EVERY GENRE PROJECT - February 21 - Electric Texas Blues

Genre of the Day - Electric Texas Blues

Album of the Day - Couldn’t Stand The Weather by Stevie Ray Vaughan (1984)

It’s been quite a big time lately for some high-profile Texas musicians. Beyoncé announced out of nowhere an upcoming country album due in March, harnessing the too-often overlooked Black roots of country music. Fellow Houstonian Normani proceeded to announce a long awaited solo album today. Perhaps Stevie Ray Vaughan would’ve been among those Texans lucky to be announcing new releases. Unfortunately, his life was cut quite short in a tragic helicopter accident in 1990, barely a decade into his national recognition.

Hardships often create the best musicians, although suffering shouldn’t necessarily be equated to virtue. It is kind of incredible though that he achieved what he did considering he started a steady alcohol addiction at the age of six. That his brain could be that addled from childhood alcoholism and abuse at the hands of his father and he could still shred like he did is a testament to god-given talent. Additionally, his love for the genre was obviously shaped by his family history. His grandparents had lived as sharecroppers in Texas, so the connection between music and environment was in his blood. 

Electric Texas blues is an evocative enough name, but it’s also pretty straightforward looking at its history. It’s simply blues in the Texas tradition, jolted up by the invention of the electric guitar in the 1940s. Its particular characteristics include more jazz overtones with swinging rhythms, horn sections, and extended guitar solos spotlighting the instrument. As lots of people moved away from hard farmwork to the cities across Texas during the Great Depression, they brought their unique homegrown musical styles as well.

It’s rare that artists will have a spoken track on their album explicitly discussing the roots of their genre in such a coherent yet plainspoken way. But Stevie does exactly that on “SRV Speaks” as he points out that one of the special attributes of folk music is that it can take the monotony of daily rural life and transform it into eternality via the power of sound, noting that back in the day musicians used to create melodies meant to imitate a train or someone simply walking down the street. That passion for simplicity isn’t always evident in his masterful, uber-complex guitar playing, but it shows how honed in his musical ear is. On one album he can transfix with a stand out cover of one of the most universally-agreed-to-be-inimitable guitarists Jimi Hendrix, venture into jazzier territory on “Stang’s Swang”, and give odes to the kings like on “Look at Little Sister.” It’s indeed electrifying, but it also pays an authentic homage to a potent era of the Lone Star State’s music. Oh, and the man also had incredible hat game.