Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble

Pride and Joy (Epic/Legacy)

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Friends

Solos, Sessions & Encores (Epic/Legacy)

Posthumous releases, both great (The Sky Is Crying) and small (Blues at Sunrise) now outnumber Stevie Ray Vaughan’s initial Texas flood, 1990’s Pride and Joy VHS, one of the first to hit the market months after the Austin guitarist’s tragic death at the age of 35. Doubled from its original 36-minute runtime, the DVD appends a trio of MTV Unplugged performances and three Family Style bonuses to the eight videos made during SRV & DT’s commercial run, 1983-1990. Hilarious (“Cold Shot”), perfectly stormy (“Couldn’t Stand the Weather”), and pimped out (“Change It”) can’t quite match the “Superstition” clip’s cameo, though “The Vaughan Brothers EPK” (electronic press kit) makes a nice vault-uble. Time for the complete MTV Unplugged, audio and visual. Solo, Sessions & Encores hodgepodges 14 Vaughan collaborations on CD, six of them live and previously unreleased save for a tart studio recording of Lou Ann Barton signature “You Can Have My Husband” from 1978. A.C. Reed’s “Miami Strut” and Bill Carter rave-up “Na-Na-Ne-Na-Nay” prep the live heart of SS&E: sulfuric Jeff Beck duel “Goin’ Down,” Lonnie Mack’s yummy “Oreo Cookie Blues,” Katie Webster and Albert Collins back-to-back at Jazz Fest ’88, and with brother Jimmie Vaughan on Saturday Night Live ’85. Dick Dale’s “Pipeline” never slows, and closing with Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” equals a licensing coup. Boxing all of SRV’s studio guest shots would be a feat in the face of all the unreleased live material still available.

(Both) **.5


This article appears in November 23 • 2007.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.