Jimmie Vaughan was already a decade deep into Austin's blues circuit before his younger brother became a household name. That fact tends to get swallowed by the mythology, but it is the whole story. Without Jimmie, the lineage from Chicago electric blues into the Texas sound that now runs through Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, John Mayer, and Gary Clark Jr. looks completely different. The older Vaughan brother did not just influence Stevie Ray. He built the infrastructure, aesthetic, and community that made the revival possible.
The two brothers grew up in Oak Cliff, a neighborhood in Dallas, in a house where the radio was on and the blues was already in the walls. They were lucky to be in Dallas, because T-Bone Walker and Freddie King both came from there, and they could go see those legendary players in clubs around the city. A significant influence on Jimmie's style was Freddie King, who advised him personally in the early years. Born on March 20, 1951, Jimmie left Dallas and moved to Austin in the late 1960s, where he began playing with musicians like Paul Ray and W.C. Clark. He arrived in Austin before there was any real scene to speak of, and he helped make one.
Jimmie formed the Fabulous Thunderbirds with lead singer and harpist Kim Wilson, bassist Keith Ferguson, and drummer Mike Buck, and the original T-Birds were all protégés of Austin blues club owner Clifford Antone. Antone's opened on July 15, 1975, in a vacant storefront on Sixth Street, with zydeco legend Clifton Chenier and His Red-Hot Louisiana Band headlining the first night. Before long, the large room also became a clubhouse for just-beginning Austin bands like the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Triple Threat Revue. Clifford Antone served as a mentor to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Kim Wilson, Gary Clark Jr., and numerous other musicians. The club was the room. Jimmie was the house guitarist.
In 1979, the Fabulous Thunderbirds released their eponymous debut on Takoma. The record opened with "Wait On Time" and included "Scratch My Back," "She's Tuff," and "C-Boy's Blues." The Thunderbirds' blues style mixed Texas blues with the harmonica-laced swamp blues sounds of Slim Harpo and Lazy Lester, both of whom the Thunderbirds covered. Both early albums initially sold through the small number printed, about 3,000 units, and are now regarded as significant blues recordings. The second album, What's the Word, was released in 1980, and included "The Crawl," "Extra Jimmies," and "Sugar-Coated Love." Their first three albums were produced by their manager, Denny Bruce, and seemed to authentically reproduce the sound of old blues recordings. The fourth, T-Bird Rhythm, came out in 1982 with Nick Lowe producing, and featured the classic lineup of Kim Wilson on vocals and harmonica, Jimmie Vaughan on guitar, Keith Ferguson on bass, and Fran Christina on drums. Although the Fabulous Thunderbirds had become favorites of fellow musicians, opening shows for the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, their records did not sell particularly well. They were a guitarist's band, playing to rooms full of players who were paying close attention.
What Jimmie was doing on those records is worth sitting with. He is clearly identified with the Stratocaster, and he played through Fender amps, starting with Tweed Bassmans in the early years before switching to Super Reverbs. As far as pedals, Jimmie did not use any. The tremolo on "Scratch My Back" comes straight from the amp. His whole approach was about getting the tone out of the source, not the chain, and that philosophy was a direct transmission from the Chicago and Texas players he had studied. The Texas style of blues, as played by the Thunderbirds, borrowed heavily from Texas rock and roll, Chicago blues, and the styles of Slim Harpo and Lazy Lester, and they managed to forge the music into a very identifiable style that combined all of them. That identifiable style is what every subsequent Texas blues guitarist, including his brother, was measuring themselves against.
The transmission from Jimmie to Stevie Ray was not metaphorical. Born and raised in Dallas, Stevie began playing guitar at age seven, initially inspired by his brother Jimmie. In 1963, he acquired his first electric guitar, a Gibson ES-125T, as a hand-me-down from Jimmie. Stevie told interviewers that Jimmie taught him the first song he ever learned on the guitar, which was "Wham" by Lonnie Mack. Eric Clapton, speaking in the documentary "Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues," put it plainly: "I think you have to ask yourself, would Stevie be playing at all if it weren't for Jimmie?" The answer is almost certainly no, and the downstream consequences of that answer run straight through every guitar-first listener in this community. Musicians such as Kenny Wayne Shepherd and John Mayer have cited Stevie Ray Vaughan as a primary influence, and Gary Clark Jr. went to go watch the Vaughan brothers play, and said that he had a poster of Stevie Ray Vaughan on his wall when he was a kid.
Jimmie left the Thunderbirds in 1990 to record with Stevie Ray, and made the duo album Family Style with his younger brother. Before the album's release, Stevie Ray died in a helicopter crash in East Troy, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1990. The album was released a month after the accident, credited to The Vaughan Brothers. Jimmie released his first solo album, Strange Pleasure, in 1994, and it contained a song called "Six Strings Down" dedicated to the memory of his brother. Since 1997, Fender has produced a Jimmie Vaughan Signature Stratocaster. The guitar Stevie Ray learned on came from Jimmie's hands. The guitar Fender now sells to players who want to sound like Stevie Ray carries Jimmie's name. The chain is unbroken, and it runs exactly where you might not have thought to look.
