Stevie Ray Vaughan

Vaughan married Lenora “Lenny” Bailey in 1979, after meeting her for the first time at one of his Nightcrawlers’s performances at La Cucaracha, Austin. They both got divorced after Lenny squandered his money on drugs and other men.

In 1986, he met with Janna Lapidus in New Zealand and started seeing her immediately afterwards. When he was in London getting treated for his substance abuse problem, she visited him and he referred to her as his fiancé.

Vaughan developed an alcohol and cocaine problem in the late eighties and he started consuming as much as seven grams of cocaine every day. His stomach got scarred from mixing alcohol with cocaine and he almost died in Germany.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was born on October 3, 1954 in Dallas, Texas, to Jimmie Lee Vaughan and Martha Jean Vaughan. His father was an asbestos worker and mother worked as a secretary.

Vaughan was interested in playing instruments since a very young age; he used to play drums, saxophone and guitar. He had a rough childhood as his father was an alcoholic and used to get violent after a few drinks.

Vaughan went through a hard time trying to maintain his academic performance at Southern Methodist University as he had no inclination towards studies and all his loyalties lied with music and playing with garage bands.

Soon he dropped out of college and moved to Austin. In order to make a living, he collected soda and beer bottles for money and stayed at friends’ houses. During this time he was able to get sporadic gigs in Austin.

In 1975, Vaughan collected a bunch of musicians and formed the band, ‘Triple Threat’, which was later changed to ‘Double Trouble’. He was the lead vocalist of the band and started getting quite a bit of popularity in Texas.

‘Double Trouble’ caught the attention of the famous Mick Jagger in 1982. They received an invitation to come and play at his party in New York. In the same year, they performed at the Montreux Blues and Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

In 1983, singer David Bowie’s gave them an opportunity to play on his album ‘Let’s Dance’. In the same year, they signed a contract with Epic and the producer, John Hammond, Sr. took over the management of their career.

Vaughan’s most important work of his short-lived musical career is the album that he released after recovering from his substance abuse problem—‘In Step’. The album consisted of songs written on his personal and spiritual evolution and earned him a Grammy.