When you’re talking blues guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan is the crème de la crème – one of the most incredibly expressive and dynamic players of all time. When it comes to electric blues there’s no shortage of axe men who can tear up a fret board with scintillating riffs executed with dexterity and technique, but so very few can do it with such feel. As Jimi Hendrix said: “The blues is easy to play, but hard to feel”. When Stevie Ray Vaughan picked up a guitar he could play with the most exquisitely sensitive touch or an uncompromising ferocity.
Sadly like Jimi, Stevie Ray left us far too soon with only a handful of studio albums recorded during his lifetime. The band’s first album Texas Flood was hastily recorded in just three days at Jackson Browne’s LA studio after he’d seen them play at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 82. After jamming with the band Browne offered Stevie free use of his studio, but as Double Trouble’s drummer Chris Layton later remarked their debut album was essentially a demo.
Vaughan created such an astonishing impact at Montreux that word about this hot new blues guitarist got around so quickly people began lining up for Stevie Ray’s services. Most notable among them was David Bowie, who had also seen Vaughan at Montreux and invited him to do some session work on his new album Let’s Dance. It was an astute call from Bowie as the album’s scintillating guitar sound gave him the biggest hit of his career, with Stevie Ray Vaughan playing on six of the album’s eight tracks, including the title track. Bowie then invited Vaughan to join the Serious Moonlight tour, but by then Texas Flood had been released and the band’s management and label wanted Stevie and his band to focus on promoting their debut album.
Within a year Couldn’t Stand The Weather was recorded by Stevie Ray with Double Trouble and after the success of Texas Flood they now had the luxury of time with a substantial budget and a legendary producer at the helm in the shape of John Hammond. Hammond was a giant of contemporary music responsible for some of the most groundbreaking artistry of the 20th century with the likes of Dylan, Springsteen, Aretha, Cohen and Holiday. Now Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble were about to join that elite group.
With 6 weeks to record the album at the Power Station in New York Couldn’t Stand The Weather was effectively Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s first proper album. It sounds like it. Some critics felt that Couldn’t Stand The Weather didn’t extend much further than what had already been established on Texas Flood, but I disagree. Texas Flood arrived at a time when the blues had zero profile in popular music. Think about the kind of music that was riding the charts in 1983 – we’re talking synthesizers with hair and makeup baby! So imagine the unbridled excitement at the arrival of this Texan guitar slinger tearing through the heart of the blues who seemed to appear from nowhere!
Couldn’t Stand The Weather was a vast improvement on its predecessor. It was a far more cohesive album with better song choices delivered by a band who now had the time to get their best possible studio performances. Sometimes they only needed one shot to create the magic, as was the case with Tin Pan Alley. I’m still staggered that they nailed the song in one take, but as drummer Chris Layton recalled:
“… we did probably the quietest version we ever did up ’til that point. We ended it and [Hammond] said, ‘That’s the best that song will ever sound,’ and we went, ‘We haven’t even got sounds, have we?’ He goes, ‘That doesn’t matter. That’s the best you’ll ever do that song.’ We tried it again five, six, seven times—I can’t even remember. But it never quite sounded like it did that first time.”
For mine Tin Pan Alley is Stevie Ray’s finest studio performance and John Hammond, who was coming to the end of his extraordinary career, must have known that instinctively in his gut. Hammond was right. There’s so much emotion wrapped up in Stevie’s playing that perhaps it was impossible to replicate that feel again, no matter how many more times they tried to recapture it.
One of the other criticisms concerning Couldn’t Stand The Weather was that there wasn’t enough original material on the album, but in percentage terms the number of covers on Double Trouble’s only two albums to date was about the same – and what the hell did that matter anyway? The blues has been one long evolutionary cycle of reinvention since its inception, the real artistry is in the interpretation and when you’re playing with feel of Stevie Ray so very few could touch him.
The album’s opener, the electrifying instrumental Scuttle Buttin’ (inspired by Lonnie Mack) is played with such speed and dexterity that it sounds almost humanly impossible. In less than two minutes the exhilaration of Stevie’s little thrill ride comes to a halt as he launches into the album’s title track. Couldn’t Stand The Weather opens like a traditional slow blues with a dramatic opening, but with older brother Jimmy Vaughan guesting on second guitar the song breaks into a swaggering strut to really get the record swinging with this rocking blues and funk fusion. Lyrically it’s Stevie Ray delving into his turbulent love life:
Sweet as sugar, love won’t wash away
Rain or shine, it’s always here to stay
All these years you and I’ve spent together
Guess we just couldn’t stand the weather
Maybe the blues purists didn’t like it and maybe the critics who preferred Texas Flood didn’t either, but it terms of musical direction it shoots down any argument about not advancing musically from Double Trouble’s debut with this song alone. It’s an absolute cracker.
Things That I Used To Do dates back to the mid 50s’ – a song originally a big hit for Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones). Vaughan turns it into a Texan tour de force as his fingers work the neck with endless blues runs. Jimmy is on board again for second guitar, but this song belongs to Stevie Ray as he takes what was originally a vintage bluesy stroll and breathes some real fire into it.
Side one closes with Stevie’s take on Voodoo Chile. It’s cleaner than the original Hendrix single, but still with plenty of fuzz. (Note that there are two versions of the song on Electric Ladyland – the five minute single version and a fifteen minute extended blues jam featuring Steve Winwood on keys). Jimi Hendrix was all over the original single like a man possessed on a psychedelic head trip with sonic explorations separated through the stereo channels, whereas Stevie’s excursions take the song into bluesier territory, albeit with plenty of shredding. (If you’re looking for a muddy, old school blues version check out Hendrix’s swampy reworking of the song on the Jimi Hendrix: Blues compilation). Stevie Ray Vaughan rips into a vivd electrified blues interpretation that allows him to put his own stamp on the song – not enough to steal it from the master, but there’s no shortage of inventiveness there to avoid the obvious comparisons. For that reason alone it has to be one of the all time great cover versions of a song.
Cold Shot kicks off side two with Stevie Ray Vaughan back in a funky, strutting, blues mood. W.C. Clark may well be the Godfather of the Austin blues scene, but Stevie who had played with Clark during his formative years as a bluesman took plenty away from that experience – including this song and made it his own. SRV’s guitar work here just electrifies the song.
Honey Bee sees SRV in swinging blues mode. Its good time up tempo ode to a new love interest perfectly sets up the album’s closing instrumental Stang’s Swang, a song that sounds like the coolest tonight show theme there never was. It’s a track where Stevie Ray shows off his jazz chops and the influences of guys like Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass – further evidence of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s unique place as a guitarist who straddled the blues, rock and jazz genres to create his own defining sound.
As a man who reignited the blues Stevie Ray Vaughan may be bordering on mythology after an early death, an all too common rock n roll legacy, but when you seperate the musician from the myth you’re left with an extraordinarily talented guitarist with a rare gift to tap into the essence of the blues and combine it with a host of other influences to distill it into a sound that was his alone. As a complete album Couldn’t Stand The Weather is the finest example of his work.
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