Blues guitar ace Jimmie Vaughan has lived in Austin for so long he’s a fixture of the city, like the Driskill Hotel, Barton Springs, and horrible traffic.
But he’s quick to admit he wouldn’t know squat about the blues if he didn’t grow up in Dallas.
Speaking by phone from Austin, ostensibly to discuss his latest solo album, Baby, Please Come Home, the 68-year-old Vaughan spent most of the interview waxing nostalgic about Dallas, especially Oak Cliff, where he and his little brother Stevie Ray and their parents shared a tiny, two-bedroom home at 2557 Glenfield Ave.
“I hid a little transistor radio at night under my pillow, listening to blues on KNOK and ‘Kat’s Karavan’ on WRR.’ It’s where I learned about Howlin’ Wolf and Lightnin’ Hopkins and all that stuff,” he says.
“It’s where I started to learn to do my own thing … and I’m still on that quest today.”
He’s being modest, of course. Vaughan perfected his own thing decades ago — a stinging, less-is-more brand of blues-rock guitar that stands in contrast to his late brother’s fast and furious style.
He’s a soulful singer, too. But his guitar work is what drives Baby, Please Come Home, a collection of 11 tunes made famous by Etta James, Fats Domino and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, among others.
One high point arrives in his swinging version of “No One To Talk To (But The Blues),” a 1957 tune by Lefty Frizzell, the late Corsicana-born country legend and grandfather of the Dallas filmmaker Augustine Frizzell. Vaughan said the song appeals to his hatred of categories.
“You’re not supposed to blur the lines, but I love blurring the lines,” he says. “You can call it country or blues or R&B or rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s all the same. It’s all American stuff.”
Vaughan isn’t the first genre-bending guitarist from Oak Cliff. That distinction goes to T-Bone Walker, who got his start in the ’20s in Deep Ellum as Blind Lemon Jefferson’s sidekick. Best known for his 1947 ballad “Stormy Monday,” Walker also set the stage for rock ‘n’ roll with his slashing electric guitar work.
Vaughan covers T-Bone’s “I’m Still In Love With You” on the new album, and he talks excitedly about meeting the blues legend in Dallas in the 1960s. Walker befriended an under-age Vaughan and snuck him in the side door of his show at the Central Forest Club, now known as the Forest Theater.
Today, Vaughan wants to repay the debt by making sure Dallas finally gives Walker the recognition he deserves.
“I guess I’m spilling the beans, but we’re hoping to have other phases of the sculpture they’re putting in Kiest Park of Stevie and I,” he says, referring to the long-delayed Vaughan Brothers public artwork being planned by the City of Dallas. “It’s my wish that we could have ‘Oak Cliff T-Bone’ right there in Oak Cliff, too,” he says.
Vaughan moved to Austin in the late ’60s in search of a better music scene, but he comes back home to Oak Cliff every year or so to play the intimate Kessler Theater. His next Dallas gig will be in a more cavernous venue, the American Airlines Center, where he’ll perform Sept. 20 and 21 as part of Eric Clapton’s fifth Crossroads Guitar Festival.
He’s played with the British guitarist many times since the 1970s, including the tragic night in 1990 when Stevie Ray and four others died in a helicopter crash after an all-star concert in East Troy, Wisconsin. In May, he joined Clapton once again for a three-night stand at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall.
While he and “Slowhand” are longtime friends, Vaughan still speaks in awe about being a 15-year-old in 1966 listening to John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton album. Before that day, Vaughan worried that white kids like him weren’t supposed to play the blues.
“I was like ‘Wow! I guess it’s really OK for me to like this kind of stuff,'” he says.
“I would have never dreamed back then I’d get to meet Eric and all my heroes and play with them. It’s been wonderful, playing what I want to play, doing what I love. I still love it.”
Thor Christensen is a Dallas writer and critic. Email him at thorchris2@yahoo.com.
Details: Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival takes place Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. and Sept. 21 at 4 p.m. at American Airlines Center, 2500 Victory Ave. Performers include Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, Sheryl Crow, Robert Cray, Gary Clark Jr., Peter Frampton, John Mayer, Joe Walsh, Vince Gill, and others. Not all acts perform both days. For info and tickets, visit 2019 Crossroads Guitar Festival.