DO YOU GET THE BLUES?  In 2001, Jimmie Vaughan threw that question out to the world at large when he released his third solo album.  Surely, the only truthful answer any adult can give is YES if the question is related to mood.  But if he was asking people if they “got” the music, the voting members of the Recording Academy of the United States of America most certainly did that year.  A Grammy Award is arguably the most prestigious recognition of outstanding achievement in the global music industry and Jimmie slam-dunked the BEST TRADITIONAL BLUES ALBUM winning points at the 44th Grammy Awards ceremony with this masterful outpouring.

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2025 marks the twenty-fifth year of the recording and so I decided it was time to re-issue this great album in time for one of his rare visits to the UK and Europe for some shows with his band.  At the time of its original release, the album marked the beginning of a new era for Jimmie.  The turn of the century and a new love in his life sparked off a period of intense creativity which resulted in these recordings.

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When I talked to Jimmie about the making of the album, he told me

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“The release party was going to be in a club in Austin in 2001 actually on 9/11, so as you can imagine, the in-store and everything around it was cancelled.  The album is really about meeting Robin and falling in love, feeling brand new, being able to see forward and all that.  That’s what it’s about.  Sometimes you might feel like it’s all over and then…there it is.  I was inspired by Robin and was writing songs.  The lyrics tell their own story.  OUT OF THE SHADOWS, THE DEEP END, LET ME IN, DON’T LET THE SUN SET, ROBBIN’ ME BLIND, SLOW DANCE BLUES… I kinda wished it.  It was like a dream come true…these lyrics and the music.  Greg Sain – songwriter and one of the singers – wrote many of the lyrics too.  I also wrote with Paul Ray who I’d known since I was thirteen years old in Dallas.  He played piano and we’d write songs.  WITHOUT YOU was originally written by my son Tyrone and his buddy, but I put my stamp on it and made it mine.  Bill Willis made up the progression and played it in his jazz way.  If I come with a notion and the groove and the idea and the melody, people can help me that way, but I have to think of the melody and groove first.  PLANET BONGO just came to me in a hotel room when I was on vacation in Mexico with Robin.  I had my guitar with me.  I had a nickname for her, Venus de Bongo.  You know how it is when you’re in love, things just pop.  I don’t know how to say it better than that!

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My house in Austin was named La Casa Que Cante and we recorded about half the album there.  A house can sound better than a studio.  I had a B3 at home in the living room.  The drums were in the kitchen.  I was pushing my theories on recording.  I’ve never liked the way studio guys do it with the mics on things in the way they learned in a school and then have the carpenters design stuff.  The best sound is in a wooden house.  So, we broke every rule and tried to make it sound good.  All my vocals were recorded in the back bedroom or even the bathroom.  Same with the guitar.  I played it in all rooms, but most of it was recorded in the hallway, kitchen and living room.  John Hampton stayed over in the back bedroom when we recorded.  Jared was there too engineering and mixing a lot of it.  The rest was done at Ardent Studios in Memphis.

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The root of the record is a B3 trio with Bill Willis and George Rains.  That was the whole idea.  I was always trying to get into a groove where it seemed effortless and there it was - as Nile Rodgers used to say, “with all the musical candy on top!"

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James Cotton played on THE DEEP END.  He lived not too far from us at that time, and we were seeing him and his wife quite a bit.  He played Antone’s a lot and we played with each other.  We turned out to be real good friends.

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I met Bill Willis around 1989 right before recording my first solo album STRANGE PLEASURE.  He was playing B3 with Lavern Baker at Antone’s in a way that was very…well…he didn’t fool around.  A lot of kids wanna play B3 like Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff and Jimmy McGriff, which I love.  Bill had more of a Bill Doggett style and played bass pedals at the same time.  He actually learned B3 by watching Bill Doggett.  He was the house bass player at King Records, and he played bass with such great artists as The 5 Royales, Little Willie John, Freddie King among others.  I told him that I loved the way he played and sure would like to record with him   That was it.  We recorded the whole album right after that and then every other record I made until he died.  I really miss him.

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George Rains was also someone I first ran into at Antone’s.  He was originally from Fort Worth but had been in San Francisco playing with just about everyone out there.  Clifford used to invite him up to play at the club a couple of times a year at the anniversary shows with all the great original blues guys from Chicago and Mississippi.  The real guys.  He had a sound and feel that was just…well here’s the difference.  You hear a groove, and you can either jump on and ride it like a merry-go-round or you can fight it.  You know how it is.  No groove and you’re trying to fight for your place.  You never get in your slot.  But with George, it was like jumping the merry-go-round and just riding.  He had the greatest groove that I’ve ever played with.  When I started my own band, I just asked George.  With him and Bill Willis, it was like having the Bill Doggett band behind me in my mind.  So that’s what I pretended.”

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