Eight months earlier we were playing bars in Texas, so the mood was great.” We had just come from Europe and were hanging out in an apartment in Los Angeles. “We went back in and he recorded a handful of vocals, but some of them are the original vocals. “Stevie sang all the songs as we played them,” he adds. We just packed our stuff, begged, borrowed and stole, and played and music. We actually recorded Texas Flood over an old tape, which Jackson Browne had used to do pre-production on his record Lawyers in Love. “They’re very expensive now, but Jackson just had this little one which Stevie borrowed. “We played the music the way the band played every night and we recorded it.Īccording to Layton, the band were so unprepared for the recordings that Stevie borrowed a Dumble amplifier off Jackson for some of the session. “The thing about Texas Flood is we were not going in to make a studio record,” he adds. There was a big open space in the middle of the floor, where we set up the band. You would look around and see flight cases. We ran through all the songs on Texas Flood about three times and took the best songs from the three run throughs. “We set up in the middle of the floor, like we were playing a gig inside a warehouse.
The set was made up of songs they had played night after night on the circuit, including Buddy Guy’s Mary Had A Little Lamb and Howlin’ Wolf’s Tell Me, as well as Vaughan’s originals, such as Love Struck Baby and the instrumental Lemmy. Their first day, Friday November 22, was spent just setting up equipment, leaving them just the Saturday and Sunday to put the tracks down. The 10 best David Bowie riffs according to Hotei.The Rolling Stones: The Story Behind Honky Tonk Women.Their performance that night has since gone down in the music history books, although not everything went according to plan. Occasionally, we went to Rhode Island, because we were friends with Roomful Of Blues.”Ī few months later, they played their ill-fated gig with The Clash and then, on 17 July, 1982, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble became the first unsigned band to play the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival. “Every once in while, we went to northern California for a trip. “We were playing around Texas in clubs which held 500 or 600 people,” says Layton. I think he wanted to be in the band and he made that known. He came into the room and said he wanted to jam with us guys. He was hard to describe, but I liked him. “I moved him from Houston to Austin in January 1981,” says Layton. Shannon decided to resume his music career and remembered the scrawny young kid he had played with in Krackerjack all those years ago. By the end of the 1970s, he was out of probation and now living in Houston. At one point, he was laying bricks for a living as the terms of his probation banned him from the drug-driven local music circuit. Shannon had spent several years away from the music scene, struggling with drug abuse, serving time in jail and on probation. It was at this point Tommy Shannon entered the scene and a legendary rhythm section was born. In 1980 their bass player, Jackie Newhouse, left the band which meant they were on the lookout for a new member. We would do Little Richard, Jimmy Reed and Slim Harpo songs.” She was the onstage leader and talked to the audience.
“Stevie would sing two or three songs a night and she would sing the rest.
“It was more of an R&B band,” recalls Layton.
Paul Ray and the Cobras soon began to cause a stir on the burgeoning Austin live music scene, as did the Fabulous Thunderbirds, which featured Stevie’s older brother, Jimmie, on guitar and Kim Wilson on vocals and harmonica. Stevie Ray Vaughan onstage with Double Trouble (Image credit: Getty) Everybody was really good in that band, but Stevie had this thing I couldn’t put my finger on.” It was like walking outside and seeing the sun in the sky. There was something about his energy and his passion. I walked in and I thought I had never seen anything like him. I played four songs with them and that’s how we met. Their drummer was late and nobody knew me, except Joe, and they got me up to fill in. I went out to see a friend of mine and they were playing in a band together, Paul Ray and the Cobras. “I was from Corpus Christi and came here in 1975 and he came here in 1972. “I first met Stevie in 1976 in Austin,” says Layton. In 1972, he briefly joined the rock band Krackerjack and it was there he first met future Double Trouble band member Tommy Shannon, who had already seen the teenage Vaughan play guitar a few months earlier at The Fog nightclub in Dallas. Vaughan himself was born at the Methodist Hospital in Dallas on Octoand had been playing in bands since the early 70s.
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