FORCE of NATURE

Faced with a choice between David Bowie and his own band, Stevie Ray Vaughan took a bet on the blues and unleashed a torrent 40 years ago with his debut album, Texas Flood. Double Trouble’s Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton fill in the details.

- MARK MCSTEA

AFTER 10 YEARS of grueling one-night stands, forging a reputation as a one-of-a-kind new breed of electric bluesman, Stevie Ray Vaughan was poised to make 1983 his watershed year. Stevie's Strat sprayed blistering licks across David Bowie's Let's Dance, released that same year, punctuating the songs with a dose of Texas grit and primo blues flavorings and taking Bowie's songs to a whole new level. It was only half of the story, though, as shortly after the release of Let's Dance, he delivered his startling, game-changing debut album, Texas Flood. While Let's Dance was a fantastic showcase for Stevie to sprinkle some of his Texas hot-sauce stylings, Texas Flood was the full-blown, no-holds-barred, real deal — arguably the greatest blues-rock album made since Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter were in their prime. Sure, there were plenty of great discs that might loosely fit the pigeonhole of blues rock, but their emphasis was always on the rock side of the tracks. With Stevie, blues was king.