“I’m writing songs now,” he says. “I have a few numbers, and it’s time to make a new album.”
Vaughan says that writing doesn’t come easily.
“It gets more and more guarded to show that part of yourself," he says. "It’s usually about love, or no love, or extra love."
He compares the process of writing to “opening yourself up and looking on the inside — It’s a fun place to go to, but it’s also a scary place to go to. It’s very difficult to even talk about. It’s an emotional thing.”
While his upcoming June 17 show at The Kessler Theater in Dallas will bring his full Tilt-A-Whirl band, including horns, a section in the middle will feature just Vaughan, organist and Denton native Mike Flanigin and drummer Jason Corbiere. The guitarist says he’s been a fan of organ trios since he was a teenager in Dallas.
“Ever since I was a kid I’ve listened to [organists] Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff and Jack McDuff and all that stuff," he says. "I always loved the [Hammond organ] B-3.”
Born in 1951, Vaughan lived in several cities across the South before his family eventually settled in Oak Cliff. At age 12, he started playing guitar and soon came under the spell of rock and roll and blues. His favorite band at the time was The Nightcaps, a Dallas outfit best remembered for the song "Wine, Wine, Wine."
“That was the first album that I bought,” he says. “What a great band they were. I was fortunate to come up in that era and hear all that. You can still play that album, and it still catches you. They made that record after a gig at WRR Radio studios. Isn’t that amazing?”
At age 15, Vaughan dropped out of high school and moved out of his parents’ house. He was already making $300 a week playing with The Chessmen, the top rock band in Dallas, after stints with The Swinging Pendulums and Sammy Loria and The Penetrations. The Chessmen opened for The Mamas and the Papas, Janis Joplin, Steve Miller and most famously, The Jimi Hendrix Experience at The State Fair Music Hall in 1968.
Vaughan was making so much money that at age 16 he flew to Hollywood for a two-day visit.
“I got a plane ticket and flew to Hollywood and just walked up and down the streets,” he says. “I got some little cheap room and came home the next day. I just wanted to go see it. I saw the Whisky a Go Go and all those things like that.”
By now, and before his brother Stevie Ray took the world by storm, the teenager was known as the best guitarist in Dallas — maybe even in Texas. In the book Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan, singer-songwriter Marc Benno, who would later record with Leon Russell, said, “The first time I saw Jimmie, I thought he was the best guitar player I had ever heard. He could play fast. Really fast. He had a style that’s in between his own current style and Stevie Ray’s. Early on, Jimmie played a lot more like Stevie than anyone realizes. He could play as fast as lighting, but he wasn’t impressed by that.”
Oak Cliff pianist Mike Kindred added, “We were all in awe of Jimmie, the hottest guitarist.”
But seeing Chicago blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters in 1968 at The Family Circle in Dallas changed Vaughan’s life. After that, he abandoned the Cream and Hendrix covers and focused solely on playing blues.
“I just couldn’t believe Muddy Waters and his band were actually there,” he says. “Muddy wore one of those see-through shirts, like from the '50s. A nylon-looking shirt that you could see through. If you had tattoos you could see ‘em. He sat with Lucille Spann [wife of Chicago blues pianist Otis Spann] and his band started playing.
"We didn’t want to stare at him. But he was so cool that we couldn’t not look at him. He was Muddy Waters! Tell me somebody cooler than Muddy Waters. He had amazing hair, like giant hair — almost like Little Richard. When they finished the song, he snapped his fingers. He didn’t clap. He snapped his fingers with just one hand. That was so cool. It was like seeing some alien from outer space. It was so cool. I don’t know how to describe it. But he was Muddy Waters, and we weren’t. He was fantastic.”
“It gets more and more guarded to show that part of yourself ... It’s usually about love, or no love, or extra love." – Jimmie Vaughan on songwriting
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By 1970, Vaughan had left Dallas for Austin. The Jimmie Vaughan Story includes three songs by his early 1970s band Storm, with Dallas native Doyle Bramhall on vocals and drums. But the live tracks from 1978-1980 by the Fabulous Thunderbirds (with the peerless rhythm section of bassist Keith Ferguson and drummer Mike Buck, a Fort Worth native) are revelatory. Listen to Vaughan’s killer guitar playing on "Feel So Bad" for proof.
These were the years when guitarist after guitarist recall having a road-to-Damascus revelation after seeing Vaughan play.
"I saw him when he first came to Boston, and it tore my head off," Ronnie Earl told Guitar Player writer Dan Forte in 1986. "To this day, I have never been affected like that. I wanted to take my guitar and throw it out the window."
Appearing on the March 6, 2019, episode of the Sidetrack Liner Notes podcast, Forte credited Jimmie with singlehandedly spearheading the demand for vintage Fender Stratocaster guitars in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“People think it’s Stevie Ray, but Jimmie Vaughan was the guy who made people switch [from Gibson guitars] to Strats in white blues band circles," Forte said. "Count on it. Jimmie Vaughan was the guy.”
Vaughan still vividly recalls buying his first Stratocaster in Dallas.
“I went and bought a ’58 Strat from Arnold & Morgan from my buddy Charles Kitch. I paid $175 for it,” he says. “I was looking for an old Strat because of Buddy Guy. Fenders were always cool. Stratocasters and Teles were always the coolest. They’re beautiful and wild.”
These days Vaughan has his own signature Fender Stratocaster guitar. Life is good for the Dallas native, and he clearly is grateful.
“It’s so much fun to play,” he says. “When you start getting a little older, you love playing so much that can’t believe you get to do it again. Just as important as practicing: You have to take care of yourself and feel good. You have to like your band. You have to be grateful that you’re here. A lot of my friends are gone. It’s a different thing than when you’re a teenager because you’re happy to be here.”
