For more than 50 years, Jimmie Vaughan has been a force onstage and on records. He came to prominence in the late 1970s when the Fabulous Thunderbirds brought their Texas roadhouse blues to a national, and later international, audience. The T-Birds broke into the U.S. singles charts in 1986 with “Tuff Enuff” and enjoyed high-profile success at home and around the world.
Vaughan left the T-Birds in 1990 to record Family Style with his younger brother, Stevie Ray. Plans to build upon that platform, touring as the Vaughan Brothers, came to a grinding halt when Stevie was tragically killed in a helicopter crash that same year. Jimmie found the loss impossible to deal with, and refrained from recording until the release of his debut solo album, Strange Pleasurefour years later.
Since the release of that first solo record, Vaughan has continued to record a series of critically acclaimed albums and to tour extensively. The 2023 documentary Brothers in Blues was the first official telling of Jimmie and Stevie Ray’s story. It features not only extensive interviews with Jimmie but also appearances from Billy Gibbons and many associates of Stevie and Jimmie from their earliest days.
Jimmie is pleased with how it turned out, but still finds it hard to talk about Stevie. “I still can’t believe that it’s true that Stevie got killed,” he says. “I’m still in denial about it. It was terrible. I had to deal with losing my little brother.
“The thing is that he died on the same day that our father died, four years earlier. Imagine how that felt when I was calling up my mother to tell her. I guess she thought I was calling up to tell her I was thinking about her on that anniversary. And I have to tell her that Stevie got killed?
“It’s a life-changing experience,” he continues. “I didn’t know what to do or say about it when it happened. I almost didn’t even want to play anymore. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. There’s an expectation as well, when people speak to you about it, that you’ll have something profound to say. I sometimes think that maybe God picked that day so that we knew they’d be together. What else can you think?”
Once again this year, Jimmie will join up with Billy Gibbons for shows at Antone’s, the Austin, Texas blues club where the Vaughan brothers (and many other electric guitar players) got their start. Jimmie and Billy have intermittently teamed up for their Jungle Show performances at the venue, joined by Sue Foley, Mike “The Drifter” Flanigin and Chris “Whipper” Layton. This year, Vaughan will be the special guest on December 27 and 28 when Billy F. Gibbons and the BFGs, featuring Flanigin and Layton, take the stage.
“We’ve talk about doing more things,” Vaughan says, “but Billy is very busy, and I’ve been real busy, but we always come home around Christmas time, which is when we often do shows together. We have been thinking about maybe doing something in Vegas. I think we’d have to make a record first though, but that’s currently on the back burner.”
Vaughan’s primary focus at the moment is to continue to tour across the States. He has dates scheduled through Januaryand there will undoubtedly be more to come. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a big deal or a small deal, it’s always exciting to play guitar and to get together with your friends to play,” he says. “There’s something magical about playing the guitar. I still can’t believe that I get to be a guitar player.”
We asked Vaughan to share the stories behind some of that magic as he’s applied it to key songs from his career. Here’s what he told us.
“WAIT ON TIME” (1979)
“I picked this one because it’s from the beginning of my recording career with the T-Birds, and it’s also one of the very first original songs that we worked up. The whole album was pretty representative of what we were like as a band. This was a song that we’d been playing at Antone’s for years. (Vocalist) Kim Wilson came up with the lyrics, and I think it’s a song that sounds like it could have been written at any time. If you didn’t know that it was an original, you could easily be forgiven for thinking it was some old, obscure blues cover version.
“That was what we did, you know? We’d be playing across the states at blues festivals and clubs, and we’d have that mix of original and cover songs, but I doubt the average listener would know which was which. Playing as the back-up band at Antone’s, with whatever blues great was playing there, was a tremendous apprenticeship as a band.
“I think I used a ’58 Strat that I’ve still got, and I think maybe a Bassman amp. We were really pleased with the album when it came out. It was real exciting. Denny Bruce owned the label (Takoma Records), and Ray Benson from Asleep at the Wheel recommended us to him. We recorded the album in Dallas in a couple of days, since we’d been playing those songs for so long.”
“TUFF ENUFF” (1986)
“Dave Edmunds produced this album, and it was the first time that we allowed somebody to produce us, as opposed to record us. It was the first time that we asked for help and got it. Dave wanted us to overdub, and put a lot of guitar layers on the tracks. We spent a lot more time on the vocal tracks as well. He was a great producer, and we were confident that he could bring something extra to the table for us.
“We were fans of his records of course, and I think the album turned out pretty good. We thought, and Dave agreed, that ‘Tuff Enuff’ could be a radio hit. We did everything that we thought we needed to do in the recording of it to achieve that, which it did of course, giving us our first hit single. We still stuck to our guns though — it still sounds like the T-Birds. Most of the album was a little more like our regular approach, but ‘Tuff Enuff’ is still an authentic-sounding T-Birds song.
“For this song I think I used my white Strat, which was a ’62 body with a neck that René Martinez built for me, and he put a Fender decal on it. This was before I had a deal with Fender. I think this was either two Super Reverbs or Bassman combos together with a ‘Y’ cord. I turned the amps to 10, then turned it down on the guitar. If I needed something extra, I always had something in reserve.”
“POWERFUL STUFF” (1989)
“This was the last T-Birds album that I played on. This was the follow-up hit to ‘Tuff Enuff,’ and I thought it was a real good record. We got a lot of airplay on this one. This is another example of where we updated the sound of the band a little while still remaining true to who we were as a band.
“There’s actually a live version of this on YouTube for some TV special and I think it actually came out a lot better than the record. I had a Stratocaster tuned down a tone, with real heavy strings that I used for those parts that sound like a baritone guitar — even though I did have a Danelectro Longhorn baritone that I used on a lot of the T-Birds records. There was a song when I was a kid that I heard it on, by Grady Martin, whose playing I really loved. Man, he played with everybody in Nashville. He had that great double-necked guitar with the little, short neck (a 1952 Bigsby double-neck). Great guitarist.”
“TICK TOCK” (1990)
“Recording the Vaughan Brothers’ Family Style with Stevie was one of the highlights for me. I wrote the music and the chorus, with the words ‘Tick Tock.’ Nile Rogers, who was producing, wrote the lyrics. When I turned up, I had a recording of what I had, played it to Nile and he took about 10 minutes to write the words. (laughs)
“I couldn’t pick a particular favorite from this album — it was all real serious and heavy to me as we were working on it. And then Stevie got killed. We were together for three months making that record and had a real great time doing it. Tony Martell at Epic came up with the idea of us making an album. Ever since we were little kids our dad would say, ‘Okay, boys, go get your guitars and play something in the living room for our guests,’ and someone would always say, ‘That’s really great boys, maybe someday you can make a record together.’ It was a long time coming.”
“BOOM BAPA BOOM” (1994)
“This cut from Strange Pleasure was the kickstarter to my solo career. After several years of not knowing what to do after Stevie’s death, this was my return. I asked Nile Rogers to produce this because I’d enjoyed working with him on Family Style. He’s the greatest producer I’ve ever worked with. He’s such an inspirational guy, that it’s almost like magic.
“Stevie had enjoyed working with him on Bowie’s Let’s Dancewhich was why we asked him to produce our album. I felt a certain amount of pressure and scrutiny in the making of this record, because it was the start of a whole new thing for me, particularly as I was also doing all the vocals. The thing is though, as you get older, and you’ve had a good career, I think you always feel a certain amount of pressure to come up with something that will stand alongside your best work.
“I’d decided to change one of the fundamental approaches to my music by having the organ cover the bass parts instead of using a bass player. I’d been a huge fan of people like Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff, and those kinds of guys, since I was a teenager. I ran into Bill Willis, and thought that was my chance to do something in that vein. If you call up your favorite guy to make a record and he says yes, that’s a pretty special thing.”
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