16 May 18 – 24, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Pride and Joy A mural series at a new park in Cockrell Hill — the site of the Vaughan brother’s first perfor- mance — honors Jim- mie and Stevie Ray. BY CHRISTIAN MCPHATE S tevie Ray Vaughan wasn’t much older than the South Park gang when he first appeared on stage with his older brother Jimmie at the Cockrell Hill Jubilee. The 1965 celebration took place at the Hill The- ater in Cockrell Hill, a small community sur- rounded by Oak Cliff and just down the road from the house where the Vaughan brothers lived. In a photograph of their first perfor- mance, Stevie Ray and Jimmie are seen dressed in their Sunday best, preparing to un- leash their axes on the crowd, many of whom would remember them nearly 60 years later. That old photograph of their first perfor- mance with the Swinging Pendulums ap- pears as part of a new mural dedicated to the Texas guitar blues legends. Now, Jimmie Vaughan stands in front of the mural, recalling those formative years with his little brother. His hair has long since gone from black to gray. He still wears it in the same ducktail style immortalized in The Outsiders, a 1983 movie about the chasm that divides the rich and the poor and the outsiders who dwell there. The Vaughan brothers crossed that di- vide a few years after their first perfor- mance. They dropped out of high school and headed to Austin to pursue the limelight that brought them fame, fortune and heart- ache. And while Jimmie Vaughan had earned recognition for his talent on stage, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s legacy was immortal- ized after his death in 1990. He was only 35. Several photographs capture the Vaughan brothers’ formative years in the new mural at Stevie Ray Vaughan Park in Cockrell Hill. The city built an event center where the Hill Theater once stood and erected a masonry wall where the mural by Dallas artist Steve Hunter now appears. At the corner of Cockrell Hill Road and Jefferson Boulevard, Stevie Ray Vaughan Park is a place where food trucks will set up and local music will unfold on a small stage. In late May, the community will gather for the first Movie in the Park night. But on this Sunday in late April, Jimmie Vaughan was on memory road at his broth- er’s park. He’d been traveling it all weekend. He had attended the opening night of Buddy magazine icon Kirby Warnock’s new docu- mentary Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues the night before at the Texas Theater. It was a family affair, a sold- out show with audience members who War- nock said all had some kind of connection to the Vaughan brothers over the years. An en- core presentation of Warnock’s documen- tary will screen at 7 p.m. on May 14, at the Texas Theater. It’s being hosted in conjunc- tion with the Dallas International Guitar Show, which took place in early May. “In the words of Lou Ann Barton, ‘They came from nowhere and went everywhere,’” Warnock said in the opening to the docu- mentary. Warnock’s 2013 documentary When Dal- las Rocked planted the seed for Stevie Ray Vaughan Park in Cockrell Hill. City adminis- trator Bret Haney had just returned from a council meeting in 2014 when he saw War- nock’s documentary on PBS and learned about the Vaughan brothers’ connection to Cockrell Hill. “I said, ‘Holy Moly,’ and picked up the phone and called the mayor and picked up the book the next day,” Haney says. Haney picked up Craig Hopkins’ book Stevie Ray Vaughan: Day by Day, Night after Night. Inside, he discovered old photo- graphs of the Vaughan brothers that would later appear as part of the mural at Stevie Ray Vaughan Park. About a year later, the city discovered that the property where the Hill Theater once stood had been foreclosed. Haney says the city bought the property for about $80,000 and began moving forward with plans to build a park in honor of Stevie Ray Vaughan. “If you talk to the mayor, he’ll say the stars aligned for this project,” Haney says. Cockrell Hill Mayor Luis Carrera was there with Jimmie Vaughan when he ar- rived on a Sunday in late April to view the new mural at the park. Carrera had been planning the park for several years and spent nearly a year working on it with his son, who is a landscape architect. He’d gotten the inspiration to honor the Vaughan brothers after he watched When Dallas Rocked. His takeaway from it, he said, was that the cities where the Vaughan brothers grew up needed to do more to rec- ognize their musical contributions. Aerosmith’s Joe Perry has called Stevie Ray Vaughan one of the greatest and most influential guitar players ever. In a 1996 trib- ute, blues guitar legend B.B. King praised Vaughan and compared their playing styles. “When I play, I play sort of like talking, you know, syllables, you say a sentence here, a sentence there and then, I have to stop and think for something else to keep my conver- sation going,” King said. “But his didn’t seem to be that at all. It was fluent. [Stevie Ray] flowed when he played. He could get some- thing going and it was like a song and it would just go on and on. Ideas continuously flowed; I don’t have that. There is not a lot of people that I hear that have that, but Stevie had it.” Jimmie Vaughan is also a blues guitar powerhouse on stage. Some of his influences include the Three Kings of Blues — Albert King, B.B. King and Freddie King — and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. Like his little brother, he’s also shared the stage with blues legends such as W.C. Clark (known as the Godfather of Austin Blues), Eric Clapton and Robert Cray. In the 1970s, he formed The Fabulous Thunderbirds and stayed with them until 1990 when Stevie Ray died in a helicopter crash. Following Stevie Ray’s death, he released his first solo album Strange Pleasure in 1994 and continued pur- suing a solo career that had him recently re- turning to the stage, Warnock says, while recovering from heart surgery. The Vaughan brothers’ music journey led to recognition from the Grammy Awards and from Dallas in a memorial public art dis- play at Kiest Park. Warnock had led the charge with other fans as part of the fund- raising Vaughan Brothers Art Project. They raised more than $16,000 for the art display and received $74,000 that had been allotted from the 2006 bond election to create a fu- ture monument in honor of Stevie Ray. At the time, Cockrell Hill had purchased the old Hill Theater property. Carrera said he called then-Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, ex- plained their plans for the Stevie Ray Vaughan Park and asked if Rawlings wanted to make it a joint venture between the two cities because they both have a historical connection to the Vaughan brothers. Rawlings, Carrera said, po- litely declined since they were already in the middle of the Kiest Park project. The stars aligning for Cockrell Hill con- tinued a few years later when Warnock be- gan working on the Vaughan brothers’ documentary. He emptied his 401-K retire- ment to fund it and still had to accept finan- cial help from friends, whom he listed as executive producers, to make it a reality. “When you talk about Stevie, everybody has a different viewpoint depending on when they knew them,” Warnock says. “I was there watching all of this as a journalist, a paid observer and got to go backstage at every show because I was at Buddy and had a vantage point that not a lot of people have. How many people do you know at age 14 drop out of the ninth grade and become a professional musician and actually made it? I don’t know anyone except for them.” It happened, Warnock points out, in a time when people couldn’t be Instagram in- fluencers. There was no Facebook or Tiktok. They had to set up a mic, a guitar and an amp and hope to draw people by word of mouth. Warnock says he felt a sense of urgency to tell their story because everyone who knew the Vaughan brothers was getting older and knocking on heaven’s door. He began tracking down family and friends of the Vaughan brothers, people with first- hand accounts. He flew to Los Angeles and interviewed Eric Clapton, who discussed Stevie Ray’s final performance in 1990. He spoke with music legends Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top and Jackson Browne, who of- fered his studio to Stevie Ray, resulting in “Texas Flood.” David Bowie’s producer Nile Rodgers recalled Bowie’s friendship with Stevie Ray. Then Warnock spent a few more years trying to get the music rights for the nearly two dozen songs that appear on film. He said it wasn’t cheap or easy, especially since some of the copyrights were held by more than one entity. Before releasing the documentary in late March, Warnock put together a rough cut and showed it to Jimmie Vaughan at his home in Austin. After it was over, he recalled Jimmie looking at him and saying, “I don’t know whether to cry or kiss you.” ▼ Music Mischelle Hunter Dallas muralist Steve Hunter honored the Vaughan brothers in a series of murals at the new Stevie Ray Vaughan Park. >> p17
