By Bill Bentley

Jimmie Vaughan is the kind of musician who captivates the imagination from their very first note. There is something in the way he approaches the bandstand, like it's a sacred ground where there is really no telling what will unfold. He holds his Fender Stratocaster guitar like it is part of his body. Vaughan's relationship with his instrument is obviously endless. He's been playing the guitar over 60 years, and what he has learned to do is speak his own language with it. It's magical, really, a practice of such pure power, but in a quiet way. It's like Vaughan is playing notes that come from a private language, one that his many fans have learned from over a half-century of seeing him perform. In his home state of Texas, Jimmie Lawrence Vaughan has become a combination of everyman and royalty when it comes to music, someone who is finely tuned to his place in the community but also knows he is the keeper of a sacred flame: the blues played with total commitment and class. Few who have his talent combined with his commitment. There are a lot of lifetime greats that are part of the Lone Star state tradition, but there is something different about this musician. It's a soul thing that cannot be learned. It is just given and then refined.

I first saw Jimmie Vaughan perform in 1968 at the Houston Music Hall. His band Texas was opening for the Steve Miller Band, who were just starting through the nation making their mix of rock and blues known. Miller was an obvious all-timer, a player who was agile with blues and rock and just getting his abilities known. Vaughan was also on the early road of destiny, but his attack took a rougher time. Hisi guitar playing was as rough as it was smooth, if that makes any sense, and you could instantly tell in the first song that night in Houston this young Texan was a lifer. Still a teenager, there was also something ageless in Jimmie Vaughan. When he played strategic solos on his Stratocaster, it felt like a window had been opened. He wasn't trying to be T-Bone Walker, Freddie King, Albert Collins or any other Texas bluesman. Even then, as the end of the tumultuous 1960s were moving toward a finale. Jimmie Lawrence Vaughan made it known a new giant was entering the field. It was a brand new world.

At the start of the 1970s in Austin, it seemed like a hardcore tornado had blown things apart. What was once a swirling psychedelic scene with the Vulcan Gas Co. ballroom downtown, and a few blues clubs hosting homegrown sounds on the East Side had dried up. Now a slow-growing gaggle of musicians was looking for somewhere to move. So when the Armadillo World Headquarters opened in August of that first year of the decade, it was as if a miracle had happened. The room held over a thousand people, and shows with Captain Beefheart, Ry Cooder and others lit the fuse for a hometown explosion. But the blues boys who had lost their spots on the East Side were out of luck for awhile. The Victory Grill, Sam's Showcase and Charlie's Playhouse, which featured all kinds of local blues spirits, went away, and Jimmie Vaughan, who moved to Austin from Dallas to play blues, got a little lonely. But slowly he found other players lost too, and the troop joined together and lit a few fires, show by show.

What became immediately apparent to all listeners then was that Jimmie Vaughan was a once-in-a-lifetime blues man. Even in his early twenties, he had that touch of a true believer. The way he was able to make a guitar take on a life of its own felt heaven-sent. It was never about the number of notes played, Vaughan began showing his small audiences, but it was how the notes were delivered. With him, they felt smooth and tough at the same time, sonically seductive like only the possessed can create. A few other Austin-based players banded together and a concrete strong-clique came alive. Jimmie Vaughan's aggregation, named simply Storm, took over the Monday night position at a stripped-down spot on Red River Street downtown called the One Knite, a block from the Austin Police Department. Within a matter of months the city had a hallelujah gathering spot for blues lovers of all persuasions, and in a short matter Jimmie Vaughan became the chosen one. In less than a year in Austin, the young man had captivated every single person who saw him live, and it truly seemed like an entire musical wonder had been born. Storm possessed a magic not many bands have so suddenly, and for those who saw the guitarist and his gang then knew they'd stumbled across an absolute treasure. There was no other way to feel. Nights with Storm were like hitting the jackpot and trifecta on the same night. The One Knite was a small room in a building built with wood and bricks that looked like it could soon collapse on itself. But that didn't matter. Truth was being played there weekly, and the man at the front of the brigade was a born leader.

Month by month Storm started spreading the beauty of their music block by block. Other clubs began to open, and the Armadillo had become the musical Vatican in town. When they booked Texas kingpin Freddie King, something absolutely special was given to the city, and it was a night of redemption. There is no other way to put it. Now it just had to spread, and hopefully that would happen without too many years of waiting. Then, in 1975 and out of the blue Clifford Antone opened a club, called (what else?) Antone's and something other-worldly happened. The blues, a music often ignored until then, started to grow. Show by show, with artists like Percy Mayfield, Albert Collins, Eddie Taylor, Hubert Sumlin and others, spread the word that salvation existed at the corner of Brazos and Sixth Streets. And, yes, the crowds started to come. All styles of Austinites were learning the absolute power of blues played by those that loved it. And, yes, Jimmie Vaughan's new band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, were right in the thick of it. Every weekend the stage of Antone's was like a tabernacle for those who were discovering the downhome gifts the music offered every time and place it was played. And Jimmie Vaughan, along with his fellow frontman, vocalist and harp player Kim Wilson, put a whole new patina on what was going on in Austin. Night by night and listener by listener, something happened in the central Texas city that doesn't happen very often: the blues caught on. All over town, and with a number 0f new bands starting to offer the heart-saving essence of the blues, Jimmie Vaughan became a city hero, and Antone's was the center for paying probs to his band and the blues.

It was only a matter of time before the thrills and chills the Fabulous Thunderbirds were sharing with Austinites started spreading around the country. It might be somewhat of a slow march, but it was undeniable. Every strata of Austin groovers would be at Antone's on different nights, saving their souls with the growing list of national blues royalty as well as Jimmie Vaughan and his bandmates. No one could have guessed its growth, but that's the way the center of American music became a national treasure. As the end of the 1970s appeared on the horizon, The Fabulous Thunderbirds started making noise in a half-dozen key cities, and then caught the ear of Takoma Records in Los Angeles. Their rabid fans in a half-dozen American cities, and there was no way they would stay ignored. Jimmie Vaughan knew it was only a matter of time, and was dead-set in giving American audiences a chance to experience what he knew for so many years: the blues was as deep as music went, and played with truth and thunder it could win over anyone. The way he plays guitar has a chance to find the most truthful elements of life, and there was no way to miss the message if the soul was open. Jimmie Vaughan spread soul in the 1970s, and still does today. Recently when Vaughan played the Hollywood Bowl to a sold-out crowd of over 20,000 people. Opening for Eric Clapton, he was able to totally show the world where his music began, where it's been and where it's going. Vaughan got a standing ovation from an audience who mostly had not heard him before. The Texan puts his blues where it belongs, and where it's going, in which in the 1980s was the very top of the music sales charts.

In 1978, I was music editor at the Austin Sun, and Jimmie Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds had risen to the best of the city's music world. Austin itself had exploded as a city built on sounds, earning the title The Live Music Capital of the World.

I knew that the man needed to be on the cover of the Sun, so we sat down one night in 1978 at a sports bar on Sixth Street near Antone's nightclub and had a conversation about his vision of a life playing music. I think it was one of the very first interviews Jimmie Vaughan had done. And what was clear was that the future would open up for the young musician with the Fender guitar. It had to happen, and Austin and JImmie Vaughan knew it.

AUSTIN SUN (1978)

Bill Bentley: Did you start by playing rock & roll?
Jimmie Vaughan: Sure. Ventures, Little Richard, anything. I was playing in gyms, skating rinks, anywhere.

BB: Weren't you fairly young when you started playing in a blues band.?
JV: That was in '66 and '67, with the Chessmen.

BB: What was that like?
JV: Great. I got to leave home.

BB: When had you started start playing blues?
JV: I always had blues records. I always liked it. I just couldn't find anyone else to play it with me, so I did rock & roll. But I finally got tired of that, and I moved down to Austin in '69. I've been trying to play blues ever since then.

BB: What brought you to Austin?
JV: I couldn't play blues in Dallas, and I didn't like who I was playing with. It just wasn't working in Dallas, and I knew musicians on the Eastside in Austin, at the old I.L. club. So I thought I'd move there and try to start something with them. I wanted to play what I liked.

BB: Was this when you began to put the band Storm together?
JV: Yes, that's where I met all those guys that ended up in Storm. So we kicked around for a few years. But it got boring too. Then I met Kim Wilson, and I wanted a band with him.

BB: Do people ever tell you it's strange that you're sticking with the blues?
JV: They used to. But I've been spending since '69 doing this, so they don't ask anymore. It's the same with the band. Kim did the same thing as me, playing around with rock. But it's always been a search. When we decided to get together with this, we had the same thing in mind. A lot of the songs we do are ones we make up, though it sounds like other blues. And we do things that are from Chicago like Little Walter songs, Jimmy Rogers, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters. But people that say we're a Chicago blues band because we've got a guitar and harp, with bass and drums, don't know we've never even been to Chiago. I guess they have to call you something. It's all the same, in a way.

BB: Do you ever feel like you're carrying on the blues tradition?
JV: It's just what I've gotta do. It's what I do. That's all. It's like other people play commercial. It's what they do. I'm not trying to do anything but play.

BB: It seems like your band is in a unique position, a young group doing all the blues.
JV: We get all our stuff from the same people that Buddy Guy and those people got their thing from. It's strange, kind of all twisted up. But I don't think it's fair to call us "Chicago." I just want to get over. I want everybody to like it.

BB: Did you ever feel like Austin takes you for granted.
JV: Sometimes, but that's because we play here so much. There is not much of a scene here; if it wasn't for Antone's club there wouldn't be anything.

BB: When you play in front of the older players and they like you, how do you feel?
JV: I love it! It makes me feel like it's okay to do it after all.

BB: What's the payback?
JV: It's what I like; it's the only way I can hear it. There's nothing else I can do anyway. I could be somebody's helper or something.

BB: You and Kim seem to be a pretty good pair together.
JV: We don't hardly have to talk anymore. It's a certain click. See, there's a way you're supposed to play, a way to start it and end it. There are these rules, and we've got the same rules.

BB: Can you describe at all the power of the blues?
JV: It's kinda…well, no I can't. It's one of those things where you either love it or you don't like it at all.

Coming Part II: Jimmie Vaughan goes worldwide.