Rocky Athas reveals how Stevie Ray Vaughan acted like a pro at 5th grade talent show
The late Stevie Ray Vaughan developed his mind for business at a very young age, according to his friend and fellow guitarist Rocky Athas.
Athas, who went on to record with Vaughan’s Double Trouble and play with several prominent names in the blues world from Glenn Hughes to John Mayall, recalled his first encounter with that sharp young business mind during a recent appearance on The Blues Rock Show.
Athas and Vaughan grew up going to the same schools in Texas, the shared home state that they later explored together while traveling from one jam session to another. But back when Athas had his first memorable interaction with Vaughan while in the fifth grade, “Stevie Ray” was simply known as “Steve.”
“Steve I knew from being at school with him, but we didn’t know each other played guitar,” Athas said. He learned that tidbit about his classmate after performing at their elementary school’s fifth grade talent show.
“He was sitting right in the front row, and I started doing my little thing, whatever it was. I think I played ‘Secret Agent Man,’ or something like that, and ‘House of the Rising Sun,’” Athas recalled. “But it was really cool, because he was smiling real big, and he came up afterwards and he said, ‘Man, I play guitar, too.’ And he said, ‘Here’s my card.’”
It was then that Athas said Vaughan handed him a business card, which Vaughan explained his mother had made for him.
“They were little professional cards that said, ‘Call Steve Ray Vaughan,’” Athas explained. “He was already thinking business, even back then. His mom helped him go with that direction.”
From then on, “We were very good friends: grade school, junior high and high school,” Athas said. He remembered traveling with Vaughan around Oak Cliff, a neighborhood in Dallas County, as they sought opportunities to jam with other aspiring musicians.
“Usually my brother would loan me his car, and I’d come by and get [Vaughan] where he lived, and it was just fun,” Athas said. “Of course, we would go to anywhere people were jamming.”
After spending all of those early years together, Athas said there is one other memory of Vaughan that stands out in his mind. The memory is tied to a day when Athas arrived at the Vaughan family’s home to find that his friend wasn’t yet ready to leave. Instead, Vaughan urged Athas inside so he could show off a song he had just learned to play from the Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul.
Athas noticed that Vaughan was using a Les Paul that belonged to his older brother, Jimmie. As Vaughan strummed the tune in his bedroom, Athas reminded his friend that they had “better get moving.” Vaughan agreed before casually tossing the guitar aside in a way that startled them both.
“He took the guitar and he threw it up on the bed, and the headstock goes bonk, and the body hit the edge of the headboard,” Athas remembered. “And in the other room, ‘STEVE!’”
The shout they’d heard had been Jimmie’s unhappy reaction to the sound of his guitar bouncing around his younger brother’s room. “That was a fun memory, because he goes, ‘We’d better get the heck out of here, man,’” Athas laughed as he remembered his friend’s sudden hurry to leave the house.
