In March 1983, Tracy Anne Hart was making her name as a live music photographer in Houston when she was hired to shoot an Austin guitarist scheduled to play at the local club Fitzgerald’s. The 29-year-old hotshot was going on tour with David Bowie, and the local alternative paper wanted some photos of him to go with its story.
Hart accepted the assignment and soon found herself face to face with Stevie Ray Vaughan. Photographing the guitarist for the first time at the now-defunct club, Hart was aware that she’d discovered her muse.
“I knew I’d found a musician with the incredible talent and style to give my Leicas a run for their money,” Hart writes. “I wasn’t iconic rock photographer Jim Marshall and I’d never even seen Jimi Hendrix play, so hearing and seeing Vaughan was truly a decisive moment in my photography and in my life. He had moves to spare and the sound to back them up, and he was right on the brink of the fame he so deserved.”
Hart’s and SRV’s paths would cross over the remainder of that decade as she photographed him, his brother, Jimmie, and countless other blues guitarists, including Billy Gibbons, Buddy Guy, Sue Foley, Gary Clark Jr., Albert King and Lonnie Mack. Her photos and memories of the Houston and Austin music scenes come together in her new book, Seeing Stevie Ray (Texas A&M University Press).
Hart’s photos capture the 1980s and ’90s blues scene as it went down on- and offstage. Throughout Seeing Stevie Ray, she notes the place and date each photo was taken and shares her memories of the occasion and performer. Collectively, her images and words transport us to that vibrant, blues-soaked era and testify to the potent music and camaraderie of the artists who defined it.
Hart wraps up her tome with photos and thoughts about the breed of musicians who followed in Stevie’s powerful wake, including Doyle Bramhall II, Ian Moore and Charlie Sexton. What emerges is a sense of generational continuity, with SRV as its main catalyst. Not that he ever would have thought that.
“Vaughan was a humble man who gave his all to his playing,” Hart recounts. “He loved music intensely and it showed. That was one of the things that made him such a great subject for the camera.” For more information, visit Hart’s site, theheightsgallery.com
Rites of Spring Concert, Auditorium Shores, Austin, May 4, 1990
“This was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen - absolutely magnificent. It was the last full Stevie show I photographed, and of course I didn’t realize that at the time. I couldn’t have possibly imagined a better chance to capture him at his best. If I’d never taken another live music photograph after this one of Stevie with his head down, I would have been content with the huge exclamation point it was for my imagery.”
Encore from SRV and Double Trouble’s show at Fitzgerald’s, March 25, 1983
“My first SRV show. Pure joy. They say nothing good ever comes easy. They’re wrong. Knowing and photographing Stevie Ray Vaughan was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done, and hearing him play was, too.
"That correlation between difficulty and transcendent experience just flies right out the proverbial window in Stevie’s case. Without his huge talent and generosity that wouldn’t have happened. Every one of my images is a true collaboration. I do believe you can’t capture something that doesn’t want to be caught. Not for long, anyway.”
“This was Stevie’s record release show at the Houston club he’d been gigging at every month for years. Finally, Double Trouble’s first album was coming out after an extremely eventful year. He was about to leave the small venues behind for good.
“In 1983, Charley Wirz of Charley’s Guitar Shop customized a single-pickup Strat for Stevie. It was previously owned by the guitarist for Vanilla Fudge, who had hollowed it out to put in four humbucker pickups. Wirz was a close friend of Stevie’s, not just a guitar fixer, and when he passed away a few years later, Stevie wrote the beautiful song ‘Life Without You’ in tribute.”
Jimmie Vaughan playing “The Crawl” with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Rockefellers, Houston, July 1983
“It is entirely possible there wouldn’t have been a Stevie Ray Vaughan without Jimmie Vaughan. I’m sure Jimmie would disagree, but I stand firm on this. Without that infinitely cool older brother leaving his records and guitars laying around the house, how exactly would Stevie have evolved?”
* This article was originally published here
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