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Although the show didn’t seem to go all that well, it turned out to be the most important gig of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s career. David Bowie was in the audience, and he made a point of meeting Vaughan and his manager in the after-hours lounge. John Paul Hammond, the son of record producer John Hammond, also saw the show and asked for a tape of the performance to give to his father. Jackson Browne caught the band’s performance in the after-hours lounge, and he sat in with the group until early the next morning. Within the next few months, Browne invited Vaughan and Double Trouble to his L.A. studio to record a demo, Bowie asked Stevie to appear on his next album, and John Hammond, who helped develop the careers of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, helped the band sign a deal with Epic Records and offered to produce their debut album. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Jackson Browne delivers the final word: “Blues was a long-standing pillar in most musicians’ lives, but it was not something that was going to make any bread. Blues had not been resurrected yet. Stevie Ray did that. He resurrected the really deep blues and roots music, took it to the altar and made it a serious thing. He introduced the blues to a whole new generation, and that was quite a stunning development.”

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