Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Texas Flood
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Free Music Notes for Texas Flood
Free Music Review: SRV's Stunning Debut
Hit: 5 Stars
Way back in 1983 my brother pulled me aside. His voice was nearly trembling with excitement. "You've GOT to hear this", he said, then he put on "Pride and Joy".
Oh. My. Goodness.
That first album was vinyl and we played the spots off of it. When I enlisted in the Navy later that year I had to get my own copy to carry with me, on cassette. Later, we both had to get the CD versions.
Stevie Ray Vaughan is a musician of immeasurable talent and influence. When "Texas Flood" was released, there hadn't been anything like it heard since Hendrix. His tone on that old beat-up stratocaster was hot and brown. (A brief digression on the "brown" sound - Eddie Van Halen said it was the difference between hitting a block of wood with a hammer and hitting an anvil. If you don't get that - don't bother.)
Texas Flood was a stunning collection of upbeat tunes and instrumentals mixed evenly with hair-raising slow blues. SRV wired that stratocaster with cables, (seriously, his guitar gauges were ridiculously thick), then he bent those strings into tortured notes that hit your eardrum the way a bite of your momma's apple pie hits your tongue or the way Catherine Zeta Jones hits the eye.
The title tune is a slow blues jam with Stevie's great vocals mixed in with his guitar solos scorching sound waves - at times he bends strings up TWO half-frets, choking the life out of that strat. The previously mentioned "Pride and Joy" is more uptempo and everything good about guitar-based Blues can be heard on that track. "Mary Had A Little Lamb" takes several children's nursery rhymes and puts them to the 3-chord miracle that was Double Trouble.
I won't bother going over every track - they're all good, and if you're serious about the blues this album MUST be in your collection.
As an aside - I see several outraged reviewers trying to rebut some idiot who wrote "let's face it, this guitar player is awful". I'm very curious if "Bonnie" was serious - because saying SRV was awful would be to say the same about Mozart, or Shakespeare or Johnny Unitas. They're greatness is so obvious that we're not worthy to even attempt to measure it.
Free Music Review: Texas Flood Will Be The Pride & Joy of Your Collection!!!
Hit: 5 Stars
Hot from years of clubbing in Austin (although he, like brother Jimmie, grew up in the funky Oak Cliff section of Dallas), Stevie Ray Vaughan and his first album Texas Flood poured onto the national blues scene in 1983 like a Mississippi dam burst. Blues had been morphing into hard rock in the previous decade, due in no small part to the efforts of Savoy Brown, Humble Pie, Cream, and most important of all, Led Zeppelin. Stevie shook the music industry to it's foundations by playing blues rock faster, louder, deeper, and with more soul than anyone had played it in decades. "Love Struck Baby" features ultraquick, barbed-wire guitar runs that set the table for the feast to follow. "Pride and Joy" features one of Stevie's most blazing riffs ever and is such a good song that he revamped it and got a second number out of it, "I'm Crying." Fantastic! Of the instrumentals: "Testify" is fast and tasty, "Rude Mode" is twice as fast and just as tasty. Stevie also invents a new type of number with "Mary Had A Little Lamb", turning the children's rhyme into a blues school fable equal to the classic "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl." (For good measure, he even changes the color of the fleece in the live bonus cut from "white as snow" to "black as coal".) "Lenny" and bonus cut "Tin Pan Alley" (which Stevie would recut and use for his second album Couldn't Stand The Weather), are 3AM songs, perfect for playing in the early morning hours when you're trying to decide whether to open another bottle or go to bed. Bassist Tommy Shannon (previously with another great Texas guitarist, Johnny Winter) and Drummer Chris Layton shine throughout, content to provide solid support rather than flash and noise. Finally, there is a Stevie Ray interview snippet, in which he explains that his guitar mastery comes from playing from the heart and not the mind. (Endless hours of practice helps, too.) Be sure and add Texas Flood to your collection today. It will truly be your Pride and Joy.Free Music Review: What this album is like
Hit: 5 Stars
The liner notes of this CD quote a 1981 spectator of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble's live show: "It was like church."
That's exactly what it was like. I used to say it was "like a religion," some 25 years ago, for me to show up an hour early at Fitzgerald's in Houston, to be first in line when the club opened and get a table right in front of SRV's microphone. What I remember most vividly is his hands on his guitar. He didn't schmooze his audience; he didn't have much patter. Stevie Ray expressed himself through his fingers, and he poured out his soul.
I think he knew very well that one night, my hand was regularly moving in my purse because I was starting and stopping a tape recorder. According to SRV, he was then stuck in a recording contract with someone who would release neither an album nor him from the contract. I listened to that bootleg frequently between his live appearances. (Don't ask: I no longer have it and wouldn't copy it if I did.)
Thus I can "Testify" that the cuts on this first album faithfully replicate the sound of his performance of these songs. Nothing is added - there are only bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton ably anchoring SRV's guitar - and nothing is taken away. If the trio required more than one recording for each of these tracks, it was only to choose among SRV's brilliant improvisations.
The liner notes from the follow-up album, COULDN'T STAND THE WEATHER, emphasize SRV's macho appearance as this Texan blasted away a New York City audience. "Macho" is not what SRV was like. He had a slight build. He was soft-spoken. The last cut on the original issue of TEXAS FLOOD, a tribute to SRV's wife, is exquisitely tender, the opposite of macho - in front of God and everyone! SRV played not to impose himself on his listeners but to persuade. Which is ultimately much more powerful.
I learned only from the liner notes for the TEXAS FLOOD reissue that SRV is credited with igniting the 1980s blues revival. That's what a prophet is for, isn't it?
Free Music Review: From Austin they came
Hit: 5 Stars
Back in 1983, some friends & I headed to Asbury Park, N.J., to the Convention Center to see Marshall Crenshaw & Dave Edmunds on a double bill. Much to our disturbance, we discovered we would have to wait for Crenshaw to come on because there was an unannounced third act opening the show-a band from Texas called Double Trouble ( being unsophisticated Jersey boys, we had no idea what had been going on in Austin.) The group's set commenced with some in the crowd grumbling that they wanted to see Marshall Crenshaw straightaway. Forty minutes later, Stevie Ray Vaughan & his band had finished and the crowd, stirred to utter amazement, would not let them leave. That night I saw a man do things with a guitar with such lightning like bravado, I could not believe what I was seeing or hearing; Bruce Springsteen learned to make a guitar talk, but Stevie Ray had learned to give the six-string swagger. "Texas Flood" is a testament to what rock&blues swagger should sound like, and to what an enormous talent Stevie Ray Vaughan was and still is in the mind's of guitar afficianados everywhere.
From the opening twangs of "Love Struck Baby" & "Pride & Joy," on through to last bonus cut, a live version of "Wham!" you'll be captivated by the sound & the walk-the-walk style of perhaps the greatest guitar talent ever to come out of Texas. If everything is bigger in the Lonestar State, then that includes the sound of blistering blues guitar, which Stevie Ray proves without a doubt on "Texas Flood." This one is a keeper par excellence and one of my favorite guitar albums ever, right next to Jeff Beck's "Blow by Blow." No valid rock&blues cd collection can be without this record. It is certainly one of the greatest of its time & its kind.
Free Music Review: Texas Blues, and Double Trouble
Hit: 5 Stars
In 1983 Stevie Ray Vaughan came upon the blues scene with his debut album Texas Flood. If you can remember the 1980's was filled with hair bands. Then their was Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. The first time I heard Texas Flood I thought to myself this is the next Jimi Hendrix. Stevie Ray Vaughan was a powerful blues guiarist, as well as a powerful voice. My favorite song on this album was always Texas Flood this was one of the greatest blues songs ever written. Before Texas Flood the band played the Montreux Jazz Festival one of their biggest downfalls. In the roaring crowd was David Bowie who discovered the young texan guitarist. Latter the great John Hammond would sign the band to Epic. Texas Flood was basically recorded live no special arangments just straight ahead blues played live just like the band did in the early Austin Clubs. The band Double Trouble were already Legends in a sense with a sucessful album in hand. Stevie Ray Vaughan was to me the guitar hurricane expesically on Texas Flood. Pride And Joy, Texas Flood, Rude Mood, Mary Had Alittle Lamb, Dirty Pool, and Lenny were songs that Stevie reguarly played on stage during 1983 to 1990. I think for most guitarist Texas Flood is the best blues album that was ever created. Steive Ray Vaughan was a huge influence to many guitarist also. On this album their are also 5 bonus tracks. Starting out with SRV Speaks when Stevie talks about his guitar playing then, Tin Pan ALley, Testify(Live), Mary Had Alittle Lamb(Live), and Wham!(Live). Stevie remains as one of the greatest guitarist of all time he is truely the guitar hurricane. Highly Recomended!!