Blues THE TOP 10 PLAYERS

01 STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN IN HIS OWN WORDS

In 1988, just two years before his death, the blues master spoke to Guitarist about his music, his brother Jimmie, his love for Hendrix, and the guitar he called “My First Wife”.

PLAYING

“I just play a lot. To sit down in my room and play, because that’s what started it, that’s like going back to square one. And it’s fun! It’s fun to sit around, even if it gets frustrating.”

BIG BROTHER

“I learned a lot from Jimmie and he tells me he’s learned a lot from me. He started playing when he was in junior high, when I couldn’t have been more than eight. A friend of my father’s brought over a guitar and handed it to him and said, ‘Hey play this, it won’t hurt you.’ That’s what he said, and Jimmie started playing right away. It was amazing to watch him do it. He had three strings on the guitar and I went to school an came home and he’d made up three songs. I’m serious! With that kind of influence as a big brother it’s real easy to get into playing. I saw how much fun he was having with it, how dedicated he was to it, and it gave me a lot of inspiration. Eventually he got an electric guitar and I got the one that he’d had. Then he got another electric guitar and I got his hand-medown, and soon after I was playing gigs.”

HENDRIX

“I get asked a lot of times by people, how do I have enough gall to do Voodoo Child, and my answer to that is that it seems to me all this pressure about whether it’s sacrilegious to do

Hendrix’s music or not comes from other people, not him. I think he would probably hope that other people would take his music further. He took everything he heard, that excited him, and put it into his own music.”

MYFIRSTWIFE

“My First Wife is a ’59 Stratocaster, although now I have a different neck on it because every time I re-fretted it I’d have to fill in the holes. It’s the neck off another Stratocaster, but it’s the same size neck. I use the big necks, the ‘V’ necks, and I use bass frets, jumbo bass frets. In some ways I have a little bit of a problem with that, because I don’t know why but it seems to cause a bit more of a rattle. Of course part of that could be from tuning down to E flat as well – my action is pretty high too. Anyway I used mainly Stratocasters. I like a lot of different kinds of guitar, but for what I do it seems a Strat is the most versatile. I can pretty much get any sound out of it, and I use stock pickups.”

MYOTHER GUITARS

“There’s one that I’m carrying with me that is made by Charlie Wirz, the E-flat model, which is basically a Stratocaster with Danelectro lipstick pickups in it. Whether he changed the wires in those pickups I’m not sure, he never told anyone. I love that guitar, it sounds like a Stratocaster but it’s just a little bit different.

Those pickups seem to work real well in a Stratocaster body – I like it a whole lot. I’ve also got a guitar that Billy Gibbons had made for me, that’s a Hamiltone model. And I’ve got a Gibson 335 that’s a semi-acoustic, but I don’t really do too much acoustic stuff. I’ve got a ’28 dobro and I sometimes play some slide, but not very often. I go through phases where I feel comfortable about it.”

AMPS

“I used to use two Fender Vibroverbs, two Super reverbs and a Dumble [Howard Dumble amps, made in Texas – Ed]. I had used Marshall amps years ago and I had a real clean one. It was a first or second series head – I’m not sure. I liked the Dumble a whole lot when I first got it, but the first one I had built, which is the best sounding one, is messed up right now – that’s the one that’s out on stage right now. but every one I’ve had since then have all sounded worse in different ways – I don’t know what it is. My favourite rig lately has been an old Marshall Major, the PA top with four inputs. I was looking for one, I found the head, plugged it in, turned it up and it sounded... right. I use that head with the Dumble cabinet with four EV speakers in it. Then I use my older Dumble heads with another cabinet, and run a Leslie cabinet with that, and it sounds strong and clear. If you bear down on the strings and hit hard it will bark at you like it’s supposed to, but it doesn’t break up. The problem with taking the amps to a shop is sometimes they come back sounding like another amp. So right now, my favourite thing is to use the old Marshall Major head, and my best Dumble, with two 4x12 cabinets and a Leslie – if I can keep speakers in the Leslie. A Leslie has one 10-inch or 12-inch depending on which model it is, and running it with a 200-watthead, it’s screaming for help!”

THE HEALING POWER OF MUSIC

“I figure there is no sense in going out there and not giving it what you’ve got, and I’ve had to do that when literally I did not feel up to par. It’s funny, because sometimes that’s when you can heal yourself – by playing you can make yourself feel better. That has happened many times.”

SING ITAND LEARN

“I kept listening, kept going to see people, kept sitting in with people, kept listening to records. If I wanted to learn somebody’s stuff, like with Clapton, I learned how to make the sounds with my mouth and then copied that with my guitar. I’d get it to where I could sing it and then do it on the guitar at the same time. It was kind of like scat singing or something. It had to do with confidence levels and the excitement of playing, trying new things and originality.”