1990 Stevie Ray Vaughan, blues guitarist (Texas Flood; "Pride And Joy"; David Bowie - "Let's Dance"), dies in a helicopter crash at 35
I'll never forget that day. I was driving from my house to the UT campus, it was move-in day at the dorms my freshman year, school was starting in a week.
As I got into my car and turned on the radio, my usual radio station-- the local rock station-- was playing a Stevie Ray Vaughn song. That wasn't unusual, he was of course a hometown favorite. As I was driving along, that song ended and another SRV song came on. I thought to myself, "Cool, two in a row, they must be doing a double day for double trouble, or something."
But then a third SRV song came on. That's when I knew something wasn't right. I imagine I had the same sort of blank expression that I vividly remember being on my parents' faces, the day we were driving along through New Mexico in our family truckster, wrapping up our final days of a weeks-long vacation, and we hard three Elvis songs in a row.
As I pulled up to the front of my dorm building, with my car full of pretty much every belonging I'd ever owned, the DJ came on and announced the tragedy. I was pretty shocked. I walked up to my dorm room, in a bit of a daze, and a couple of other guys were moving in at the same time. I heard one of them playing the radio, a different station but another SRV song. A couple of us got together and talked, and commiserated. I obviously didn't know Stevie Ray personally but I'd heard him play multiple times around Austin, he was one of my favorite musicians, he was part of the fabric of the town, and it was an impactful death in my life.
For the rest of the day, as we all moved our meager possessions into the dorm and organized and decorated our rooms, all of our doors were open and you could hear SRV songs blasting from nearly every doorway. It was surreal, but honest and appropriate.
RIP SRV
