JULY/AUGUST 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN Todd V. Wolfson V. Todd JIMMIE VAUGHAN The Texas guitar master still considers himself a student of the blues By Eric R. Danton

TEXAS-BORN GUITAR SLINGER JIMMIE VAUGHAN GREW course his much-missed younger brother passed away in 1990. But up listening to songs by the likes of Jimmy Reed, Johnny Ace and even today, the songs of Jimmie Vaughan’s youth continue to inspire Lonnie Brooks—the kind of old rock ’n’ roll, vintage blues and country and sustain him—so much so that he worked up his own versions of that once fi lled up jukeboxes and crackled from transistor radios. a dozen of them (along with one original instrumental) for his fi rst Stations at the time regularly played songs that blurred genre lines, new solo album since 2001, the aptly titled Jimmie Vaughan Plays and young Jimmie didn’t mind it one bit. “I was just listening to the Blues, Ballads & Favorites. “It’s a combination of songs I always guitar players,” he recalls. “Not because I was smart, I just didn’t liked and songs I was a little afraid to do,” he says. “And then some know any better.” obscure little weirdo stuff that was fun.” Those were the tunes Vaughan could never quite get out of his The album was a long time coming, not the least because system, from his days gutting it out on the Dallas and Austin blues taking on the songbooks of your heroes is a tall order. “If you start scenes as a teenager alongside fellow hopefuls like former ZZ Top recording songs from other people you hold in high esteem, it gets frontman Billy Gibbons, through his star-making turn in the 1980s really scary,” says Vaughan, now 59. “Sometimes, you can do things as a member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds and in platinum-selling you think you can’t, and sometimes you just can’t. You just have to go duo the Vaughan Brothers with sibling Stevie Ray. Now the club try.” Vaughan spoke with us about those songs, his famous brother circuit is a distant memory, Vaughan left the T-Birds in 1989, and of and his lifelong process of learning to play the blues.

‘I’m still doing my dream, which was to be a blues guitar player.’

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Did any of these songs intimidate you? a kid. I’m still doing my dream, which was TOOLS OF THE TRADE [Billy “The Kid” Emerson’s] “The Pleasure to be a blues guitar player. When I told my is All Mine.” I love that song and I’ve been uncles I wanted to be a blues guitar player, listening to it a long time. A lot of songs are they said, “What for?” They thought I should Jimmie Vaughan is loyal to his signature- scary because I can play them, but I don’t be a country guy. It was a very odd thing model Stratocaster, the Tex-Mex, but it’s know if I can sing them. Even though I’d for me to announce that I was going to be certainly not the only guitar he plays. “I just listened to them for a long time, I’d never a blues guitar player when I was 15. And recently got a Barney Kessel Jazz Special,” tried to play most of the songs—with the I don’t mean from a racial standpoint: In says Vaughan. “It’s the one with the big K-letter exception of Lonnie Mack’s “Roll, Roll, Roll,” the early ’60s in Dallas, every kind of band headstock, a big jazz box. I had never even which I’d recorded with the T-Birds in the played Jimmy Reed songs. I always listened seen one, except in pictures. I have a Fender ’70s. Any song, when it’s new, it’s unfamiliar to the black station and wanted to play Little Coronado that really sounds good, but mostly and scary. But that’s the good part about Tommy Tucker and “High Heel Sneakers.” I play the Stratocasters because I like them it, too. By the time you learn it, you want so much. They do everything.” The Strats go to go do something else. If you get real But your uncles preferred country? on tour with him, accompanied most recently familiar with something, it’s not all brand They liked Webb Pierce. So did I, but when I by a pair of Fender Bassman amplifi ers. “I’d new and exciting. was a teenager, I didn’t know the difference been using Matchless amps forever, and I between blues and country. That was the still like mine, but I got hold of one of those How long did the album take? confusing part. On Saturdays in Dallas, it Bassman reissues and it sounded so good,” It took maybe a year, but we weren’t in the was all country and western shows on the Vaughan says. “We’re constantly on the studio very often. It was an on and off thing. television, like the Wilburn Brothers, Porter lookout for a new amp that’s better than I pretended to be making 45 singles with Wagoner and Cow Town Jamboree. A lot of anything else, but basically, you just want the country and western guys would come something that sounds like a Bassman.” out and play jazz songs or Jimmy Reed songs He marvels at the modern gear too. Back then, music was more together selections available. “This is a really exciting ‘I’ve never really than it was separate. time,” says Vaughan. “When I started the Fabulous Thunderbirds, there weren’t any learned anything Did you always want to play guitar? really good amps that you could go buy, or I wanted to be a drummer at fi rst, but I guitars. They all had racing stripes on them that I haven’t used couldn’t do it as well as the guitar, which or something. If you wanted an authentic old seemed easier and more fun.

sooner or later.’ Coming up with guys like Billy Gibbons, did you feel a sense of destiny? this record. I’d go in with two or three songs, When you’re young like that, you’re having so and then the next time my band came to much fun, you’re not thinking too far ahead. town for a gig, we’d go in again. There were You’re thinking, “Man, what if I could play a lot of different sessions. Most of us live this song and do this gig?” and, “Have you in Austin, but not everybody—[saxophonist] heard that new song by Eric Clapton?” Greg Piccolo lives in Connecticut; Billy (laughs) I wasn’t thinking about my career Pitman, the guitar player, lives in California; or anything except, “I can’t believe I have a Bill Willis lived in Oklahoma—so to get my gig tonight.” I did meet Billy Gibbons when band together, I have to come up with a I was about 15, and we played together in block of gigs, or a good reason to fl y ’em all Houston at the Catacombs. I was in a band out. [Organist Willis died earlier this year.] called the Chessmen. The ad on the radio for the Catacombs was, “Dallas’ Jimmie Why pretend to be making singles? Vaughan meets Houston’s Billy Gibbons It’s more fun and it feels better. You don’t from the Moving Sidewalks. On the same have to come up with a book, you only have stage, battling it out!” to come up with a chapter. You just go in and pretend you’re making a new single for the What was the idea behind the Vaughan jukebox down the street, right? In the old Brothers album [Family Style, 1990]? days, you’d have a recording budget, book When I was 12, I bought an electric guitar Fender Strat, you had to pay a lot of money a studio for two or three weeks and try to and got in a band at school and started or fi nd one in a pawn shop.” spend that budget and do the album. I’m not playing. I’m four years older than Stevie, These days, he strings his Strats—and going to do any more albums like that. When so he was 8 and had a little toy guitar. everything else—with fl at-wound strings. “If I record now, I’m not going to say, “You know Somebody would come over to the house you bought a 1955 Stratocaster brand new, what, we need to make a new album.” and my dad would say, “Jim, get your guitar they came with fl at-wounds,” he says. “I was and play ‘In the Mood’ by Glenn Miller,” like, of course! All those old records, they Do you still recognize the kid who fi rst because my dad liked that song. When had fl at-wounds. That’s why they sound so fell in love with this music? Stevie got a guitar, Dad would say, “You boys good. You listen to any of those old Chuck I feel like that kid. He’s actually having more get your guitars and play a song.” And the Berry Chess records, those are fl at-wounds, fun and is just as excited as when he was person would almost always say, “You boys man, I’ll bet you.” 63

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Opening for Bob Dylan at the

UPI /Landov Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest, 2007

are pretty good. Maybe someday you can out in the bar anymore. I’m over all that LOST & FOUND make a record together.” We grew up and young-man stuff about drinking. I don’t became musicians and fi nally it happened. do any of that anymore, so I play guitar. When Call it luck, call it karma–the Texas guitarist I named it Family Style, because it was like you’re young and out on tour, you don’t recently recovered a guitar that went missing sitting at a table family-style. Also, Family want to go home. But you go through life, more than 40 years ago. “A guy just gave me Style was a deliberate attempt to have a get a little older and start appreciating my original 330 Gibson that I lost in about hit and do something different than what what you’ve got. At least that’s what ’67,” Vaughan says. we were both doing with our own bands happened to me. He doesn’t remember exactly what and careers. We defi nitely pushed it and happened to the ES-330—a thinline hollow- tried to do all the stuff we weren’t doing with Is playing guitar an ongoing learning body guitar with P-90 pickups, which Gibson our own bands. experience for you? started producing in 1958. He does, however, I took music lessons last year. I got a recall wanting to keep the news of its Think you’d have done another one? guitar teacher who’s unbelievable. I’m disappearance from his father. “Something I don’t know. We just didn’t ever get not going to tell you his name because I happened to the guitar,” he says, “I broke there, you know? We recorded the album, don’t want everyone to call him. He’s it or something and didn’t want my dad to and then the tragedy happened before the mine! (laughs) But he’s a fabulous guitar know about it, because he signed for it.” To record came out. It came out immediately player who went to the Guitar Institute of Vaughan’s relief, his dad never asked about after Stevie got killed. It was already Technology and learned from [GIT founder] the missing guitar. scheduled, so we didn’t know what to Howard Roberts. I’m always trying to learn Luckily, Vaughan and his band, the do. Do we release it? Do we cancel it? how to play new things. Not necessarily Chessmen, were gigging regularly enough by We didn’t know. change my style so I sound different, but that point that he had the means to replace theory and chords. I still enjoy all that. the broken instrument. “I’d started making Do you still practice? I’ve never really learned anything that I money with my band and bought a new I play a couple hours every day. Sometimes haven’t used sooner or later. I may not use amp and guitar,” Vaughan says. “That 330 more. I just took the ferry from England to it for 20 years, but someday it might come Gibson, I either gave it to somebody or left Hamburg, and I played guitar for four hours up, and you go, “Oh yeah, I know what it somewhere and this guy found it. Can you sitting in the bus. It’s fun. I’m not hanging to do about that.” believe, 40 years later?”

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