The Life of Stevie Ray Vaughan
This paper is about how a small time boy from Oak Cliff, Texas with a dream, revolutionized the way blues guitar was played. By 17 he new what he wanted to do with his life, thus dropping out of school to become a blues guitarist. All throughout Stevie's career he was loved and adored for his gentle touch and majestic rhythmic guitar playing. Throughout his life he led three bands to hitting it big, released five albums with "Double Trouble". Most importantly, Stevie became sober. He turned away from the substances, even though he believed they gave him the drive to play the way he did.
By age eleven Stevie Ray Vaughan was an impressionable boy, whose brother's rhythmic guitar playing inspired him to pick up his first guitar. In 1963, he would begin an era of guitar playing that would revolutionize the way blues was done. As early as 1961, Stevie was already sneaking into his brother's room just to sneak a strum on Jimmie's guitar before he came home. "I just felt like I was destined to play blues guitar. Whenever I picked it up I just felt this surge of adrenaline over take my nine-year-old body", implied Stevie (Patoski 4). In 1963, Stevie had taken up guitar playing and had apprenticed himself to Jimmie (Patoski 1-20).
By 1972, he was an ambitious blues guitarist with only one thing on his mind, his guitar. Stevie felt it was pointless to stay in school, when what he really wanted to do with his life had nothing to do with school. So by his junior year Stevie had dropped out of high school to play his guitar full-time in his band, "The Cobras". "The Cobras" consisted of five members; the drummer, John Turner, singer, Bruce Bowland, bassist, Tommy Shannon, keyboardist, Mike Kin...
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...blues artists across America. In 1990, when this great legend was tragically killed in a fatal helicopter accident, those who have come to know and love Stevie for his music and his genuine kindness, mourned his passing. This is a legend that for sure will never be forgotten and will always live on in the hearts of blues artists everywhere.
Bibliography:
Work Cited
Patoski, Nick. Caught In The Cross Fire.Little Brown and Company: Canada, 1993
Cherry, Steven. "Stevie Ray Vaughan, October 3, 1954 - August 26, 1990". www.uark.edu/~scherry/srv. 23 Feb, 1994. Online. Aol
Fushay, Sheri. "The Sky Is Cryin'". www.aramisgraphics.com/srv/index.htm. 24 Apr. 1997. Online. Aol
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Ray Charles Robinson was the son of Aretha and Bailey Robinson. When Ray was still a newborn, his family moved from Georgia, where he was born, to a poverty stricken community in Greenville, Florida. In the early years of child development, Ray showed a curiosity for anything mechanical and he often watched the men nearby work on their cars and farm machinery. His curiosity in music wasn’t sparked until one day when he snuck into Mr. Wiley Pit's Red Wing Café. When he came in Pit played boogie woogie on an old upright piano. Pit would care for George, Ray's younger brother, so as to take the burden off of Ray’s mom. However, George drowned in his mom’s laundry tub when he was four years old. After witnessing this horrific tragedy, Ray would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt later on in life.
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The pioneers of the blues normally used guitars to play their music. Blues music is currently accompanied by both traditional instruments and pre-designed digital sounds unlike in the past. This has be...
Buddy Holly was a pioneer in rock and roll and an inspiration to many. The impact he made on the music industry and on his fans will last for years to come. Forever young, Buddy Holly’s impact on his fans is stronger than ever.
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Louis Armstrong is a very popular Jazz artist, cornet, and trumpet player from the early and mid 1900’s. Some of Mr. Armstrong’s most popular songs were “What a Wonderful World”,” Mack the Knife”, and “Hello Dolly”. He has won a few awards throughout his life time including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Grammy Award for Male Vocals Performance. Louis Armstrong passed away in 1971, but he had several songs released and won a few awards after his passing.
“You pushed the limits of playing the guitar, you had young musicians on the edge of their seats waiting for your legendary guitar solos. Hendrix sat in silence for a short period thinking and contemplating the realization of his impact on the world.
Stevie Ray Vaughan is a legend and was a leading figure in the blues-rock genre. Vaughan was born in Dallas, Texas in October of 1954. (Dutton) He was exposed to music early on in his childhood watching big bother Jimmie Vaughan play guitar. By the age of 14 Vaughan was playing in Dallas blues clubs. (Simon, 2001) When he played he demanded the audience’s attention and had a sound of blues meets Jimi Hendrix. (Wenner, 2011) His fame was based mainly in central Texas. It was not until he played at a party thrown by Mick Jagger that his band Double Trouble got their big break when David Bowie as Vaughan to perform on his upcoming album Let’s Dance. (Stevie Ray Vaughan, 2013.) He became a pretty big success and his fan base grew to places outside of Texas. In 1985 Stevie became the first white performer to win the W.C. Handy Foundation’s Blues Entertainer of the Year award. (Simon, 2001) After a performance in August of 1990 Vaughan got on a helicopter bound for Chicago that crashed into mountains due to fog just minutes after taking off killing everyone onboard. (“Stevie Ray Vaughan”, 2013.) His legacy still lives on to this day with an ever-growing fan base.
In closing, the undoubtable influence of music, more specifically of Rock ‘n’ Roll on American society is responsible for a number of changes to the status quo. These range from sexual liberation and racial desegregation all culminating with other influences to create an intergenerational identity. Despite the desperate attempts of older generations to smother these influences, these changes ultimately shaped the years that followed, molding the country into what it is today. Along the way these changes as well as individual involvement in them has also eased the lives of many through empowerment and a feeling of community and purpose. Despite a lull and renewal Rock ‘n’ Roll continues to serve as an agent of influence and change in today’s youth culture and continues to burn in the heart of past generations of loyal fans.
McLeese, Don. “The Spirit of a Rocker.” New York Times. 18 October 1987. Web. 11
...g for only a few minutes, Sonny starts to truly feel the music. The narrator can hear the clarity and freedom echoing from Sonny’s fingers. The narrator envisions Creole telling the other band member and the audience “what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen.” (pg 148) Through the Blues, Sonny has the means to fill the air with life; his life” (pg 145) and the narrator starts to really hear the music. Sonny’s dangerous, drunken blends of music and raw notes from the heart cause the narrator to remember the great misfortune of his parents and the death of his beloved daughter. The narrator realizes why Sonny chose the life he did: unsafe and sorrowful, but infinitely more satisfying in the end.
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For generations, singers and songwriters of country music have been working to evoke emotions in listeners by performing and writing songs that the listeners will be able to relate to. Country music traditionally reveals stories of life, love, death, and values, all of which can be seen in the works of great singers and songwriters like George Strait, Alabama, Brooks & Dunn, and Alan Jackson. One artist in particular, Garth Brooks, forever left his stamp on country music and on the hearts of his millions of listeners with his hit songs, “The Beaches of Cheyenne”, “Callin’ Baton Rouge”, and “The River”. “The Beaches of Cheyenne” has a storyline containing themes of life, death, love, and regret. The themes of this song branch out much further than the reaches of country music, and makes this particular song relatable to each and every person. "The Beaches of Cheyenne" by Garth Brooks is the epitome of country music, and largely contributes to the success and popularity of country music by evoking emotions in listeners through means of a storyline that conveys strong emotions, relatable to each and every person. “Callin’ Baton Rouge” is fast-paced, upbeat love song that is able to evoke emotion in listeners because of the strong instrumentals in the song accompanied by meaningful lyrics. “The River” is a song about following dreams no matter what obstacles may be in the way, which makes it inspirational and very relatable to everyone that listens to it.