Twenty-six years ago, I stood in the shop at The Glass Studio, where I drove truck during the summer, staring at the radio and thinking what I’d just heard couldn’t possibly be true: Stevie Ray Vaughan was dead, killed in a helicopter crash leaving a gig.
The DJ of the Classic Rock was broken up to a point where he couldn’t really work. I think he left. Just sheer disbelief at the injustice of it all. The man had beat addiction to cocaine and alcohol and was tearing it up better than ever — and then he was gone.
Weird how the mind works. I can see all that in my mind’s eye so clearly, but it’s a long time ago now. And he’s still the greatest…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Yyn6LT2n4
Two decades and more down the line, and the sky is still crying…
Paul McNamee says
That one sent chills down my spine. I was at a commuter rail station. The old teletype display board flashed that there had been a helicopter crash after a concert featuring Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc.
At the time, they didn’t say if anyone had been killed.
But something told me Stevie Ray was a casualty. I just knew. And it was confirmed later in the day.
Weird.
JimC says
“I just knew.” It IS weird how that happens — but it does. Intuition is powerful. Plugging in.
Matthew says
Texas musicians shouldn’t travel by air. Look at Buddy Holly. Audie Murphy who is, of course, better known as a soldier and movie star also wrote country songs also died in a plane crash. (Though that may not qualify Audie as a musician.)
JimC says
Not many people know that Audi Murphy was a songwriter. Pretty good, too. He counts for sure.
Matthew says
He also wrote poems (which he got incorporate into Sabaton’s song about him.) I just found out he was also did some composing (don’t think it was that great a piece myself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8nvgP0h1c8
JimC says
Thanks for that. Murphy was an interesting guy — classic PTSD symptoms not well understood. When I was a kid, I watched Forty Guns Through Apache Pass any time it was on TV. That’s how I knew him, until I read To hell and Back in junior high school.
john roberts says
“Posse from Hell” is one of my favorite B-westerns. Also stars the strange, disturbingly sexy Zora Lampert.
JimC says
Pat_h says
I saw him preform at the UW Auditorium. It must have been in 1986. He was great.