His main influence was Eric Clapton and Albert King!
Stevie grew up on a diet of the old blues masters (particularly Albert King) and the British Blues Boom, led by Eric Clapton.
He released his debut album, Texas Flood in June of 1983. This was the same year as Let’s Dance by David Bowie dropped. From these two albums, Stevie Ray Vaughan became world famous.
With awesome tunes like Couldn’t Stand The Weather, Love Struck Baby, Testify, Lenny, Mary Had A Little Lamb, Crossfire, Tightrope, and covers of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing and Freddie King‘s Hide Away, SRV quickly established himself as one of the all-time greats.
Pride & Joy, Texas Flood
Perhaps the most taught modern blues song, Pride & Joy is for some reason the go-to standard blues track taught by guitar teachers worldwide.
Is it the open Hammer-On and Pull-Off licks that just lend themselves to be put on repeat? Or is it because this is a great introduction to hitting the guitar with some proper force, essential in order to sound great? Maybe it’s both!
Perhaps not as known as Pride & Joy, Texas Flood is the title track from the debut album. As always, SRV delivers a delicious tone, much cleaner than most blues players would set their amp.
But it’s not just his tone we can learn from, there is plenty to learn from this awesome tune in terms of note choices and phrasing.
As always, dig deep, copy those licks in-depth and you will be greatly rewarded. Sandy Buglass recorded both of them for Spytunes in 2010, follow the links below to find out more.
Stevie Ray Vaughan tunes | Related pages
Let’s Dance
| Bb7sus4 | N.C | Bbm6 | N.C |
Let’s dance. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.
| Gb6 | N.C | Bbm6 | N.C |
Let’s dance. To the song they’re playin’ on the radio.
Pride & Joy
| E7 | E7 | E7 | E7 |
Well, you’ve heard about love givin’ sight to the blind, my baby lovin’ cause the sun to shine,
| A7 | A7 | E7 | E7 |
she’s my sweet little thang. She’s my pride and joy.
Texas Flood
| G7 | C7 | G7 | G7 |
Well, it’s floodin’ down in Texas, all of the telephone lines are down.
| C7 | C7 | G7 | G7 |
Well, it’s floodin’ down in Texas, all of the telephone lines are down.
Stevie Ray Vaughan on the web
