25 years ago today, we lost an amazing artist. Hell, the old Antone's isn't even there anymore. This has all been shamelessly stolen from the MUSICREDEF mailing by Matty Karas. Go subscribe. Curating the curators.

"For a long time, you learn to play as many notes as you can find. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out which ones you can leave out." - STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN

rantnrave:// Long before he became one of the world's great character actors, STEPHEN TOBOLOWSKY was in a high-school band with a certain 14-year-old guitar prodigy in DALLAS. He tells a story of the first time anyone saw this kid in a recording studio, how they kept asking him to do more takes of his solos, not because they needed the takes but because they couldn't believe what they were hearing. "It was the first time that they saw CHOPIN. It was the first time that they saw the magic of OTIS REDDING. Right in front of them. And it's STEVIE VAUGHAN, this 14-year-old kid." He died way too young, 25 years ago today, in a helicopter crash in EAST TROY, WIS. He'd be 60 now. In 1983, everybody wanted a piece of STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN. The DALLAS MORNING NEWS charts his emerging stardom, and his break with DAVID BOWIE. The requisite guitar magazine interview. Inside the making of his debut album, "TEXAS FLOOD." A long, four-part video interview from NEW YORK's LONE STAR CAFÉ. MICHAEL CORCORAN on SRV's struggle with addiction. HOWARD STERN grills him circa 1987. JOHN MAYER inducts him into the ROCK HALL OF FAME. The MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL revisits a tragic day... Four other people died in that helicopter crash. CAA's ROB LIGHT remembers one of them, legendary agent BOBBY BROOKS.

Stevie Ray Vaughan: True Hero of Texas Music by Michael Corcoran

It was a thick Austin night in the summer of ’86 and Stevie Ray Vaughan looked bad. Without acknowledging the applause of the sunburned multitudes pressed up against a chain link fence, Stevie emerged gingerly from a big black limo and used a silver-tipped cane to pick his way to the side of the Austin River Fest stage.