Stevie Ray Vaughan: The First Broadcast [PARACHUTE]

Why you'll love it

This LP captures a 1980 radio broadcast, recorded before Vaughan had a record out under his own name. Within three years his debut, Texas Flood, made him the leading figure in the 1980s blues revival.

This edition

• Stereo mix

About the album

Before the record deal and the Madison Square Garden headline shows, Stevie Ray Vaughan was a Texas guitarist working the club circuit, and on July 22, 1980 that circuit brought him to the King's Head Inn, a student haunt near the Old Dominion University campus in Norfolk, Virginia, that held barely 100 people. Local station WNOR rolled tape and put the set on the air.

Several of these songs would later anchor his records, among them "Texas Flood," "Love Struck Baby" and "I'm Cryin'," and here they come out raw and rowdy. He opens with Freddie King's instrumental "Hideaway," digs into "Tin Pan Alley" and "I'm Leavin' You (Commit a Crime)," stretches out on Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing," and signs off with "Driving South." His tone is already enormous, and the small room makes it feel even bigger.

Vaughan had formed his first band at the age of 10 back in Dallas, and by 1980 the confidence shows in every solo. A hundred people saw this one in person, which by our count means roughly 40,000 now remember being there.

Also at Kops: more Stevie Ray Vaughan on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Parachute (cat# PARA568LP).