<back - JIMMIE VAUGHAN - Jimmie Vaughan's musical abilities and sense of style were obvious from an early age. Growing up in Oak Cliff, just south of downtown Dallas, TX. he was weaned on classic Top 40 radio, vintage Blues, early Rock n' Roll and the deepest R&B and Jazz of the day.  "I never got over that stuff, and I never will. That's the kind of music I like," Jimmie explains. When he was sidelined by a football injury at the age of 13, a family friend gave him a guitar to occupy him during his recuperation. From the moment Jimmie's fingers touched the fretboard, it was obvious that he was a natural talent. "It was like he played it all his life", his mother Martha Vaughan later noted. He also began tutoring his younger brother Stevie Ray Vaughan, who would cite Jimmie as his biggest inspiration and influence throughout his own, all to short, musical career.

At age 15, Jimmie Vaughan started his first band, The Swinging Pendulums, and was soon playing the Dallas nightclub scene. By the time he was 16, Jimmie joined The Chessman, the area's top attraction. After hearing Muddy Waters and Albert King play in Dallas, he began to get into the Blues, melding his many influences into a style that was clean, economical and a highly articulate, less is more approach.Determined to create an ideal vehicle for Blues music that was both modern in its impact and appeal yet true to the tradition, Vaughan founded the Fabulous Thunderbirds with Kim Wilson in 1974. When Antone's nightclub opened in Austin Texas in 1975, the Thunderbirds became the house band, sharing the stage and jamming with such Blues greats as Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Albert King, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley and a host of others, all of whom recognized Jimmie Vaughan and Kim Wilson as the ones who would keep the music they developed alive for future generations. He utilizes raw emotion, simplicity, and an elegance that is powerful and accessible, yet communicates exactly what he feels inside. "I try to speak with my guitar in sentences," he explains. "The people that I enjoy and the music that I enjoy are not about just a bunch of licks strung together. "When I listen to Gene Ammons, the great saxophone player, I get the feeling he's telling you a story. That's the goal. That's what I enjoy. That's what makes me get chill bumps, when you listen to music where the phrasing comes out and it speaks. That's the conclusion I've come to after 37 years of playing." Yet for all his accomplishments and the admiration he has earned, Jimmie Vaughan remains modest when it comes to his life and work. "I'm just trying to have fun like everyone else," he concludes. "I've been playing since I was 13. I play every day. I've never stopped. I can't imagine that I could exist without it."
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