'Live from Carnegie Hall'

Then again, maybe not.

Once they've re-experienced the big band majesty of "Dirty Pool," complete with Dr. John on keyboards and the horn section from Roomful of Blues, and shared the guitar interplay with brother Jimmie on "The Things That I Used To Do," they might not even remember that Stevie had also played "Voodoo Chile" on that night of Oct. 4, 1984.

For Vaughan, as for Jimi Hendrix before him, "Voodoo Chile" had become an albatross of audience expectation. It was the brain-fry part of the performance, the place where he would trot out all his tricks, pull out all the stops, make his virtuosity leap through all sort of hoops. In short, it was the sort of center-ring spectacle more suitable for a circus than for the concert-hall subtleties of Carnegie Hall. For fans of Stevie's loudest, wildest and most wired music, "Voodoo Chile" was his tour de force. For Vaughan, it had become a clown act.

"I took off "Voodoo Chile' because I didn't really think it was appropriate," explained Jimmie Vaughan, the caretaker of his younger brother's musical legacy. "He liked to play that song because he would do all these tricks, and people would go, "Wow, look at that!' But as for the true music fans, I don't think that they care about that. It was like if the crowd was a bunch of guys who obviously drank too much beer, jumping up and down, then it was time to play "Voodoo Chile.' If somebody was there, they might go, "I remember he played "Voodoo Chile.' But I doubt it."

Mainly, fans will be glad for an album that adds so much to Stevie's musical memory -- a revelation rather than a rehash. Seven years after his death, Vaughan remains the most imposing presence in Austin guitar circles and a paragon in the blues-rocking world at large. Whatever band features his former Double Trouble rhythm section -- drummer Chris Layton and bassist Tommy Shannon -- is pretty much a lock to win the annual Austin Music Awards (as they've demonstrated with the Arc Angels and more recently Storyville).

Any posthumous Vaughan release is likely to outsell those of all but a handful of living Austin artists. If there were the musical equivalent of an expansion draft, Stevie would still be the first Austin pick, the franchise player.

With the demand for new Stevie albums exceeding the supply of releasable music, Epic Records and the Vaughan family have treated his legacy with taste and restraint. Rather than building a track around any scrap of tape he left behind (the way the Hendrix vault has been plundered), they have refused to commit to any album that Stevie wouldn't have been likely to authorize. Instead of the typical posthumous redundancy, "Live From Carnegie Hall" not only renews Stevie's legacy, it extends it, placing his virtuosity within a context that shines a fresh light on his musical progression.

"Stevie's playing here is a little more essential sounding," said drummer Layton of the big-band concert recording. "In more of a sparse format, he felt more of a need to put more guitar into what he was doing, while all the while not necessarily thinking that it was the right thing to do.

"Sometimes he'd say, "I felt like I was boring tonight. I was just up there playing licks.' I know that he felt he sometimes played excessively. With this, he put it where it counts, which was something he always admired his brother for, playing less and saying more."

For those who didn't see Vaughan and his expanded lineup at Carnegie Hall (or at a pair of Texas warmup dates preceding the birthday bash), the album offers a more swinging, sophisticated side of Stevie's music than has ever been heard before. The concert was plainly a special occasion for Stevie -- who marked his first appearance at the most renowned concert hall in America on the day after he turned 30 -- and he was determined to make it a special event. He brought his parents to New York for their first visit to the city, and filled his Carnegie Hall party with friends and family.

"Stevie flew in everybody he'd ever met," said Jimmie. "It was just that kind of a deal. I'm sure he went into the hole, big time."

He had velvet mariachi suits tailored for himself and the band in Austin, patterned after the one that Jimmie already owned, and he had a special stage set designed. In addition to his harder-rocking concert staples, he fashioned a set list that would celebrate the deepest blues that had so profoundly influenced him, bringing the music of Alberts King and Collins to a stage that they had never graced.

"He wanted to play songs by the artists that he liked, and who he didn't think were ever going to get to play there," Jimmie continued. "I don't think they had blues guys there before, unless you were Leadbelly or something from a long time ago. So it was a scary and exciting thing . . . It was one of the high points of his career."

It was also one that has languished in the vaults way too long. Stevie initially envisioned the project as a full-length video, one that would commemorate the occasion in all its velvet mariachi glory. Though his record label refused to subsidize the video, it rolled audiotape. The results captured Stevie and band in peak form, but the tape was shelved when the band returned to the studio for 1985's "Soul to Soul" album.

"It became a non-issue," remembered Layton. "We were playing and writing and going out and working, so it kind of sat there without much thought to what we were going to do with it. When we didn't get to film it, I remember thinking it was kind of an all-or-nothing deal . . .

"I'm glad it's coming out, because it represents a whole different viewpoint of how he thought about music. 'Cause he loved that stuff: big band, jump, jazz, anything that had that kind of vibe to it."

Thus, the band expanded from a power trio into a brass-laden blues review, adding George Rains as second drummer, featuring guest vocalist Angela Strehli on Albert King's "C.O.D.," injecting some big-band swagger into Guitar Slim's "Letter To My Girlfriend," playing Vaughan's "Dirty Pool" in homage to the Chicago blues, the classic sides on Chess and Cobra, that had provided such a formative musical influence for both Vaughan brothers. The galvanizing grandeur of the latter had even Jimmie Vaughan fooled.

"It had that Otis Rush sound, very Chicago-sounding," he said. "See, I got to tell you the truth. When we were doing it, I thought he was singing an Otis Rush song. I didn't even know it was his (Stevie's) song."

Among Stevie's bandmates, however, it was obvious that his biggest influence was the guitarist sharing the stage with him. Whether introducing his big brother at Carnegie Hall as "Bad Boy," or coaxing Jimmie into the spotlight on "The Things That I Used to Do," Stevie felt that all the tricks in his arsenal were no match for his brother's tone and chops.

"He tended to defer to Jimmie, because he was his biggest hero," said Layton. "It's really touching when I think about it, because he always looked up to his brother: My brother's the best. I'll never be as good as him. He does stuff I can't even imagine."

"Jimmie always had an influence on Stevie when they played together," agreed bassist Shannon. "That's something you just have to listen to. Anything we did that Jimmie played on, Stevie played different . . . The two of them kind of got in the same frequency or energy level or whatever, and I think it changed both their playing."

"For this show, I absolutely for sure knew what my role was, which was to back him up at Carnegie Hall," Jimmie demurred. "It was his gig."

The announcement of the album's impending release came as a surprise to Vaughan fans, who suspected that the well had run dry following the greatest-hits and all-star-tribute packages, and that this year would likely see the inevitable box set. Instead, the release of the Carnegie Hall performance raises questions as to whether there is still a series of albums to come.

"Everybody thinks there's a lot of stuff just sitting in a vault somewhere, all these great records, and there isn't," said Jimmie. "I think this is really it. The record company wanted to do a box set, and they'll probably do that next year. There was a lot of stuff recorded, but the stuff that's not done is not done, and it's never going to come out. My role is to not let that happen. And the record company's been real good about it.

"There's a great deal of bootlegs, hundreds, and they're still coming out, and most of it is the same stuff over and over. This is something that lets you see another side of Stevie. . . . He would have put this out himself. He just loved to play. And when you listen to this, you can tell that he loved it. I mean, people love it, but he loved it more. You can almost see him smiling."

Interview from Austin 360

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