time . On a list in the magazine from 2003, he was ranked seventh. In 2014, Vaughan and Double Trouble were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame. In April 2015, SRV was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. Vaughan has won a total of 6 Grammy Awards and 10 Austin Music Awards. He won a WC Handy Award five times. In 1984 he was nominated for "Best Contemporary Blues Male Artist," and in the same year he received the awards "Entertainer of the Year" and "Instrumentalist of the Year" (1984 and 1985). In 2000 the awards "Blues Album of the Year" and "Contemporary Blues Album of the Year" followed for the posthumously released CD / DVD "In Session" (with Albert King).

Discography

Albums

Unless otherwise stated, the albums are by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)				Remarks
		DE	CH	UK	US
1983	Texas flood	-	-	UK- silver UK	US38 × 2 Double platinum (33 weeks)US
1984	Couldn't stand the weather	-	-	-	US31 × 2 Double platinum (38 weeks)US
1985	Soul to Soul	-	CH18 (3 weeks) CH	-	US34 platinum (39 weeks)US
1986	Live Alive	-	-	-	US52 platinum (25 weeks)US	Live album
1989	In Step	-	CH24 (6 weeks) CH	UK63 (1 week) UK	US33 × 2 Double platinum (47 weeks)US	Grammy (Contemporary Blues Album)
1990	Family Style The Vaughan Brothers	-	CH24 (4 weeks) CH	-	US7th platinum (38 weeks)US	with Jimmie Vaughan
1991	The Sky Is Crying	-	-	-	US10 × 2 Double platinum (48 weeks)US	Recordings from 1984–1989 Grammy (Contemporary Blues Album)
1992	In the beginning	-	-	-	US58 gold (12 weeks)US	Recorded live on April 1st, 1980 in Austin ( Texas )
1995	Greatest hits	-	-	-	US39 × 2 Double platinum (35 weeks)US	Best of album
1997	Live at Carnegie Hall	-	-	-	US40 gold (12 weeks)US	Recorded live on October 4, 1984 at Carnegie Hall , New York
1999	The Real Deal: Greatest Hits Volume 2	-	-	-	US53 gold (17 weeks)US	Best of album
2000	Blues at Sunrise	-	-	-	US80 (8 weeks) US	compilation
	SRV	-	-	-	US148 gold (5 weeks)US	Compilation (box with 3 CDs + DVD)
2001	Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985	-	-	-	US178 (1 week) US	Live recordings
2002	The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble	-	-	-	US165 gold (2 weeks)US	Best of album
2011	In session Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan	DE- Gold (German Jazz Award) DE	-	-	US52 (3 weeks) US	Live recording
2014	The Complete Epic Recordings Collection	-	-	-	US6 (1 week) US	compilation
2016	Guitar Thunder: Radio Broadcast 1984 Jeff Beck & Stevie Ray Vaughan	-	-	-	US7 (1 week) US	Live recording
	Happy New Year Blues Stevie Ray Vaughan with Lonnie Mack	-	-	-	US14 (1 week) US	Recorded live on December 31, 1986 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta
	Old Jam, New Blood: Redux Club, Dallas 1987 Robert Cray Band feat. Stevie Ray Vaughan	-	-	-	US9 (2 weeks) US	Recorded live on January 21, 1987 at the Redux Club in Dallas

More albums

• Sugar Coated Love (1998, re-released - with Lou Ann Barton and others)
• Live at the El Mocambo (1999)
• Tin Pan Alley - Guitar Heroes Vol. 3 (2000; Best of 1983-91, Label: Zounds , all tracks digitally remastered)
• Live in Tokyo (2006)
• Stevie Ray Vaughan & Friends - Solos, Sessions and Encores (2007)
• The Fire Meets the Fury (2012)
• The King's Head - Legendary 1980 Radio Broadcast (2014)
• Spectrum, Philadelphia 23rd May 1988 (2015)
• Bumbershoot Arts Festival 1985 (2015)

Video albums

• Pride and Joy (1991,platinum)
• Live from Austin, Texas (1997,× 2Double platinum )
• Live at the El Mocambo - 1983 (1999,× 2Double platinum )
• Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985 (2004,platinum)
• Live in Tokyo (1985/2007)
• In Session (Deluxe Edt .; CD + DVD, 2010)
• Rise of a Texas Bluesman: 1954--1983 (2014)

With others

• A New Hi - Cast of Thousands (1971)
• Texas Twister - Johnny Copeland (1983)
• Soulful Dress - Marcia Ball (1983)
• Let's Dance - David Bowie (1983)
• Strike Like Lightning - Lonnie Mack (1985)
• Twilight Time - Bennie Wallace (1985)
• Living for a Song - Roy Head (1985)
• Heartbeat - Don Johnson (1986)
• Gravity - James Brown (1986)
• Famous Blue Raincoat - Jennifer Warnes (1986)
• Emerald City - Teena Marie (1986)
• I'm in the Wrong Business - AC Reed (1987)
• Characters - Stevie Wonder (1987)
• Loaded Dice - Bill Carter (1988)
• Distant Drums - Brian Slawson (1988)
• Madre Dolcissima - Zucchero (1989)
• Under the Red Sky - Bob Dylan (1990)
• Bird Nest on the Ground - Doyle Bramhall (1994)
• In session with Albert King (1999)

Awards for music sales

Golden record

•  Canada
  • 1986: for the album Soul to Soul
  • 1989: for the album In Step
  • 1991: for the video album Pride and Joy
  • 1996: for the album Best of Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble

Platinum record

•  Canada
  • 1987: for the album Live Alive
  • 1988: for the album Couldn't Stand the Weather
  • 1988: for the album Texas Flood
  • 1990: for the Family Style album
  • 1992: for the album The Sky Is Crying

Note: Awards in countries from the chart tables or chart boxes can be found in these.

Country / Region	silver	gold	platinum	Sales	swell
Awards for music sales (country / region, awards, sales, sources)
Germany (BVMI)	-	gold1	-	10,000	musikindustrie.de
Canada (MC)	-	4 × gold4th	5 × platinum5	655,000	musiccanada.com
United States (RIAA)	-	5 × gold5	19 × platinum19th	14,100,000	riaa.com
United Kingdom (BPI)	silver1	-	-	60,000	bpi.co.uk
All in all	silver1	10 × gold10	24 × platinum24

literature

• Joe Nick Patoski, Bill Crawford: Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire. Little, Brown and Company, 1993, ISBN 0-316-16068-7 .
• Jeff Kitts (Ed.): Guitar World presents Stevie Ray Vaughan. Hal Leonard, 1997, ISBN 0-7935-8080-3 .
• Hugh Gregory: Roadhouse Blues: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Texas R&B. Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003, ISBN 978-0-87930-747-9 .

Web links

Commons : Stevie Ray Vaughan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• MusicAustin
• Fan Club
• Equipment
• stevieray.com
• Official website
• Stevie Ray Vaughan at laut.de.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan. VH1. 2007
• mylespaul.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 100 Greatest Guitarists. Retrieved April 22, 2018 . 
2. ^ Hugh Gregory: Road House Blues: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Texas R&B . Backbeat Books, 2003, pp. 42-44.
3. ^ Hugh Gregory: Road House Blues: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Texas R&B . Backbeat Books, 2003, p. 48
4. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, pp. 2-3
5. ^ Hugh Gregory: Road House Blues: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Texas R&B . Backbeat Books, 2003, pp. 47-48.
6. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, pp. 4-5
7. ↑ See Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 6
8. ^ Calen Stone, James Manheim: Stevie Ray Vaughan, guitarist . encyclopedia.com. 2005. Retrieved February 16, 2011.
9. ^ Before the Flood . Guitar world. Sept. 1983. Archived from the original on September 18, 2011. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 16, 2011. 
10. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, pp. 7-8
11. ↑ Stevie Ray Vaughan
12. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 3
13. ↑ See Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, pp. 48-49
14. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 35
15. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 36
16. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997. pp. 9, 36
17. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, pp. 19-20, 29
18. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 8
19. ↑ Stephen Thomas Erlewine: Stevie Ray Vaughan Biography . allmusic.com. 2010. Retrieved February 16, 2011.
20. ↑ See Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 18
21. ↑ Playback: Heart Transplant - The future of Ray Hennig's Heart of Texas Music, Austin Vintage Guitars, and the HighBall called into question. . Retrieved February 9, 2013.
22. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 102
23. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 102
24. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 107
25. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 103
26. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, pp. 103-104
27. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 108
28. ^ Stevie Ray Vaughan's Guitar called “Number One” . Retrieved February 16, 2011.
29. ^ The Fender SRV Signature Series Stratocaster . Retrieved February 16, 2011.
30. ↑ Stevie Ray's King Tone . Retrieved February 26, 2012.
31. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 113
32. ^ Ibanez Tube Screamers History . Retrieved February 16, 2011.
33. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard (1997), 115–15
34. ↑ Jeff Kitt (Ed.): Guitar Player presents: Stevie Ray Vaughan . Hal Leonard, 1997, p. 116
35. ^ Hugh Gregory: Road House Blues: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Texas R&B . Backbeat Books, 2003, p. 119
36. ↑ NTSB Archives: CHI90MA244 . Retrieved June 27, 2013.
37. ↑ Stevie Ray Vaughan Biography . Archived from the original on June 6, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 3, 2014. 
38. ↑ Readers Poll Results: The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time . Retrieved December 19, 2014.
39. ↑ 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Rolling Stone , December 18, 2015, accessed August 8, 2017 . 
40. ↑ 100 Greatest Guitarists . Retrieved March 7, 2015.
41. ^ SRV & Double Trouble Inducted Into Musicians Hall Of Fame . Retrieved December 19, 2014.
42. ↑ John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr. honor Rock Hall inductee Stevie Ray Vaughan with raw blues . Retrieved June 17, 2014.
43. ↑ Chart sources: CH - UK - US / US2
44. ^ The Billboard Albums by Joel Whitburn , 6th Edition, Record Research 2006, ISBN 0-89820-166-7 .
45. ↑ Stevie Ray Vaughan in the RIAA gold / platinum database (USA)
46. ↑ Stevie Ray Vaughan - Happy New Year Blues w. Lonnie Mack: Fox Theater Radio Broadcast 1986 CD , Leeway's Homegrown Music Network, accessed May 26, 2018
47. ^ Robert Cray, Old Jam, New Blood , Resident Music, accessed May 26, 2018