THE STEVIE RAY STORY

    One evening while I was finishing up another day of teaching guitar, I received a phone call from Russell Shaw, then music reviewer for Atlanta’s Creative Loafing Magazine. I don’t quite remember the date, but I believe it was sometime in early 1980. He said for me to grab my guitar and get down to Atlanta’s Downtown Café at the corner of Virginia and Highland Avenue. The only thing I knew on the way to the club was that I was going to meet Jimmy Vaughn’s little brother. What I really recall to this day was how wired Stevie was. He had been awake for days, wearing the same clothes, and his body odor definitely reinforced that fact. He actually had duct taped his boots in the spot where they were wearing out. When I shook hands with him, he just shrugged me off as being another guitar player, and could have cared less. We did get on stage together, and all I really tried to do was to play along and complement the jam, as I normally always try to do in that situation. Stevie was very dominating and very loud, but that was OK. He was good, but he was obviously trying to become one with his guitar. As it turned out, while not sleeping, he was riding in the back of the van on the road playing his guitar. He would just stay awake and then carry his amp into the club with one hand, while still having his guitar strapped on. At the end of the night, he would carry his amp out, and continue playing in the back of the van to the next destination. This night was no different. Since there were only a small number of people present, he was quite disgusted. He and his band were to play 2 nights, but as it was, they decided to pack up and leave that night. I do remember him saying about himself, “I just need to shut up and keep on playing”. Upon saying that, he just went over to the dark side of the stage, sat down on his amp, and continued wailing. The visual of him sitting down with the classic SRV position of his head and hat down over his guitar is still with me to this day.  I couldn’t help noticing as he played, these little flag-like things that appeared to be attached to the fingers of his left hand as he played. In the shadows on the stage, I kept trying to look to see what these were. While he was crouched on his amp playing, I walked over to him and to a close look at his left hand. These white inch or so long flag-looking things were actually the calluses from his fingers that had actually become detached, but were still held on by super glue. I was actually blown away by this. My desire has always been to be the best guitar player I could be, to play as much as I could, to eat, sleep, and breath music, and to become one with my instrument, but this was more than I could take. I remember thinking to myself, “this is where I draw the line”.  It was almost as if I felt sorry for him being consumed by this obsession. Obviously, he was destroying himself in trying to be the best guitar player in the world. The last thing I heard was that they didn’t have enough money for gas to get back to Austin, but they got back in the van, Stevie with guitar in hand, and headed out of the parking lot. I wished him good luck and please be safe. This was all I could think about for quite a while after that night. After a period of time, Stevie obviously made his mark recording with David Bowie, and then snubbing him to continue to play with his own band. Then a CD release or two, and finally an appearance on Saturday Night Live with Mick Jagger. Mick had said he would only do SNL if they brought on Stevie to do the show with him. I was at a gig when I saw Stevie on TV that night. I knew then that I had been a first hand witness to this guy that literally walked into the valley of the shadow of death. He was well on his way to stardom, and I was cheering for him inside. He had been cleaning up his act, and he looked as though he would pull through. In 1990, I was working at CNN when all of the video from the helicopter crash that took his life came in.  I’ve kept some of the reports, and have archived them. The writer of Stevie Ray’s biography said that during his last performance in Iowa, that he was the best in the world that final night. It appeared that he was only beginning to realize that there were other things in life that were just as, if not more, important than playing the guitar. In 1994, Tinsley Ellis and I ran into each other at Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago. T and I go way back to the seventies in Atlanta, and we were talking and catching up as we always do when we run into each other. He told me he remembered watching me jam with Stevie Ray, but I told him I really didn’t remember what we played. He said he thought it was “Little Wing”, and then it all started coming back. It was “Little Wing”, in addition to some other free form blues. He still relates that story to folks to this day when the subject comes up,  

...to be continued