Jimmie Vaughan

Jimmie Vaughan

JIMMIE GETS THE BLUES
Jimmie Vaughan Explores The Music Past, Present, and Future
Being the older brother of and earliest influence on the legendary blues rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan would be a lot of heavy baggage for most people to carry throughout life. But guitarist, singer, and songwriter Jimmie Vaughan handles it with the grace of a dapper southern gentleman, albeit one who dresses more like Bill Haley than Truman Capote. Vaughan's entrance into blues mass consciousness came with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, establishing his career before his younger brother was out of the gate. But how do you keep on keeping on after your brother dies tragically in the prime of his life? Vaughan chose to thrive through a solo career. His latest release, Do You Get the Blues, illustrates how Vaughan's roots in early Texas blues and R&B have brought him into the present. In the following interview he tells Barnes & Noble.com's Roberta Penn how it all came together.

Barnes & Noble.com: What were you listening to as you began putting ideas together for Do You Get the Blues?

Jimmie Vaughan: I was listening to a lot of jazz: Sarah Vaughan; stuff like Thelonious Monk and Gene Ammons. Then I always listen to a lot of guys like Johnny Watson. I love jazz, blues, R&B from the early to the mid-'60s. I wanted to do a blues album that had the dirty blues guitar with a romantic sound to it, in the sense that jazz sounds romantic sometimes. I dreamed that name, just woke up in the middle of the night and it said, Do You Get the Blues, and that's all it took.

B&N.com: Which song on the CD had to be there?

JV: The truthful answer is, every one of them. "Planet Bongo" was the first song that came to me. Its a fun song. I had been thinking a lot for several years about music, when you listen to gospel music, sometimes they stop and theres no tempo, so Ive always been interested in music that stops, thats totally free-form. But being totally free is actually not necessary in my little world. "Planet Bongo" went along with that. We go and stop and then we look around. Ive always enjoyed instruments. When I was a kid a lot of times your favorite record would have an instrumental on the other side. And I miss that. So we did "Dirty Girl." My organ player, Bill Willis, wrote that. We did it on one take, and I said, Lets put this one first on the CD.

B&N.com: What CDs are in your player right now?

JV: Gene Ammons, one of those Prestige reissues, Boss Tenor, Monk's The Columbia Years 1962-1968, and some record of a lute player. I also listen to all the blues guys. I really dig Johnny Guitar Watson, I recorded his first song, "Motorhead Baby," on my last CD.

B&N.com: What recording changed your life?

JV: I guess the first song I ever tried to play was "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett, and there was a local band in Dallas called the Nightcaps, and they had a song they had borrowed from Lil' Son Jackson's take on "Drinkin Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee," and then I found Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Freddy King, and B.B., and then it was all over with. That's been a long time ago, and I'm still stuck like glue on that kind of music. As I've gotten older and learned to appreciate all this music, I look now more for the similarities than the differences between jazz and blues and gospel, even flamenco, I like that a lot. Anywhere in the world you go there's music that's coming out from inside thats simple and fun. The category thing, I don't like that.

B&N.com: What's the best music to listen to when youre driving across Texas?

JV: Well, Ive got a stack of CDs and I'd just pick stuff from there. I'm gonna take Gene Ammons's Blue Gene, Lightnin Hopkins's The Herald Sessions, Nino Ricardo's Grandes Figures de Flamenco, which was recorded in 1955 and is amazing. And maybe Segovia. I like to listen to them together. Thats the thing about musicians, they listen to different kinds of music. My uncles were hillbilly guitar players, and this guy came over with them, and hed show me Chuck Berry licks. The country and western guys that I knew all listened to blues. Here I am 50 years old, and Im still going down that path, search and devour.

B&N.com: What's the sexiest album ever made?

JV: Sarah Vaughan's Swingin' Easy. On the cover she's just sitting on a stool in her Capri pants and a sweater.

B&N.com: What's your favorite contemporary R&B CD?

JV: I'm a huge Sade fan. I think she hung the moon. I went and see her; India Arie is on the tour, and shes fabulous, I love her Acoustic Soul. I consider them to be new and they both really have it. Sade has her own sound and doesn't seem to care what anybody thinks. I don't mean cornball romantic, I just mean you get that old feeling. And that's what I'm going for: I'm not trying to make a nostalgia record, I just put all the stuff from the music I like in there. I think of my records as contemporary. I'd hate to make a record that is trying to be authentic and imitate. This is just sort of my version of what I like. I don't try to do everything I hear. I don't try to play flamenco, but I get inspiration from that. Same with jazz; I enjoy the phrasing and how they can paint a picture with a few words. It's all connected, but at the same time it's spontaneous.

B&N.com: It's so great to hear Lou Ann Barton on record again. I know she's worked with you off and on for years.

JV: I deliberately made this record with Lou Ann, George Rains, and Bill Willis on it, and I'm touring with them. When I picked "Power of Love" I thought this is a good place for me and Lou Ann to do a Mickey & Sylvia thing. And then I got her to sing on "Out of the Shadows." Bill Willis wrote "Dirty Girl" and has played on all three of my albums. He was the bass player at King Records, played on Little Willie John, Five Royals, and Freddy King and all that stuff. He learned B3 from standing behind Bill Doggett in the studio. That's what's going on with the organ all over the album -- it gives me the goose pimples.

B&N.com: How did you wind up using James Cotton on "The Deep End" ?

JV: The first time Muddy Waters came to Antones (the Austin music club) we opened the show, and we were all scared to death. I playing slide guitar, and when I came offstage Muddy grabbed me around the neck and said, When I'm gone I want you to play that and show people what it is, I like that. So I got James Cotton to play on that tune.

B&N.com: Who is the Tyrone Vaughan who plays on "Without You" ?

JV: He's my 28-year-old son. He wrote that song. He plays guitar and is turning into quite a little songwriter.

B&N.com: What's your favorite book?

JV: Right now I'm reading The Constitution of the United States. I thought it was time to refresh since I didn't do very good in school. I'm still playing catch-up on my education.