October 3,1954 - August 27,1990 "Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank god I'm alive today, and I mean that. You see, I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing. It took me quiet a while to find out that the real deal is to be able to be enough of a person on your own to know when somebody loves you and cares about you. You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other; our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That is to help each other and not hurt each other. And sometimes to help them we have got to help ourself. So that we will know that they are around in the first place. Are you listening to me ? Thank you. I'm glad to hear that....."spoken by Stevie Ray during a radio broadcast in 1987. I first saw Stevie Ray Vaughn on a show called Austin City Limits back in 1989. I had watched the show especially to see him because a few days before, a friend had made me listen his albums. I was an instant fan and I usually hated the guitar solos! I once read a quote in a magazine where Stevie said when he played, it was like reaching down into his gut and really getting the raw feel of the blues. "Ya gotta live it to play it." Live it he did, play it he did. Just watching his fingers slide effortlessly over the strings always amazed me. But, there was much more to the man than his raw talent. Stevie has often been described in articles as "A black man trapped in a white man's body" because of his style and enthusiasm of playing guitar..especially the blues. His heros and idols were the greats like BB King and Robert Cray. BB King was quoted as saying Stevie was "the blackest white man I ever saw!". Stevie often said his love for music was what drove him to teach himself to play. He would listen to songs over and over until he had learned them perfectly. Friends have often commented that Stevie's fingers would be raw and bleeding sometimes when he finished a set. He made the comment more than once that he was married to his music and often referred to his guitar as his wife. He played with his guitar behind his back, never missing a lick. His brother, Jimmy (of the Fabulous Thunderbirds) said that Stevie never sang or played the same song the same way twice. At the time of his death in a helicopter crash, Stevie was coming back strong from a period of drug and alcohol abuse. He made it a point to speak out against drugs in his concerts and appearences. Stevie came from nowhere, like many before him, and he left us with a legacy of his music and style of playing which has yet to be duplicated. "..It was as though he never took a breather...or took a pause to think where he was gonna go next, it just flowed out of him. It's going to be a long time before anyone that brilliant will come along again." Eric Clapton Stevie was buried in Laurel Land Cemetary in Dallas, Texas, his hometown.