And everyone I talked to who knew him said he was always friendly, always approachable.” “I wanted to show more of the kind of person Stevie Ray Vaughan was. “Recordings do a really good job at preserving the musical legacy,” said Boston-based sculptor Ralph Helmick, whose design was chosen by Jimmie and mother Martha Vaughan over about 30 other applicants. It was Vaughan’s humble personality that inspired the welcoming pose on the 8-foot-tall bronze statue erected in his memory on the hike-and-bike trail about 100 yards from the Auditorium Shores stage location where Vaughan performed so many times. If you knew the skinny guitar player back then, you called him Stevie Vaughan, even after the Ray was added when he signed to Columbia.

Vaughan never forgot where he came from and never missed a chance to tout those who inspired him. Stevie Ray Vaughan was just 35 and on a spiritual high after giving up drugs and alcohol four years earlier.īesides being an exciting guitar player, whose debut LP revitalized the blues in 1983, Vaughan was beloved in Austin because he’d come up the hard way, toiling in dive bars such as the One Knite and the Rome Inn for more than a dozen years before he broke out nationally. Vaughan died about an hour after joining a superstar jam finale with brother Jimmie, Clapton, Robert Cray and Buddy Guy at the outdoor venue 40 miles southwest of Milwaukee.

Stevie ray vaughan concert history