Texas Flood: Legacy Collects Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble Albums

The late guitar hero Stevie Ray Vaughan is getting an epic release from Epic Records and Legacy Recordings. On October 28, Legacy will unveil Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: The Complete Epic Recordings Collection, a 12-CD box set compiling, for the first time, the entirety of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s official studio and live album canon at Epic. The box set will include the first commercial release of A Legend in the Making, a promotional recording of the band’s landmark 1983 performance at Toronto’s El Mocambo club, and will also feature two discs of SRV’s odds and ends.

The late Vaughan, who tragically perished in a helicopter crash on August 27, 1990, built his reputation on the Texas club scene in the 1970s as one of the most exciting and innovative guitarists around.   Younger brother of another blues great, Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray played in The Nightcrawlers with Leon Russell’s onetime Asylum Choir partner Marc Benno and famed Austin singer/songwriter Doyle Bramhall, and joined Denny Freeman in The Cobras. But it was the Triple Threat Revue that morphed into Double Trouble, the unit with which Vaughan would set off a blues revival in, of all decades, the 1980s.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble – Stevie Ray (guitar, vocals), Tommy Shannon (bass) and Chris “Whipper” Layton (drums) – caught the ear of David Bowie at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival, and the ever-astute artist enlisted the blazing guitarist for his Let’s Dance album. Naturally, word spread. Jackson Browne was impressed enough to offer the band use of his Los Angeles recording studio, leading to the recordings which found their way to a man who knew a little about the blues: venerable record man John Hammond, Sr. The elder Hammond played a major role in the careers of artists from Benny Goodman and Count Basie to Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan, and he brought the Texas trio to Epic Records. The recordings were remixed and remastered, and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble were off and running.

Executive produced by Hammond, the Texas Flood LP was produced by the band with engineer Richard Mullen. With both originals (hit single “Pride and Joy,” “Love Struck Baby”) and covers (The Isley Brothers’ “Testify,” Howlin’ Wolf’s “Tell Me”), Texas Flood caught on with record buyers. “Pride and Joy” reached No. 20 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and the album made it all the way to No. 38 on the Billboard 200. Grammy nominations soon arrived, too, for the album’s title track and “Rude Mood.” Yet Texas Flood – beginning Vaughan’s series of gold, platinum and multiplatinum releases over the years – is actually the fourth album on this new box set, preceded by three live recordings.

Within the box, you’ll find:

• Disc 1: In The Beginning (KLBJ-FM radio broadcast produced by Wayne Bell, recorded April 1, 1980; Austin, Texas)
• Disc 2: Live At Montreux 1982 (July 17, 1982; Montreux International Jazz Festival)
• Disc 3: Live At Montreux 1985 (July 15, 1985; Montreux International Jazz Festival)
• Disc 4: Texas Flood (1983)
• Disc 5: A Legend in the Making—Live at the El Mocambo (recorded Toronto, Canada, July 20, 1983)
• Disc 6: Couldn’t Stand the Weather (1984)
• Disc 7: Live at Carnegie Hall (October 4, 1984)
• Disc 8: Soul to Soul (1985)
• Disc 9: Live Alive (1986) (Recorded July 16, 1985, Montreux International Jazz Festival; July 17-18, 1986, Austin, Texas; July 19, 1986, Dallas, Texas)
• Disc 10: In Step (1989)
• Disc 11: Archives, Disc One
• Disc 12: Archives, Disc Two

Collectors will note that Texas Flood and Couldn’t Stand the Weather have both been expanded for Legacy Edition releases; only the original album sequences are presented in this box set.  However, the bonus tracks from Disc One of the CSTW Legacy Edition can be found on Archives.  Family Style by the Vaughan Brothers isn’t here, but the contents of the posthumous outtakes collection The Sky is Crying have also found a home on Archives.

After the jump, we have more details – including pre-order links and the complete track listing with discography!

Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.: Esoteric Reissues David Sancious’ First Two Albums

When the members of Bruce Springsteen’s mighty E Street Band took the stage at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center earlier this year to accept their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, keyboardist David Sancious took his rightful place among them.  Asbury Park, New Jersey native Sancious, the only band member who actually lived on E Street, helped shape the band’s sound on Springsteen’s first three albums before decamping to begin his own musical journey.  Sancious’ first two albums – 1975’s Forest of Feelings and 1976’s Transformation (The Speed of Love), the latter with his band Tone, have both been recently revisited by Cherry Red’s Esoteric Recordings label.

Tom Werman of Epic Records wrote in the original liner notes for Forest of Feelings, “The music on this album (David’s first) is the result of fifteen years of playing keyboard instruments.  At age 15 he also took up the guitar and percussion…David, who is now 21, has given us an extraordinary album.  We at Epic wish him a 400-year lifetime.”  Indeed, music was part of Sancious’ life from an early age, beginning with classical piano.  In the fertile music scene of Asbury Park in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Sancious met Springsteen, his E Street Band comrades, and the likes of Southside Johnny Lyon and Bill Chinnock.  Sancious played with the future Boss in bands like Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom – also featuring Steven Van Zandt, Garry Tallent, Southside Johnny and Vini Lopez – and the original Bruce Springsteen Band, also with Van Zandt, Tallent and Lopez.  On Springsteen’s debut album, 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Sancious, Lopez and Tallent all appeared (along with a certain Big Man, Mr. Clarence Clemons).

Piano/organ/keyboard prodigy Sancious played a major role on Greetings, as well as The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, for which he not only handled keyboards and the pivotal organ solo in “Kitty’s Back,” but also the string chart and piano introduction for “New York City Serenade” and even the soprano saxophone part on “The E Street Shuffle.”  (He wasn’t involved in initial sessions for the album, but officially enlisted on June 28, 1973 in the group that would become known as The E Street Band, joining Tallent, Lopez, Clemons and Danny Federici.)  When drummer Vini Lopez left the band’s ranks in early 1974, Sancious recommended his friend Ernest “Boom” Carter as a replacement.  Though Sancious and Carter would both leave themselves in August of that year, they didn’t take off before performing on “Born to Run,” the single that would catapult Bruce Springsteen’s career to the next level.  It was the only track on the album on which they played.

Join us for a look at both of these recently-reissued albums after the jump!