Stevie Ray Vaughan & Friends
Solos, Sessions & Encores
Epic/Legacy (2007) 87231 2



14 tracks, 70 minutes. Excellent. Stevie Ray Vaughan sure left his mark on the music world. Consider that while he was alive, only five licensed recordings under his own name had been issued; Texas Flood, Couldn't Stand The Weather, Soul To Soul, Live Alive and In Step. He died just before the Family Style project with brother Jimmie was released. Since his 1990 death, his catalog has easily tripled, including 'best of' discs, DVDs and a fine pair of booklet sets combining CDs and DVD material. And that still doesn't include the numerous recordings he appeared on as a guest during his short life, or the unauthorized bootlegs. There have been books about him as well, and let's not forget there's another SRV disc due this month. All that aside, this review is about Solos, Sessions & Encores. It's a decent enough set, but it also shows signs of being quickly slapped together. Only six of the disc's fourteen tracks had been unissued until now. Of those six, You Can Have My Husband is an early, tough and rugged cut dating to 1978 when Stevie and Lou Ann Barton were tearing up Texas. Change It comes from the Saturday Night Live vaults in 1985 with the Vaughan Brothers backed by Double Trouble. The remaining four are all 'live' recordings with Stevie Ray and Lonnie Mack pairing for Oreo Cookie Blues and two from the 1988 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival; Stevie as a guest of Katie Webster's for On The Run, and with Albert Collins as both slingers rip it up and trade verses through a storming Albert's Shuffle. These cuts all show the respect Stevie had for his peers as well as the respect they had for him. Unfortunately, the version of Texas Flood with Bonnie Raitt is little more than a six-minute disaster. Raitt's slide guitar and Vaughan's crushing Texas approach get along as well as two alley cats in a burlap sack. This sonic melee would have been better left inside the vault. Of the previously issued material, Let's Dance runs its full seven-and-a-half minutes and differs vastly from the heavily-edited classic rock version on the radio. It's worth picking up this CD just to hear Vaughan's blues guitar slicing through a David Bowie dance number. The balance of the tracks display SRV's work with A.C. Reed, Marcia Ball, Johnny Copeland, Bill Carter and Jeff Beck. The Sky Is Crying is another all-star gathering with Albert and B.B. King, Vaughan and Paul Butterfield. Serious SRV collectors will already have most, if not all, of this material. There is a distinct difference between this and the releases lovingly compiled by Stevie's big brother. Solos, Sessions & Encores has its strong moments but it's not a must-have item.

Legacy Recordings

© 2008 by Craig Ruskey

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