Stevie Ray Vaughan

His six months before released debut LP Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble 'Texas flood' had no liner notes. Aside knowing he was the younger brother of guitar player Jimmie Vaughan from the Fabulous Thunderbirds and his bass player Tommy Shannon had been with Johnny Winter. At the time not much more info was available.

A nice chat

I was planning to write a concert review and wanted to know more about him. That afternoon with no appointment it was impossible to interview Stevie. So that evening I went early to Paradiso. It was still quiet. There was yet hardly anybody and to my big surprise he had already arrived. Downstairs in the (large) dressing room were Stevie, his wife Lenny, his soundsman and a few others directly involved with the band.

'Rude Mood'

Stevie was in a very relaxed mood. It seemed there was no time pressure nor any preparation going on to go on stage and for about half an hour we had (no recorder/no notes) a nice chat. One of the things I mentioned was recognizing his version of 'Rude mood' (composer credits SRV) as a cover of the Lightnin’ Hopkins’ 1954 Original 'Hopkins’ sky hop' and having that Herald single. He laughed and responded his brother Jimmie had that 45 as well and got to know that instrumental that way. Asked him was it alright to make pics on stage. No problem. In the next years Stevie’s popularity had increased enormously, had reached stardom, and when meeting Stevie again there was always an army of photographers, press and lots of fans surrounding him. A technical note: the pics were shot with a tiny compact camera with no zoom.