Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Texas Flood (Columbia Legacy)

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Texas Flood, album coverThis two-disc set pairs a live set with the studio version of Texas Flood. Recorded at Ripley’s Music Hall in Philadelphia on October 20, 1983, and his band offer up slick versions with more improvisation and stretching out of “Texas Flood” “Pride and Joy,” “Love Struck Baby,” and “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”
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All of these tracks on the live disc are previously unreleased, but it’s clear that the engineers took it right off the sound board and added a few mics to the mix for that audience ambience. His playing and singing is fluid and dexterous throughout, particularly on the Jimi Hendrix classic, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” where the band goes vamping off into another Hendrix classic, “Power of Soul.” To be sure, they take the music and their audience to new heights.

Originally released in 1983, the studio Texas Flood reflects Vaughan’s mix of influences, growing up as he did in a middle-class neighborhood in Dallas. There’s some Texas roadhouse blues, some classic blues and some Hendrix-influenced blues-rock.