When it comes to current elder statesman blues guitarists, Jimmie Vaughan doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough. While his late baby brother Stevie Ray Vaughan may have gotten much of the commercial success thanks to his game-changing style of playing that oftentimes cast him as a latter-day Hendrix, Vaughan’s younger sibling often cited him as the better guitar player. And while Vaughan may be in the shadow of fellow living greats like Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark, Jr., Susan Tedeschi, and Derek Trucks, the humble 74-year-old Texas guitar-slinger has carved out his own legacy.
In recent years, that appreciation has been paid forward by UK-based imprint Proper Music/The Last Music Company, the label Vaughan has been signed to for over a decade. The latest release is a 25th anniversary reissue of Vaughan’s 2001 outing, Do You Get the Blues?, which is his third solo album. While this collection of songs has a definitive blues pipeline, the sound is informed by greasy, organ-driven grooves that find Vaughan’s crisp riffs playing off the late Bill Willis’ meaty, Bill Doggett-influenced Hammond B-3 runs—inspired by the relationship with his future wife, Vaughan’s inspired material wound up being sidetracked by an event far beyond his control.
“The release party was going to be in a club in Austin in 2001, actually on 9/11, so as you can imagine, the in-store and everything around it was cancelled,” he shared in the liner notes. “The album is really about meeting Robin and falling in love, feeling brand new, being able to see forward, and all that. That’s what it’s about. Sometimes you might feel like it’s all over and then…there it is. Robin inspired me and was writing songs. The lyrics tell their own story.”
Vaughan isn’t kidding about the narrative of yearning infusing the 11 songs he cut for this outing that had its sessions split between his Austin home dubbed La Casa Que Cante (the Spanish translation being “The House That Sings”) and Memphis’ famed Ardent Studios. The tasty organ-soaked Texas shuffle that is Out Of the Shadows has Vaughan wearily singing, “I was blind, but I see/Standin’ in sorrow, you rescued me/Out of the shadows into the light/Of your love.” While on the percolating Let Me In, he pleads “You are the only one for me/It’s your love, can’t you see/To hold back would be a sin/Open up, baby, let me in.” These cuts clearly made an impression as Vaughan won a 2001 Grammy Award for “Best Traditional Blues Album.”
While Vaughan is commemorating a notable anniversary for Do You Get the Blues?, he’ll be traveling sans a Hammond B-3 player with close friend Willis having passed away back in 2010, inspiring the guitarist to change the sound of his band “…as there was no replacing Bill.” Vaughan has instead rounded out his band with guitarist Billy Pitman, bassist/vocalist Billy Horton, and drummer Jason Corbiere. Adding punch to the mix are the Texas Horns, consisting of trumpeter Al Gomez, baritone saxophonist John Mills, and tenor saxophonist Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff. It’s a crew the band leader is eager to show off to his fans.
“I’ve got the horn players and all that with me–what’s not to like?” he said with a laugh. “We just go out and play old and new stuff every night.”
Given the pure tone and feeling Vaughan plays with, it’s not surprising to learn his earliest musical memories center around jam sessions he remembers witnessing as a child. It would take a teenage football injury for him to set him on the road to becoming a professional musician.
“My uncles played guitar and they liked Merle Travis, Hank Williams, and music that they called country back then,” he recalled. “There were a lot of musicians on both sides of the family. They were always playing the guitar or dancing. It was always going on and was a real party time. I think it was the perfect environment for my brother Stevie and me to grow up in. It was a natural thing for us to want to be musicians because of everything around us. And when I wound up breaking my collarbone and getting laid up for three months. The trauma of having the broken bones and shock of the whole thing worked out perfectly, and I’ve been playing ever since.”
Jimmie Vaughan will be appearing on August 17 at The Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, 71 E. Main St, Patchogue. For more information, patchoguetheatre.org or call 631-207-1313.
