StevIe Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble
The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble (Epic/Legacy) There will be no complaining this time. Seems that every autumn welcomes a new Stevie Ray Vaughan collection, even though the local blues legend has been dead since 1990. This time, they did it right. Spread across a 2-CD set, The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble is truly that: all killer, no filler for 33 tracks. Every tune is previously available in one form or another, saving collectors a trip to the store. For those who don’t have to have every note Vaughan put to tape, The Essential is the one to get. Sequenced in chronological order, the collection gives a complete overview of the guitarist’s growth from the streets of Austin to the stages of Carnegie Hall and Montreux. The set is composed of five tracks from each of SRV’s four studio albums with Double Trouble and is augmented by live recordings that find Vaughan at his best, plus a couple of tunes from Family Style, the album he made with brother Jimmie. Whether blasting away on “Pride & Joy” and “Crossfire,” or showing his reverence for Hendrix with a startlingly heartfelt treatment of “Little Wing,” Stevie Ray Vaughan was, as the liner notes pinpoint, “the most important, influential, and vital guitarist of his generation.” Here’s proof, and man, it’s really nice to have it all boiled down to two discs.
This article appears in November 1 • 2002.