WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 866 - Jimmie Vaughan / Kasper Collin & Bennie Maupin

Episode Date: November 22, 2017

It's an extra helping of music talk for Thanksgiving. First Marc sits down with filmmaker Kasper Collin and jazz musician Bennie Maupin to talk about the documentary I Called Him Morgan, which deals with the life, love and murder of jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan. Then Texas blues rocker Jimmie Vaughan jams with Marc in the garage, sharing stories about Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and Jimmie's little brother Stevie Ray Vaughan. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global bestselling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life when i die here you'll never leave japan alive fx's shogun a new original series streaming february 27th exclusively on disney plus 18 plus subscription required t's and c's apply all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fucksters uh what the fuckadelics what's happening how are you so all right before

i get ahead of myself and start talking about trying to deal with thanksgiving today on the show i've got uh i mean it's a it's a it's a big show it's a big show i've got casper collin and benny maupin uh they were both uh benny maupin's a uh a jazz musician who was very tight with Lee Morgan, played with him, several different instruments, a little sax, a little clarinet, big clarinet. We'll talk to him. And also Casper Collin, who directed the documentary, I Called Him Morgan, about Lee Morgan. And then after that, Jimmy Vaughn. Jimmy Vaughn.

The blues guitar player. Jimmy Vaughn, Tex-Mex, Max. Yeah. Jimmy Vaughn. Stevie Ray's brother, also the guitar player and front man, half front man. Used to be him and Kim Wilson for the Fabulous Thunderbirds. He's going to be here. I'm very excited about that.

He's a real musical hero to me. What's going on right now? It's Thanksgiving. I give the same advice every year. I'm not doing anything for Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. I'm not going down to my mommy's house to cook a big dinner this year

because I don't have time. I'm in the middle of shooting glow and I'm in the middle of moving and we're going to go to some, you know, Sarah, the painter has some friends. We're going to go over there. And it seems like a, a hippie ordeal, a progressive vegan endeavor, but that's all right. That's all right. It's okay.

I don't, I no longer have to make exceptions in terms of like, look, I haven't been eating much meat lately. Just keep the cholesterol down. Keep things level. Keep the levels level in the blood, in the heart, in the fat, in the organs. So I know I could blow it out. Blow it out today. Somewhere I could.

I could just go drop in some friend's house. I know you didn't invite me, but you got to have something to eat. But I'm not going to. Point is, this is the holidays. A lot of shit's going down. Shit is going down every fucking day. Some of it good. Some of it terrible.

Some of it good. Some of it fucking just heinous. Heinous. Where do you fall? And I'm being vague on purpose. I'm being vague on purpose because one person's heinous is another person's awesome. That's what seems to be the big problem. Your heinous is my awesome.

Sorry. Sorry. How do we figure out how to talk about that? Here's the deal. I know you're at family's house or you got people over, some annoying guy, some annoying woman, some annoying kid, some annoying cousin, some annoying parent, mommy, daddy. The levels of intensity of annoying bordering on just a crime against sanity is high.

It's high today. I know you're going through it. I know you're going, hey, look, and you people that have wonderful families and you're just having a nice time and everybody's sweet and everyone's smiling, maybe holding hands, praying a little bit in different languages.

Maybe grandma still got all her marbles. Grandpa's passed away away but he was old and everyone's just thrilled and maybe maybe you're that and your kids are perfect and everything maybe you're that person are you getting along with everybody in your family maybe you're that person i don't know what to say to you have a nice day enjoy your food and congratulations on being mentally and spiritually healthy you fuckers that was rude i apologize no i'm serious i don't envy you but but i'm happy for you so let me talk to the other people all right so what do i usually do it's very hot here i don't know what the temperature is like maybe i hopefully the best you can hope for maybe you're already there anywhere east of Los Angeles or California,

you know, Midwest even. I just hope it's crisp and nice. Maybe even a light snow would be good, but just that crisp, nice fall, leaves changing, chill in the air that makes you reflect, makes you reflect on who you are. That's what the Thanksgiving is for. Who are you? Reflect on who you are. That's what the Thanksgiving is for. Who are you? Who are you in there? Take that walk.

Get out of that room. In between cleaning up and coffee. Get out. Don't help out. Especially if it was a rough dinner. If you had to fucking strap in for some political bullshit or some just emotional onslaught of triggering. You know, if you got to strap in for that get out you don't have to help clear the table fuck it there's other people get out take a walk before you fucking hurt somebody with your mouth by saying something horrible

take that walk in that crisp air take it in think about. Think about the crisis at hand. Think about the gratitude at hand. Balance them out. How's the macro? How's the micro? Macro, not great. Micro could be good. Could be good. What do you got to do? What do you got to do? What's coming up? What are your challenges? Who are you? How can you be better? Do you have apologies to make? Do you have apologies to yourself to make? Do you have things that you want to go back into that house and make some shit right? Might be a good time to do it.

Or you know what? Fuck it. Don't worry about it. Just bathe in a certain, breathe in that fall air, breathe it out, maybehe in a certain, breathe in that fall air, breathe it out. Maybe cry a little bit. And just think about who we are, who you are, who we are.

What we can do to be better people. Get a little humility. Spread a little love. make an amends you know eat some fucking pie be nice to the kids rambling now but Jesus have a good Thanksgiving

don't make it worse don't hurt yourself try not to emotionally hurt others and think about what you need to do next to further your growth as a person and help the bigger picture how does your micro impact the macro the big pick all right so that's all i got but you know but seriously if the pie is good enjoy it and don't don't eat with a berry pie vanilla ice cream is the way to go all right so all right so this is going to be interesting um casper collin and benny maupin uh benny is a jazz musician

the documentary that they're both involved with, Casper directed it, I Called Him Morgan, is streaming now on Netflix. If you're a voting member of the Academy, I urge you to check it out. It was just nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary, and it blew my mind, and I was just getting into Lee Morgan. It all synced up, and now I get to talk to a guy who knew Lee Morgan, and I'm very excited about that. So this is me talking to the director, Casper Collin, and to Lee's friend and musician, Benny Ma. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything.

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18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Now, I didn't know you did another documentary before I called him Morgan about Albert Eiler. It's true. Very much so. But see, like, the fucked up thing about me

and jazz is, I didn't know who Albert Eiler was. I'm sure you did, Benny, right? Oh, yeah. I knew him. Yeah. So there's this whole world of jazz that I'm just starting to get into in the last few years.

And it seems never-ending. It is for me, too, after like 25 years now. Yeah. And I mean, after making this first film about Albert Eiler, it took me seven years. To make the film. To make the film. It was a fantastic journey. Why him?

Why him? Because the music. I loved the music so much and at that time I was playing saxophone myself and Albert was something else but it was also because of Albert's connection to Sweden and I was living in Stockholm at that time and he kind of lived in he was from Cleveland Ohio yeah but then he moved to Sweden in 1962 and stayed there for almost a year yeah and made his first album there. But at the same time, he was touring with Swedish dance orchestras in the far north, up to Lapland.

Yeah. And looked at the Midnight Sun and everything, got like a spiritual awakening. And then he moved to New York and became this kind of underground hero. And John Coltrane was very inspired by him and finally asked him to play at his funeral in 1967. So Albert was there with his group, and Ornette was there with his group. So that's kind of who he was, very much

an underground hero at this time. And because you're from Sweden, you felt connected to it. I think that was a very important part for me, yes. But I mean, I love music so much. And Albert was someone I heard for the first time when I was maybe 18, 19 years old. I think I found the record either in my father's collection or at the library in Gothenburg.

And it was music that, you know, if you ever heard Albert Heidler, it's kind of... Well, now I got to go. This morning, I know I got to go listen to it now. Because when you hear it, it's like, oh, well, I did not know what to do with it. So it took a lot of years. Then I was living in Gotham. But when I moved to Stockholm, I realized this story with him there, and I connected to it. And then that film come about.

How far back do you go with it? Like, where was jazz when you started? Well, you know, I'm from Detroit. So I got to grow up listening to gospel music, blues, of course, the beginning of Motown. Yeah. All of these things. And so many great musicians came to Detroit during my early years. I got to be very close to John Coltrane.

I met Sonny Rollins in Detroit. There was Yusef Latif, who was a big influence on me, as well as a lot of the other musicians. You were younger than them? From Detroit, yeah, much younger. You know, like Sonny Rollins, he's like 10 years my senior. He's 87 now. And you know, of course, Coltrane is gone, and Yusef Latif is gone as well. But I got to hear all of these different things. Latif is gone as well. But I got to hear all of these different things. And little by little, that music that was coming from New York, basically, was sort of getting its way into radio in Detroit.

But they would always apologize before they would play some of it. You know, at that time, I didn't have any of the records. And so the radio was like my saving grace. 12 noon, there was a guy who came on and uh he was the one who introduced the music but he would always say ladies and gentlemen i'm going to present something to you now it's a little bit different so don't change the station but this is a young man who's creating quite a stir in the new york music scene wow and he's he's doing something that's quite different. So just sit back and just listen to it.

And then I started to hear Ornette's music, and it was like, wow. Because in my ears, I grew up with the blues and the gospel and, of course, the bebop. Detroit was very much a bebop city, heavily influenced by Charlie Parker and all the great musicians from that era. Were you playing at this point? I was beginning to play, yeah. I was beginning to play. I was about 14 or 15. What was your first instrument? My first instrument was actually the piano.

And then from there, I went to the clarinet. But I really wanted to play the saxophone. So just before I got to go from middle school to high school, I was able to get my first saxophone, and that's when I really was able to dig in, thanks to my band director at the high school. And that was a tenor? No, it was alto. Oh, yeah? But Ornette, he's the one who captured me. It was a completely different approach.

There was no piano piano first of all that was the absence of the piano that opened up the aura of the music I guess that's the only way I could describe it uh-huh and since there was no chordal thing going on harmonically it was just the rhythm with Billy Higgins or Eddie Blackwell whoever was playing then Don Cherry and you know that was like wow yeah yeah you know I was like in the Charlie Hayden and they were playing some things but it was so unified that is what really enabled me to understand this is well thought out right so you have something that sounds like you know from

the future yes but the context is solid. It's grounded. Yes. I had a conversation once when I was about 18 or 19 with John Coltrane, and he didn't talk about his music at all. But he was very excited about something. He said, there's a young man in New York right now who's creating quite an uproar. I went to hear him a week before I came here to Detroit, and he was playing at a place called the Jazz Gallery, which was a place that was known for presenting things that were really cutting-edge things. And his name is Ornette Coleman. Oh, wow. And so I said, you know, I've been hearing him a little bit on the radio. He says, yeah.

And it was Coltrane who planted the seed in my mind. He said, you need to come to New York, because there's some young musicians in New York. They're a little bit older than you. Some of them are a says but the music is moving forward and he said and that's what I'm interested in I'm interested in and being able to capture some of that spirit in my music yeah and so that's that's what got you there that's what got you to New York he was the first one he encouraged me he said right away straight out he said even if you don't stay in new york come and feel it and just feel it and listen to what's being done yeah yeah and and coltrane himself was to be you know he was certainly pushing the envelope yes he was towards the end

so he he sort of was pushing out into what ornette took up right that's right yeah he was very influenced by ornette yeah but there were a lot of musicians very influenced by Ornette. Yeah. There were a lot of musicians who were influenced by Ornette, but I think they kept it kind of on the down low. Because, I mean, if you were a bebopter, a bebopper, then if you were listening to Ornette, then you were like, you know, well, what's wrong with you? You know, why are you listening to that? Yeah. You know, what is that?

Because it was the changing of the guard, so to speak. So some of the older guys who had worked so hard to develop that approach that was popularized by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and all those musicians. They didn't want to go out there. They did not want to go out there. They had no intentions of going out there. And so there was a lot of bad, bad, bad conversations about Ornette destroying the music. Isn't that interesting? You know, he's taking away from the art form

that's been so sacred and so special. Conservative hipsters. Exactly. Beyond conservative. American music is the only music that continues to unfold. Yeah. And jazz around the world is warmly embraced,

not only by musicians, but listeners and people who look to America for something different, something fresh, something adventurous that takes a lot of courage.

Right. And it's more appreciated, it seems, outside of America. You're absolutely right about that. I can't deny it. You know, like in Sweden, you know, it seems, outside of America. You're absolutely right about that. I can't deny it. You know, like in Sweden, you know, this kid, he gets hip to Albert when he's like 14

and changes his life and they make a movie about him. Right? That's how it is. That's how it is. But I think you really, I mean, that was the film about Albert was partly about that, that they could not get any gigs really in New York. I mean, Cecil had to play for the door, but then they went to Sweden and they were booked for two weeks, you know, prepaid.

So it was a big, big thing. Yeah. So that's part of this film, how the appreciation was bigger in Europe and in Scandinavia for this music. Now, Lee Morgan, you got me at an interesting time with Lee Morgan because I had the experience with Lee Morgan that you had with Albert. My guy down at the record store, he gave me a, I think the first one he gave me, I think the first one I had was Sixth Sense. Is that the Lee Morgan album? Yeah.

I didn't register it. And then I got Gigolo and I put it on and I'm just walking around the house and I'm hearing this tone and I'm like, what is that? Like, it just went in. Like, I didn't register Sixth Sense. I didn't know really who Lee Morgan was. I was just buying records. But the tone on Gigolo just kind of blew my mind, and I felt something.

Yep. And then I locked into Lee Morgan stuff. And I was sort of like, does everybody know about this guy? Like, there was part of me that's sort of like I think he's better than miles exactly and then when you're writing your movie came out I'm like I had no idea about that story about and I'm sure everyone in the jazz world knows that his his wife or his common-law wife shot him in the club I guess the story was that he was in the middle of a set originally was a story but then you somehow tracked down like the the coincidence of that guy what's his name larry larry uh ridley yeah who you know who no larry rennie thomas with a cassette

yeah larry rennie thomas who ran into her yeah helen yeah morgan who was just working at a church correct or working for the school what was it she was actually taking an evening course she had no education you know so she came to his

evening course in history he was a history teacher and just radio DJ this was in the late 80s right and they connected and then he finds out

figures out who she is and he's like holy shit and then he's got this weird cassette recording interview with her and you fill in all these gaps and then you got all these guys cassette recording interview with her and you fill in

all these gaps and then you got all these guys who were able to fill in the gaps in the film too now you didn't hook up with lee until like later in his career right oh yeah actually it was 1968 but prior to that yeah during my teenage years when lee was actually playing with art blakey and the jazz messengers yeah i got to hear him I think the first time I heard him was maybe 19 1958 1959 because they came to Detroit yeah would come usually maybe twice a year yeah and it just happened that even though I was under 21 yes it was a law if you weren't 21 you couldn't come in yeah the guys would even just let me in and said you have to sit somewhere special because they knew you were a player

well they knew that i wanted the music and i didn't come in there to drink any alcohol yeah yeah yeah i didn't want a beer or anything i mean you know so but morgan was always a part of my my my musical infancy i say you know he came with our blakey and that music just captured me with benny colson and all those well that hard bop stuff was it's accessible you know, he came with Art Blakey and that music just captured me with Benny Colson and all those guys. Well, that hard bop stuff is accessible. That's true. It wasn't like straight up bebop and it had a pretty strict blues groove. Yeah.

You could lock right into it and swing a little and maybe even snap. You're not going to get confused. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was the beginning of a shift from the bebop itself as a pure form of the music, you know, and composers like Benny Golson and Bobby Timmons. I mean, they created these things that were related basically to the black church again yeah you know this here and that there yeah and those tunes right I mean you know and it just kind of went on from there you know I mean those were things that the general public could have access to right exactly there was a it seemed like there was an innate marketing strategy well there was an innate marketing strategy and there was also some tremendous

foundational stuff going on with our Blakey as the drummer. Oh, yeah. He knew how to form it. Uh-huh. And he had the guys who could carry it over. Yeah. So Morgan was there. He was in my head.

But then, you know, fast forward, when I moved to New York, which was 1962. Yeah. I never saw Lee Morgan. Who were you you seeing I saw Freddie Hubbard I heard of course I heard dizzy yeah Kenny Dorham what year is this that you go 66 no this is like surely after I got there these guys were active like what year were you there I came and I moved there when I was 21 nineteen sixty two okay so i celebrated my 22nd birthday

right in new york you know so the scene was everyone was on the scene everybody was happening i never saw miles because that was another realm but uh it was what well i mean you know he wasn't like he wasn't accessible yeah you know right he wasn't out in the clubs no these these guys that i mean he might later i discovered he would go to the club to hear what they were doing but his thing was on a completely different level sure just artistically yeah and where he was you know as a band leader yeah the whole strata of the thing you know the mystique yeah the mystique yeah exactly the prince of darkness that's what they used to call him in new York. But, you know, I got to hear these guys, but I never saw Lee.

Because that was when he was down for the count? That's when he was busy. Strung out? Yeah, he was very much addicted, I discovered. You know, actually, I knew he was addicted the last couple of times I saw him in Detroit, because I could just tell. I mean, Detroit musicians were heavily influenced by Charlie Parker, so many of them were addicted. So, you know, when you're around people who are addicted and you look at them enough, you can tell physically. Oh, yeah, they're droopy. They're droopy, they're scratching.

Their whole being is droopy. Yeah, that whole thing that goes with that nasty habit. And so fast forward, you know i'm in new york working doing my private lessons playing with the puerto rican cats just getting all of the exposure that i could possibly get hanging out with marion brown and wayne shorter's brother alan shorter who was a great composer and trumpet now when do you start playing all the instruments like you play the flute piccolo right bass clarinet well uh basically when i got to new york i was playing the tenor yeah and uh i had the flute yeah and then a little

bit later on uh a musician who was known as an avant-garde musician his name was marzette watts yeah he was one of the ESP guys. But Marzette was like, he was a painter. Yeah. Heavily influenced by Jackson Pollock. Right. So, you know, people in New York say, oh, God, he's out of his mind. But he was also working to play the saxophone and the bass clarinet.

Yeah. And one day he called me up. He says, man, I know you play different instruments. He says uh i was just in paris doing a show because he was showing yeah this cat was actually going he was making more money doing his paintings than he was as a musician because as a musician he is too lame i can't hire him for anything oh yeah he doesn't read music he doesn't know any standards i mean you know he's better off just you know let freedom ring that right yeah yeah So he called me. He says, I got this bass clarinet.

I just purchased a new one and I want to sell my old one. He says, why don't you come over and take a look at it? And if you like it, then, you know, we'll just strike a deal. Yeah. So I said, OK. So I went over to his house and he showed me the bass clarinet. Yeah. And I looked at it.

I picked this up and I kind of felt it. I'd never held one in my hands. He says, yeah, it's a decent instrument. I said, well, how much do you want for it? And he said, give me $50 for it. So I said, okay, can I give you $20 now, and I'll come back when I get some more bread. He said, yeah, just pay me when you get straight. So now you've got a whole new thing.

I've got a whole new voice all together, man. And I kept it in my apartment. I did not bring it out in public at all. No? Why? Well, first of all, it was humbling. Yeah. You know, and I couldn't really get the sound. Oh, yeah.

And, you know, it was just the nature of it. First of all, it was made out of wood. Yeah. And, you know, to get to develop my my embouchure and my ear for listening to it of course i had already heard eric yeah which was a motivating factor eric dolphy that you know i said wow if i could play even one iota as well that was his instrument well that was one of them but he played the flute the alto yeah and he played regular clarinet yeah and he played the bass clarinet i mean in my mind he played the flute the alto yeah and he played regular clarinet yeah and he played the

bass clarinet i mean in my mind he's the one right who set the tone for me right but later like i say you know i just kind of developed myself yeah i got to figure it out around new york with the guys they were hiring me and you know kind of take me through some of the gigs and everything and then i got a i got a good, which is the first real important international gig. Yeah. And that was with the great composer and pianist Horace Silver.

Horace Silver. Horace Silver. Yeah, yeah. I auditioned for his band one time and he turned me down. He says, no, I don't think, you know,

I got somebody else in mind. And then I'm in a rehearsal. Finally, he did. Yeah. After a second audition. Yeah, yeah. By then, I had played with McCoy. I had played with a bunch of people. And I didn't give a damn if he did finally after a second audition yeah yeah by then I had played

with McCoy I had played with a bunch of people and I didn't give a damn if he had me or not but I wanted the gig because I knew that it was gonna work

cause Horace worked he had bands that actually made trips and went to Europe it's exciting I was in rehearsal with him for our first tour

it's 1968 yeah and the door opens and it's Lee Morgan okay and he looked great he got all cleaned up he was sharp 1968. Yeah. And the door opens and it's Lee Morgan. Okay. And he looked great. He got all cleaned up. He was sharp

as could be. I mean, he was dressed well and the skin looked good. I mean, you know, he was definitely not high.

And, you know, he came right over to me and he says, Horace, I'm sorry to interrupt your rehearsal, man, but I got to see

for a second if I can talk to your saxophone player. And he came over to me and he said hey man i'm getting ready to do another recording with blue note will you do it with me i said yeah he said okay i have somebody from luno call you he said that's it and he was gone yeah that took every bit of about three or four minutes and uh you know we the first recording i did with him was called karamba oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that was my first one and what was he like he was really during a time that we came together yeah because he was clean yeah there was no there was no private side you know what i mean right he wasn't always no secrets no i wasn't trying to go off somewhere so he could come back

all lit up you know what i mean? And so we focused on the music. That was our thing. And as a result of other recordings we did, we did Tenor Moments with McCoy Tyner. And we did one with Lonnie Smith. You and Lee? Well, it wasn't just us. It was Julian Priester and a bunch of other musicians. And we did these things.

You know, we just got tied. We loved the way we played together. The sound was great. Karamba was the turning point. And then finally, after my stay with Horace Silver, which was about two years, I came back to New York and I called Lee. I said, hey, Lee, I'm home'm home man and I'm done Horace just fired everybody yeah because that's what he would do he'd keep you a couple of years yeah and then

he said okay now you go out and do do your thing yeah you know and so he said well that's that's really cool he says uh uh George Coleman great saxophonist he says George has been playing with me but George is starting to get more of his own work and he wants to have his own band and I need a tenor player he said will you come and work with me i said hell yeah you're back i'm back so i just went like from being unemployed for maybe two weeks well how'd you meet herbie hancock i met herbie hancock before all of this happened yeah because you did a lot of records with him well yes i did yeah and uh i met I met Herbie Hancock through my chief mentor, Sonny Rollins. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. You know, once I got to New York, I called Sonny because I met Sonny in Detroit when I was like 17. Yeah, yeah. And to this day, he's my man. Yeah. I call him at least once a week. Yeah.

And, you know, Sonny. How's he doing? He's doing good. Good. Yeah, he's in great shape, man. Good, good. And just, you know, Sonny. How's he doing? He's doing good. Good. Yeah, he's in great shape, man. Good, good. And just, you know, tremendous spirit. You know, I went to see him in the beginning of September and spent three days at his house.

And we just hung out and talked. Yeah. Gave him a full report on what I'm doing, you know, where I'm going and, you know, what's happening. Yeah. He encouraged me. He always has, you know. That's sweet. That was the beginning of a completely different cycle.

But the beauty of it was that during that period where I was working during the day and everything, I called Sonny. Sonny's going to play at a place called the Half Note. Yeah.

A really famous place where Coltrane plays all those incredible solos. Everybody played the Half Note. It was like when Trane wanted to play somewhere for four or five weeks, he could play in the half note.

And nobody else could get a gig. They could just forget about it. He said, no, I'm sorry, Train is here for the next month. You just have to come back later. And it was the same with Sonny. And so one night, Sonny says, well, meet me when you come and you can go in the club with me.

And so I said, okay. So I'm standing outside. It's wintertime. I'm all bundled up and everything. And I look one way and I see Sonny walking towards me

and I look down the street and there's Herbie walking towards me because I had seen him with Miles, but I didn't know him. Yeah, yeah. But we all kind of

met like that. Right. And Sonny looked at Herbie and says, Herbie, do you know Benny? That was it. That was it.

That was it. So what it. That was it. So what made you make this Lee Morgan movie and how did you reach out to all these guys? That's a very good question. Because when you said before how you found Lee, I found it's a little bit similar to me, I think. Even if I've been around listening to jazz for a long time, I made this film about Arby, it took me seven years.

After that, being a filmmaker, I said to myself, I will not spend another seven years making a documentary about a dead jazz musician. Because Albert died in 1970. It's quite a challenge to do those films. Find the people, find the material, find the money. And you try to create the film because there's not too much material left, you know?

But then, being very music interested, it was, I i think eight years ago now i was just watching youtube i like to do it sometimes see if there's something i haven't seen or heard yeah and then it was lee morgan playing without breaking jazz messengers uh it was for 1961 in tokyo it was lee's solo uh lee's solo there in that live recording yeah i never heard anyone play trumpet like that before. So it is like that. When I find something, I kind of listen to it on repeat for a week or so. It just goes on and on.

And I was still reluctant to do another jazz film, but it grew on me. And this Lee Morgan is kind of a special guy, I realized. And I found another great music, like Search for the New Land, and the music that you did together live at the lighthouse was it was new to me i i had listened a lot to jazz but i missed lee somewhere in there yeah uh but then i said maybe there's a film there we're gonna see you do this initial research how many people are still around right is there an archival footage uh can we do something and then i realized quite a few people were still around like benny

like some other people and i remember in the beginning i i just called around and i had a few meetings with them started to to listen to them because at this time i only know about the very basics about lee like the wikipedia knowledge which was like he was this you know uh young guy that was recorded with everyone at 18 years old you know and just a teenager yeah and he was with art blakey was with dizzy he was recorded i mean he was signed with blue note when he was 18 what did you do when you were 18 i mean not much not much that's quite remarkable and you know he did all those records for Blue Notes. I know that. And then I know that he was shot by a woman at the club in the early 70s when he was in his young 30s.

I didn't know anything about this woman. And it didn't seem many people know anything about her either. I realized when I read that, and also when I saw those YouTube clips, because you can see the comments under. And a lot of the die-hard Lee Morgan fans said, he's so great. Why is he gone? Oh, that bitch that shot him, she should burn in hell forever.

It was a lot of those very angry, anger, a lot of anger. Of course, I mean. Anger on the internet comments. Yeah. Very common. Yeah. It is. But I mean, I can see those guys.

I mean, she, this woman took their idol away right but I mean talking with those guys that I found that were still alive quite a few of them started to talk about

the last four years in Lee's life right that he spent with a woman named Helen and they talked about her like you did

in a very lovely and passionate way so you knew her Benny oh yeah most definitely we spent a lot of time together it seemed like everybody sort of knew her in the scene oh yes i would i spent hours at their home up in the bronx yeah uh she was always at the gigs she was always handling the receipts and making sure that the money was right at the end of the night so he didn't have to be preoccupied with any of that he was just playing his music and yeah you know coming back yeah from being you know

addicted she helped him you know of course you know just fight through the yeah the sweating and horrible and yeah yeah you know got him on a methadone and everything so i got to i got to see him at that time. Yeah. You know, when he was really fighting to reemerge. Yeah. To reinvent himself. And you recorded with him live at the Lighthouse. That's like... That's right. We came here at Homosa Beach.

That's a big album, man. Yeah, well, we came and, you know, when I started playing with him, he wasn't writing a lot. So I came to a rehearsal one day and he said, hey, man, you got any tunes? So I said, yeah, I got one. I got one. I brought it with me, you know. And we played it.

And he messed around with it. He says, ooh, I like this. Have you got any more? I said, yeah. So pretty soon, there was five tunes and they all on live at the Lighthouse he gave me all of it

he said hey man these are your tunes publish them do whatever the hell you want to do with them you know he says I love playing them and he used

those tunes my tunes and Harold Mayburn's tunes and Jamie Merritt's tunes everybody wrote tunes the only one who didn't write a tune was Mickey Rocha

the drummer. But Mickey added a flavor to the tunes with his drumming and his special touch that the tunes never would have had had it not been for Mickey Rocha, the drummer. He was fantastic. So in a sense, you know, his work was a part of those compositions

that made them come to life when we played there. The backbone. Yeah, it was really a tremendous thing. So he's coming back. He's doing good. Lee Morgan's kicking ass. Man, he's kicking some serious ass. He was.

And Helen seemed okay. Everything seemed okay to you. Hey, man, look, we had a lovely time. We spent two weeks in San Francisco playing at a place called the Bull Fan. And during that time, we recorded for the radio, which ended playing at a place called the both and and during that time we recorded for the radio which ended up being a bootleg oh yeah it's out there somewhere i never made a dime from that uh-huh because somebody took the masters nobody know where the masters you've seen the record though oh yeah yeah we finally saw it yeah you know they put somebody

else's name on it wasn't my name it was billy harper's name but you know i said hey look so be it i mean you know right that's just the way stuff goes you know but we had a fantastic time here in California because San Francisco was so great and we're playing like six nights a week and you know having great times to just travel around the city. Is Helen traveling with you guys? Yeah. Yeah so everybody was one happy family. Yeah man we came here went out to the lighthouse out of the ocean. Beautiful. but that was really really the feeling i had when looking into this talking to those guys it was like one big family and helen was a part of it and then i realized okay this is the same woman that actually shot lee morgan uh and it was like i was in the middle of a greek

tragedy or something or a shakespearean drama yeah that was the feeling i had uh in the early and then i found this cassette we were talking about. How the fuck did you find that? You know, this was in the internet era, you know, still.

Oh, so you knew it was out there? No, but I mean, I did this initial research and I found on internet because I didn't know much about Helen. I saw this guy.

He had a blog, LaRenda Thomas, and you could read parts of that interview he made with her. So I realized, okay, she lived until 1996. Okay, and he made

an interview. It's interesting. I want to hear it. So I got in contact with him and he sent me not a cassette but a CD of it. And I remember listening to it

the first time was that, wow, it wasn't just the story she's telling because she's telling about her life, you know,

getting her first son when she's 13, the other one when she's 14, leaving them behind because she was looking for another life. This was outside Wilmington in North Carolina and then went on and into New York. And created a new life, met Lee, became his manager, wife, everything. But also took care of a lot of the guys. Yeah. Everyone was hanging out. She's making food. You know, it was like the den mother. Yeah, she care of a lot of the guys. Everyone was hanging out. She's making food.

It was like the den mother. She was. She was in a way. But that was the feeling I had really that this camaraderie that she was part of and this tragic night when she shot him because everyone was hating Helen, of course, and has been,

that wasn't part of this family that you were. They didn't know. They didn't know what she had done to him, that she actually helped him through those hard years, and they didn't know that story.

So I thought that that was, she should be remembered also for that part. I mean, it's of course... Sympathetic character. Yeah, but it's wrong to kill someone, of course. We all think so.

But people should know her not only as the murderer, also as part of this family. And also know what went down. Yeah. See, there were a lot of things that happened that Lee shared with me personally because he and I were very, very close. And he told me one time, he said,

you know, Helen comes from a background where she's been severely abused by a man that she was close to. And Lee sort of described it as he was the kind of guy coming from work and, you know, she was there, everything would be beautiful because she was a very great cook and a great homemaker, and the guy would just start beating her. So, you know, that kind of suffering and that kind of struggle, that is not something that's easily forgotten. I mean, you can go on from away from that.

And a lot of women don't. They stay for whatever reason. And she did. That's why when she moved away from where she had been living she left all of that behind ran away but you can't you can't run from the pain yeah and the scars that an abusive relationship leaves right and the film helped me to to to sort of deal with my own closure about everything. Oh, yeah? How so? Well, you know, because we were so close,

you know, I just felt like, wow, you know, something went terribly wrong there. You know, because when I left, everything was kind of shifting a little bit. And Lee was going through some real transformative stuff. Where were you going going where'd you go well i left him after a couple of years and we had done all this stuff because i got a call from herbie okay right and so i said lee i want to take this skate with herbie and he kind of paused we

were talking on the phone and he said man do it yeah it's going to be good for you yeah you know and uh that's how much he loved me you know and whenever I would go back to New York I mean he was the first person I called yeah so you know this last conversation we had it was about what he was going through and he and he told me how he was withdrawing from the methadone yeah and he told me how he felt. He says, I feel bad. I feel really bad. He says, I ache all over my body.

Yeah. He said, because anything that's strong enough to counteract the withdrawal symptoms of heroin has got to be stronger than the heroin. Right. He says, I've given up one habit for another. Sure. He said, but I'm backing off from it. I'm backing off from it, man.

He says, and I'm not feeling good. I'm not feeling good. You know, he's telling me how he was feeling. You know, we never talked about feelings. Right. That was never it. You know, but he was, he had to, he had to unload because emotionally he was going through these changes.

And then he told me about this woman that he had met and he had spent the night at her house, which was kind of like, that was never an never an issue after our gigs he went home with Helen hmm that was always it yeah that was it that was the end of the night receipts that right is over right everybody got paid sure and everybody went there on separate ways yeah okay so he said I spent the night out and Helen's calling around she didn't know what to think. You know, where is he? Is he hurt? Is he called in hospitals, called the police and everything?

And then so finally, when he did get back home, she realized that there was a vibe, you know. But by then, I wasn't there physically anymore. Yeah. Fortunately for me. You weren't there. No, I weren't there no i wasn't there but when i saw casper's film yeah and i heard the comments from the other guys yeah i started thinking about the conversations that that we had had right and how he he pushed her very aggressively to the point that she ended up

being out on the street with no coat and none then I started thinking, you know, I said, that kind of violence triggered something that was deeply buried in her life. Oh, yeah. She had no. She was temporarily insane as far as I'm sure. And he was her whole life. He was. He was. And the way she responded, it was just like for whatever reason, she bought the gun. I mean, that was a He was. And the way she responded, it was just like, for whatever reason, she brought the gun.

I mean, that was a comic thing. He brought the gun for her. I saw the gun. I held the gun in my hand. One time I went to dinner and Lee says, hey, man, come here. I want to show you something. Takes me in their bedroom, which is lovely. I mean, the whole apartment was fantastic.

And then he opens up a drawer and he pulls out this pearl handle revolver it's beautiful he says yeah he says i got this i said man what are you gonna do with this right and he says well you know somebody might try to stiff me for my bread man i might have to run up on somebody i saw man you're not gonna use that man then he said you want to get one i said no i don't want anything to do with that i handed it back to him he folded it up in the cloth and he put it back in the drawer but that weapon had been in my hand oh yeah you know and i said it's a great weapon my father used to have weapons so i knew about weapons already but uh you know that that whole exchange so when i saw the film i i started thinking and i started thinking and i said you know from her abusive past something snapped yeah well she thought that you know he was with another

woman but not only that it was the aggressiveness of him pushing her out into the street that from the club from the club. From the club. That violent act. Yeah. And with his. There was a snowstorm going on. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that was crazy. With his hands.

Yeah. I said, okay, that was the trigger. Right, but she had the gun. She had the gun. She went down there with the gun. She went down there with the gun. To make a statement of some kind. I don't know if that was what her intentions were.

And we'll never know. That's right. But she did have the weapon weapon and uh i think she wanted to confront him well of course she wanted to confront him you know because he wasn't coming forth and telling her very much yeah and everything was all coming up in the air and everything you know but i felt that at the moment she killed him she killed herself yeah she killed herself that's what happened there you know and i said you know this is really clear to me from seeing the film i was i've seen the film now three times yeah and i said ah i got it now i see what happened temporarily she was insane yeah she never would have done that

yeah but do you know when you carry something and someone's violent towards you, and she was hurt. She was deeply hurt. Betrayed. All of that. Because all the guys knew, right? Well, I mean, they were in the band, so I don't know how public it was with them, but he shared with me that he met somebody and he said you know Helen is older than I am sure and I've got a vibe with this woman yeah and you know I didn't mean to hurt her he says but you know at the end of the night the vibe was such I just wanted to go and be with her yeah he couldn't get out though she wasn't gonna

let him go well you know he didn't he didn't come home and then when he did I don't know what their exchange was but I'm quite sure it wasn't lovely you know he didn't come home and then when he did I don't know what their exchange was but I'm quite sure it wasn't lovely you know because it was it was painful so did you see Helen after all this went down

you know after I left I never saw her again until I saw the film no kidding and that wasn't her that was just her voice what happened to her

what kind of time did she do how did she end up out yeah this is like a film in itself almost. We could make another film. You could continue and continue. We had to make a lot of decisions when we made it.

I mean, because, yeah, it looks like pretty short time. She was in there five years. And then it was, did you say parole? What do you say in English? Yeah. And she was out in New york for a while and then she moved back with the help of her son down to north carolina and started on again and again built another life for her but from a filmmaking perspective i mean the big challenge in this film

was you know with lee we had the fantastic music all the blue note photographs almost 2000 black and white fantastic photographs to choose from he is one of the most well documented musicians ever from this era playing jazz from Blue Note there he liked to dress up that guy and then we had all the footage

when he was playing but with Helen she did not like to be photographed we had maybe 9 or 10 still photographs of her but then we had her voice so how are we going to solve this i mean balance those two lives up in the film that was the biggest challenge so i think that was what i was trying to say before when i first heard her voice it wasn't just only the story she was telling that is magnificent it's the sound of her voice too so i think when we were making this film and editing it we were feeling kind of almost like

musicality in her voice I really loved listening to that voice and working with that cassette recording like like a like a music piece in a way so I think the nicest comment I ever had on this film was when it was shown it was premier in Venice and then I went to Telluride film festival and there the opera director Peter Sellars where he was there. The guy from the opera? Yeah and he really loved the film and he hugged me and said hey man what are you done this is fantastic and and I will never forget because you don't do it the do it between Helen and Lee you know between his trumpet and her voice and I said oh wow that that was deep to me because that was really what we felt when we added this film yeah I was trying to treat her

I mean that's our story with what she's saying but it's also like music oh yeah so she may well jazz yourself there you go good job we're very few elements yeah I think Casper for making the film because, you know, I was with Herbie. All this stuff happened. I was stunned. Yeah. And I couldn't come back to New York. Yeah.

I didn't go to the funeral because I couldn't. Yeah. Herbie had booked all these gigs. And, you know, I was just fucked up fucked up behind it yeah i stayed high a lot that's for sure i was on my friends had some good weed and the great cocaine and shit yeah and i i got i was getting hived and a motherfucker yeah you know but then it got to a point where it started to be abusive and i've always been able to say, okay, that's the end of that. But it just hurt me, man.

And when I came back to New York, there was an emptiness that I felt. I said, well, I can't call him. I can't call him. Or her. Or her. I was never angry with her. I wasn't. I was hurt, but I wasn't angry because I loved her too.

Yeah, yeah. It's like losing two good friends. Yeah, yeah. You know? I never saw her again. Yeah. Until I saw her in the film. Yeah.

You know? And then it just brought back all these moments that we shared. You still got those? Yeah, the dinners that we shared. You still got those? Yeah, the dinners that we had. And I would go up there, and Lee would say, oh, man, let's have dinner, and let's go get some blow, and just go out and hear everybody. And that's what we would do.

We might go to three or four clubs in one night. I'll tell you, it was a tragic movie, but the feeling at the end was not sad. Right, that's right. That's not easy to at the end was not sad. Right. That's right. That's not easy to do. That's not easy to do. Yeah, you have to get your head really straight.

Yeah. You thought about this for seven years. This guy lived with this, you know. I would say that the editing, we edited this film over a three-year period, and so that was very important to really have that time, and I worked with excellent editors when making this film. But it was very important really

to coming in from the music side with Lee and also ending with the music in this film and to have that music feeling all through the film. So yeah, it was a lot of struggle to get it together because I mean, basically, it's a fantastic story,

but you also will have that music as part of it all the way and so the idea was really to make this film to be experienced in a cinema with the right sound quite loud so we really have the beauty and the power in this music I mean. Well thanks for doing it

man. Thank you. And thanks for talking guys. Hey thank you. Okay as I mentioned i called him morgan is in contention for a best documentary feature nomination so if you're a member of the academy and you haven't seen it please check it out speaking about documentaries i'd also like you to check out another doc that's in contention it's called side men long road Glory, about the lives of some legendary bluesmen. I did the narration for it, and I hope you're considering voting for it as well. Okay? Dig it. So, Jimmy Vaughn.

Jimmy Vaughn. What can I say about Jimmy Vaughn? I was thrilled to meet the guy. When I was in high school, later in high school, I don't know where I got him. The first two Fab fabulous thunderbirds records the girls go wild and what's the word those two records i didn't know who they were i'm not sure where i got the records i tend to think that i got them from a box of records from the record store next door the rb record store next door to where I worked in high school, and they didn't want them anymore. But it was just like the greatest, most fun, you know, just

kind of swing groove Texas blues music that I'd ever reckoned with. And I just loved it. And I loved the cover. It was just this goofy-ass cover. Keith Ferguson, Jimmy Vaughn, Kim Wilson, Mike Buck. And then I saw a sign somewhere in Albuquerque that the fabulous Thunderbirds are going to be playing the Golden Inn out on Highway 14 in Albuquerque. I'll tell Jimmy about this. So, like, at that time, I was very into buying vintage clothing. I had a couple of, I had a sharkskin jacket that I was sort of obsessed with. And then there was a couple of shiny suits. I had a gold suit and a silver suit that were shiny. It wasn't quite shark skin, but it was shiny.

I don't know what the material was, but shiny. And I got my skinny ties and, you know, I combed my hair up. I did a little of that. You know, I've been, I've been, I've been out there in the desert fashion wise for 40 years, 40 years lost in the desert. I finally figured it out about five years ago. But I can't remember who I went up there with to see the fabulous Thunderbirds at this old biker bar, the Golden Inn, which later burned down. But I had a great time, man.

Got drunk in the car, maybe smoked a little weed, went in there with my shiny suit and just danced until I sweat my ass off for like an hour and a half, man. And they just rocked the place. And it was just life changing or at least month changing, maybe half a year changing. But since then, I've always loved Jimmy Vaughn. I love the way he plays guitar. He had a big influence on how I handle a guitar. And I imagine most of you never heard of him, but Jimmy, he'll be playing in new york

next week december 1st and 2nd at jazz at lincoln center the most recent album of the jimmy vaughn trio with mike flanagan is called live at seaboys i saw that band with jimmy vivino in austin the last time i was there and that's when i first met jimmy and i was a little fucking starstruck jimmy vaughn's the guy that makes me starstruck so this is me and jimmy and i was a little fucking starstruck jimmy vaughn's the guy that makes me starstruck so this is me and jimmy vaughn talking i live the dream in the garage jimmy yeah yeah it's like many people but uh but when i play blues when i want to play with records i play to your first two records i play to those fabulous thunderbirds oh cool those are the ones i played to because

that your guitar sound and your guitar playing was to me was the best to to learn from and to play to well thank you that's just the truth of it that's where i come from and i saw you in albuquerque new mexico at the golden inn there's an old biker's bar up behind the Sandia Mountains. Yeah. I was in high school. I put on my sharkskin suit, and I went and saw you. That must have been like, what, 78? Well, you know, the whole thing is a dream.

Right now? No, it was from the beginning. So, you know, like you're a kid, and you don't like the way things are going necessarily or yeah something ain't right and you get this idea gee i wonder if i could be a guitar player because you heard a bb king record or something or you heard uh whatever it is you know that flipped your switch right and and you you you just do it because first of all you just do it because, first of all, you find out you can do it. Right.

A little bit. And then your dreams take over and you just go for it. And then you just sort of end up- Playing with Clapton in Madison Square Garden. Well, yeah. But I think, I mean, everybody with a guitar, that's the American dream, isn't it? It's one of them. One of them, for sure.

Yeah. But I remember when I first started playing guitar, I had a, the guy at school in junior high, he told me, he said, look, he said,

if you want a girlfriend, if you want the girls, you're going to have to play football. There's no other way. And I was like, really? And he said, well, you have to come down there on thursday

and you have to go out for football and i'm thinking i didn't say anything i was thinking man i'm i'm the worst football player in the whole school you know yeah but that didn't make any difference so i went down there and i said i don't even know what to do he said well you look like you look like you're a left halfback. Get over there in that crowd over there. So they said, okay, Jimmy Vaughn. I ran out there and I mysteriously caught this pass. It was an accident.

And they all piled on me and I brought my collarbone. That was it. So they sent me home. I was home for three months. My dad came home from work and said, I don't know what we're going to do with you. He said, here, he gave me this guitar that he had gotten from a friend of his. It had three strings on it. So I've been playing ever since.

Since he had those three strings? Yeah. And I'll show you. If you hand me that damn guitar, I'll show you what I did. I don't know what that might be in an open tuning. I don't know. Check it out. That's okay.

It doesn't matter because I only had three strings, and I didn't know what to do, but I had a... I didn't know how to do it, so I went... That's what I learned the first day. That's all you need. And I'm still doing that. Yeah. I was so fucking excited when I learned how to do that.

It was backwards, but I did it anyway. But, you know, that thing, that thing, and when you learn how to change to the A. Oh, man. It's so fucking exciting. So I've still got that bug. Yeah. That's what drives me. I'm excited. I've still got that bug. Yeah. That's what drives me. I'm excited.

I'm excited thinking about it. Because I learned chords first. But when someone taught me, I think it was honky tonk, really. I was like, oh my God. And then it just ended there for me. That was. Well, I still play that. Yeah.

I still play it all night. Yeah. I love it. It's pretty satisfying, right? It's fabulous. What was the guy like when you were a kid i mean if that's the way it happened who what was the first blue song what was the first thing that just you know entered your head and then didn't let go there was a guy

uh there was a radio station called wrr in dallas that came on it at 10 o'clock at night i believe it was played till midnight. Yeah. And they would play Jimmy Reed. Yeah. Lots of Jimmy Reed. Yeah, yeah. And they would play Lightning Hopkins

and three or four guys. Yeah. So I had a transistor radio, and you're supposed to go to bed at 10. You know, you can lay in the bed with the light out and click that transistor radio on, and you can just hear it if you put it to your ear. Right, stick it right up there. And it doesn't do anything to your head like nowadays yeah it doesn't blast

your ears out well you know nowadays it's oh yeah it might be the whatever the satellite the beam sure you know yeah satellites making babies in your brain right yeah so anyway that was it. And then at midnight, I would flip over to XCRF, which was Wolfman Jack. Yeah. And then I learned after that I could get Nashville. Oh, you could get all the way out there. Because they were the big stations, you know. From Dallas, you could get it? Yeah.

Late at night, I guess. Yeah. And that was the Hoss Man and all that stuff. Like what, just country stuff? No. No, it was blues. Really? was the Hoss Man and all that stuff. Like what, just country stuff? No. No, it was blues. Really? From Nashville?

Yeah. All blues? Yeah. So you were like what, like a kid? How old? 12, 13. And what's your brother doing? He was eight.

Yeah. So he wasn't there yet. But when I got a record player and started playing albums, I would try to play some song. I'd got a record player and started playing albums he i would you know try to play some song i get a record and try to play it put it down and say don't touch my guitar yeah we had the same room you know right then he would pick it up and as soon as i left and and play the same thing so he he basically started a little bit after I did. Yeah. And did you take lessons? No.

You never did? No. I tried to take lessons one time. My dad said, son, if you want to get good on that, you're going to have to learn your majors and your minors. Yeah. So I went down on Jefferson in Oak Cliff to Boyd's Guitar School. Yeah. And I went down there

the first lesson. He gave me a couple of things, you know, notes and stuff. He said, I'm not going to tell you what this song is. I want you to learn the notes. Yeah.

So I'll see you next week. So I came back. After a couple of weeks, I finally figured out that it was, the melody was Mary Had a Little Lamb. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. So I played that and he goes, you're not reading that.

And I said, well, look, what do you want me to do? You want me to read or play? I can't do both. So he fired me after a couple of lessons. As a student, he let you go? I'm not going to teach you, kid. It's over. And when did you start, like what'd you what what was your what

business was your dad in my dad was an asbestos worker what they called a pipe coverer oh yeah yeah that's not not healthy it's not real healthy no no you know they would insulate he was called an insulator they insulate pipes pipes on buildings, big buildings. And that was it before it was safe? Yeah. Did he get sick from that? Yeah, he did. He died from the black lung and asbestosis. Yeah.

Oh, boy. But, you know, there was a lot of musicians in his local in Dallas. A lot of rock and roll guys,billy guys and all kinds of people were there because you could go and make a lot of money on a couple of weeks yeah and then go off on tour or whatever yeah anybody that you knew uh record well there was a guy named leonard i don't know his last name but his name is le Leonard, and he had a guitar. He had a big Gibson, like an L5 or something, with two pickups and his name in the neck. Pearl. Leonard.

And he told me, he came over to my house. My parents would play dominoes on the weekends. So he came over there with another guy, and they played in the living room while they were playing dominoes. And I said, I like that blue stuff blue stuff and he goes you mean like this so he he started playing jimmy reed he showed me how to play jimmy reed chuck berry and john lee hooker in one night oh you need to show me how it went yeah right sure the what the chords were and he had actually played with chuck berry like backed him up you know oh yeah a, yeah. A lot of people did, I think. Yeah.

Right? Chuck would come into town and go, who's going to do it? Right. Yeah. So he taught you. Those are three pretty essential things, man. It's unbelievable. I mean, God sent that guy there, you know, for me.

You need that guy. He was great. How old were you when that happened? I was about 12 13 i mean i just started trying to play so were there other people that taught you stuff my uncles on both sides of my family my uncle on my mom's side played guitar they played in hillbilly bands and and on my dad's side too he was people like hillbilly vans yeah well you know which was just country at the time merle travis you know they like merle travis and um hank williams and you know

all that stuff yeah and so but you know when i first started playing they i didn't know that there was a difference between it was just cool music right sure i didn't know you know i heard blues on the radio and you know bb king and and all that stuff jimmy reed chuck berry i had you know i had chuck berry records and then i met this harmonic player who was about 15 years older than me he was a grown-up and he he um he gave me a little walter album oh yeah yeah the best of little walter sure um yeah and then he then i found you know muddy waters and all that stuff yeah the chest box yeah but it wasn't a box it was just the best it was a real album yeah yeah of little walter with juke on it yes yeah man that thing that that's a life changer and so

did you play harp at all well no i mean i tried but but but you know i never could play and then i got uh i met kim wilson so i didn really. That guy is sort of a savant. He's a great harmonic player. Yeah, like he's just a gifted player. Yeah, so I, you know. Where'd you meet him? I stuck to the guitar. How old were you when you met him?

Well, I guess it was in the 70s, so I was probably 19 or 20, something like that. And he was just around? No he came down he came to Austin and I was already playing down there and he came to Austin and came to this place where I was playing and said I want to sit in and we said okay

and he got up and he did the big Walter Horton George Smith thing you know and tore it up and so that was about two weeks later we're like well we need to get a band i think we'll call it the fabulous thunderbirds yeah and uh he was like yeah he's in so you know that's how we got started basically you know but you grew up in dallas mostly yeah but i mean I moved to Austin when I was 18 so yeah yeah that was in 1969 oh wow permanently I had been playing there I used to play in when I was 15 I got in this band that was a a band that played fraternity parties and they made a lot of money playing fraternity

parties top 40 stuff yeah anything Beatles whatever yeah And they were all 21 and I was 15. And I got to stay out all weekend. It was a lot of fun. And so I was making $300 a week. That's pretty good for 68. In the 60s. Yeah. In the mid to late 60s for a 15-year-old kid.

Yeah, better than football. A whole lot better. The 60s. Yeah. Mid to late 60s for a 15-year-old kid? Yeah. Better than football. A whole lot better. And there was girls there. I know. Yeah. You get more girls with a guitar than football. Well, I don't know about that, but it's a lot easier.

I do. Unless you're the quarterback. But see, the thing was, I didn't know how to play football. I was the worst football player in the world. I know. The guitar worked out better. So you're playing, you're doing $300 a week. You're 15 years old. Did you just quit school or did you stay in?

I just ran off. Yeah, that was it? Yeah. To Austin. Well, I went to Dallas first. I went downtown and I had gigs down there. We played at a place called the cellar yeah for a while and then with the fraternity band no that was a different band i was in a band called

the chessman yeah who i was telling you the guys were 21 yeah yeah and uh we got a gig we opened for uh hendrix you did when this was when hendrix came out his first like his first tour of the states yeah so we played at smu uh in dallas other southern methodist university auditorium from dallas was was he popular at that point yeah he was big well he was you know he was it was a big buzz i mean he filled up the 2,000 seats. I don't know how many. It was a small auditorium. Was that the same tour that Billy opened for him?

Probably. With that first band of his? Moving Sidewalk. Moving Sidewalk. I'm sure it was. Right. So what was your experience with Jimmy? He's a nice guy?

He was real nice, but I just remember, you know, when they came out, and I just remember the licks he did when he came out to see if his guitar was working when he first put it on. Yeah. He just went, Yeah. But it was like five times that fast. Right.

Yeah. I can't even do it that fast. Right. But he was fabulous. I that fast. Right. Yeah. I can't even do it that fast. Right. But he was fabulous. I got some work to do. Well, I already knew that. But he was Jimi Hendrix and I wasn't. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But most of those licks were blues licks. Yeah. I mean, he was fantastic. Yeah. I mean, he was fantastic. He was, I always thought of Hendrix as, you know, he was like Muddy Waters' stepson who had just got back from his tour of Mars. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

That makes sense. When watching somebody like Hendrix at that time, I can't imagine, because you play pretty straight in. You just go right into the amp for the most part, right? Yeah. It's just like the people then, he just went right into the amp, just turned that thing out, right? It was kind of pure. It seemed more pure back then.

Well, they didn't have all that stuff. That's right. And it sounds better, right? If you were in the studio, you could have echo and right and uh things but basically he had the he had the univive and he and he had a fuzz face i think something like that and so he could the amps already all the way up yeah and then the fuzz face will give you a little more uh i guess he was using it for the sustain and all that. It was just everything all the way up.

Yeah, right. So he could do the space travel. Absolutely. Yeah. But I mean, you know, he did. The first time I found the first Hendrix record, there used to be a TV show in Dallas when I was a kid. I come off from school.

It was called Something Else. And it had cheerleaders dancing and they would play records. It was one of those kind of deals. After school, record party, dance show. And I went over there and would go through the bin in the back, the trash

bin, and they have other records they didn't like in there. And I found Purple Haze, the 45. Foxy, I think, I forget what's on the other side. Maybe Foxy, whatever it was. Yeah. And I brought it home and played it because I had seen his name in a little blurb somewhere.

Yeah. And so that was the way I found Hendrix. In the garbage. In the garbage. They had been put out. Yeah, they decided that wasn't the kind of music they were going to play for their people. And you were a teenager still. Amazing.

Yeah. It was so exciting, you know. Well, what is it about Texas, man? Because, like, you know, I listened to you guys on those first two Fabulous Thunderbirds records. You know, those are real Texan records. Yeah. And that sound is very specific.

And at that time, when I first heard it, I'm like, what the fuck is... No one was playing blues like that. I think it almost happened at the same time as punk rock, somewhere in that area. They called us... What did they call us? Blue punk or something like that. Are they trying to think of what to do with us? Trying to market you.

Yeah. And it all comes from a certain number of people that are specifically Texas. Well, you know, it came from everywhere, really. But in Texas, like T-Bone Walker's from Texas. Yeah. He was the first guy to play electric guitar on the blues. He's the guy.

He's the guy. So he comes from texas yeah he goes but everybody had to go to la to get a record uh not everybody but there was guys in houston and guys in dallas but back in the day are we talking how far back before you 30s right okay 35 i think t-bone made his first electric guitar record all the all the licks are on those records. Every lick. That's before World War II. It's crazy. So, think how heavy that is. And then right next to him was Gate Mouth Brown,

who was, there's pictures of them playing together. So, T-Bone goes to LA, gets gigs, records. Yeah. Gate Mouth goes and takes, when T-Bone goes to LA, gets gigs, records. Yeah. GateMouth goes and takes, when T-Bone goes on tour, GateMouth gets his gig. Yeah. At whatever the place was, you know. Out here?

Yes, right here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where it spreads, the Texas sound. And then, but some of them, you know, go, it's going on in Houston, and then the Mississippi guys go to Chicago.

Right. You know how it is. You find T-Bone Walker. You find Chuck Berry. And then you read the back of the album and it says, I like, you know, T-Bone Walker. And T-Bone says, I like Charlie Christian. So you go get Charlie Christian. Charlie Christian leads you over here.

You hear Jimmy Reed. Da, da, da. You go over here. You go Jimmy Reed. You go over here. You go over there. It's on a reverse search. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's a rabbit hole. Just so I connect the dots.

And so I'm still finding guys that I didn't know about. Really? Yeah. It's impossible. It'll never end. It's so exciting. They're on record though you find them on yeah yeah and then there's now there's young guys coming up that are that are gonna it's gonna

be fine let me tell you the blues are gonna be fine yeah yeah have you seen gary clark yeah yeah i've seen him you seen him in person i've seen him i saw him open for the stones in san diego and that other guy that the guy who plays with him, the guy in the poncho. Yeah. What's his name? Zapata. Zapata. He can play too.

Absolutely. So I think we're going to be all right. Well, let me ask you about that. When you were coming up in Austin, when you kind of settled down after you opened for Hendrix, that was in Dallas, right? Yeah. With the first band but once you get to austin and you're 18 years old there's a scene there right already in the 60s no there was only bill campbell and uh who's that guy he was he played similar to uh

freddie king oh he was uh like that he played great and then there was... Did you see Freddie King? Yeah, many, many, many times. I played with Freddie King. You did? Yeah. Wow, man. That's heavy. He was serious.

Yeah? Yeah. What do you mean? Well, I mean, he was just like Albert King. He was big and imposing and cool and just, and loud and just badass. Isn't it interesting you listen to those earlier records, just how like fluid he was.

And then later he just lay into like, just riffs that ran deeper somehow. I never could understand how do these guys figure out what they're going to play? Because when you have their, when you're a kid and you have their album, you hear the beginning and all the stuff in the middle how do they know how to solo and how do they know what they're going to play yeah you know yeah you mean in in the actual song yeah where how do they land that thing right yeah i don't i haven't figured it out that's why i stay in the garage that's well so i imagined myself one time if i was in the room with all

my favorite guys albert king buddy guy bb king freddie king and they all played and we did a roundy round and it got to me what was i going to do i'd be pretty much screwed so that's what you think that's where the it starts off a pretty good fantasy and then all of a sudden the pressure's on well then you realize yeah what the i'm not as good as i thought i was yeah this these guys so i mean that's well then you have to ask yourself what do i do yeah you know you, you take from all these guys. Yeah. And you learn from them and you emulate them. Yeah. But when it gets your turn, what are you going to do?

Because you can't do what they did. That's right. Exactly. You have to have your own voice. Yeah. There's a couple guys that could use that information. And that's what I've really worked on. Sure.

Not that I don't. You were conscious of on. Sure. Not that I don't. You were conscious of it. Yeah. You were conscious of it. And like, I, I, you know,

I've listened to these guys. I know how to play like these guys, but in order to find my own groove, my own thing, you got to let it happen. I mean, you can't, you have to ask yourself,

what do I do? Yeah. You know, and what'd you come up with? I mean, I hear it on the record. I mean, it, it, your own personality will come out uh eventually yeah if you keep playing i think i think you're right yeah and it does but i'm still trying to learn and and it still changes

and uh you know five years ago i probably didn't play what I play now exactly. And how do you feel that your playing has evolved? Well, it just changes. Yeah. You know, you got to play what you want to hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the idea. Yeah. So it just sort of changes.

You don't want to play the same thing over and over exactly. So now when you get up to austin you know you're starting to play up there and i imagine you're stevie's still at home in dallas yeah he well when when i ran away from home uh my mother and dad sort of clamped down on uh stevie and said you're not going to do what he did yeah you're going to do your school work you're going to we're going to do your schoolwork and we're going to watch you, so don't think about it. Right. Which just made him try harder on the guitar. Yeah.

And so he came up, when he got out of high school, he came to Austin. Yeah. And you knew he was just down there doing it? Yeah. Yeah, working it out? Oh, yeah. Did you guys get along pretty well? Yeah.

Yeah? So he came up after high school, so now the Vaughn brothers are in Austin. That sounds like trouble to me. That must have been trouble initially. Well, he did pretty good right away. Started playing around. He got a band and started playing gigs. The Double Trouble Band?

Or was it a different band? It was Triple Threat. He had several different versions. Yeah, yeah. Always a three-piece or four-piece? No, people come and go. Yeah. And, you know, it's not as much, you don't always get what you want.

Like, you don't always, you can't have who you want all the time. Sure, yeah. Or they won't play what you want, or they want to do something else. Yeah. You know what I mean? all the time so you or or they won't play what you want or they want to do something else or you know what i mean it's it it evolves and changes yeah yeah you know so after the you know the first couple of thunderbirds records like what what was your relationship those were on tacoma right the first two and then you you switch labels you got well tacoma you know they leased it to chrysalis yeah and then you know right was there pressure to change the sound um not really because we started out so crazy they didn't really

know what to do they wanted they wanted us you know like they had some ideas hey man we could be blue wave we're like that doesn't sound right yeah oh so they were trying to wedge you in well they wanted to figure out how to market us i guess yeah and uh you know all we wanted to do was kind of play jimmy reed or little walter songs yeah and they you know it it took a while to get going kim kim wrote a lot of songs, and we would come up with stuff. So that was helpful. And then Dave Edmonds produced that, what was that, third record or the fourth record? And then we went and toured England.

Yeah. Rockpile hired us to open their tour of England. Yeah. And that's when we met Dave and Nick uh uh nick lowe nick lowe produced his first yeah and he was great that was that was one of our best records uh which record was that uh i'm in the mood to tear it up i don't know the name yeah yeah t-bird rhythm t-bird rhythm was the name of it yeah yeah yeah yeah so you like working with him? Oh, yeah. He was great.

He's a good guy. Talk to that guy. We had a great time with him. Didn't they cover, they did You Ain't Nothing But Fine, Fine, Fine, too. Yeah. That's your song, isn't it? Well, no. I was rocking Sydney.

Rocking Sydney, right. We worked with Nick, and then we went on and did, it was a few years later that we worked with Dave. Yeah. And then that was tough enough. Right. went on and did it was a few years later that we worked with dave yeah and then uh and that that was tough enough right and did you have you had some hits kind of right tough enough was our hit yeah and tough enough yeah ain't that tough enough yeah and then what happened then you did another record or like well we did uh i think we did 10 albums all together thunderbirds something like that and it's still kind of going along

without you is it yeah kim they're still going yeah and what happened was um this is my version yeah um against kim's version well i don't know what kim's version is yeah but what happened was is uh the record company epic records after tough enough came to me and said we want stevie was hitting really hard yeah they said we want you to do a von brothers record yeah and i was like okay because we my dad had talked about it since when i was a little kid he would say you know somebody would come out of the house he'd say you boys go get your guitar stevie had a toy guitar yeah go get your guitars and play a tune for so-and-so yeah and then we would play a song or i would play a song stevie would yeah pretend to play yeah at first and then the the person, the guest would go,

well, you guys are pretty good. Maybe you can make a record someday. You know, so that seed was planted from 12 years old. The two of you playing together. Right. Yeah. So, you know, Tony Martell from Epic Records said, we need to make a record on you guys, and they all wanted it.

And when they want something, it means, you know and they all wanted it and when they want something it means you you know it's a good thing when they want it yeah yeah it's better than money it's a lot better when they don't want it yeah when they don't want it there's no money and they you have to talk them into it and they don't want to do it no it's better than it's better when more than one people want it yes yes so i i just i wanted to do it, and Stevie wanted to do it. Stevie had just won a Grammy from, I think, from his In Step record. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

In Step. The third record. I got it. Yeah, yeah. Up on the tight wire? Was that the one on there? Yeah. Yeah, the sober record.

So anyway, he was kind of hitting it pretty hard, and everything was going along pretty good for him. And then the record company started saying, hey, Tony Martell said, hey, we want Jimmy and Stevie to make a record together. And he pushed it. It was really Tony Martell. And we said, okay. And then it became fun, and we did it.

Was it fun playing with him? Oh, it was fabulous. Did you guys have a sort of sixth sense about how each other worked? Had you been playing together long enough? Oh, yeah. It was telepathic. It's a good record. I loved hearing that record.

It was sad that it came out after he passed, but it was great. Well, you know, we had no idea what was going to happen. Of course not. Of course not. And so we thought, well, we'll be able to tour, and this will be fun. And the record company was excited about the record, too, from all along. I remember we went and played it for them. They came over in New York.

We were at Hit Factory or wherever it was we were recording, and some of the guys came over from the label the Big Shots and we played them a couple of the tunes and they were just like well that's a hit and that's a hit and we were like yeah you know I mean it was like that yeah yeah yeah and then

what was on that record was it mostly original shit yeah yeah you guys wrote it together yes yeah and we did the Original shit? Yeah. Yeah. You guys wrote it together? Yes. Yeah. And we did the White Boot. There was a couple of songs we didn't write, but most of them we did. Uh-huh. And then they, like when you were, like right after you finished it? And then we finished it.

And then Stevie had a gig in Wisconsin with Eric Clapton and all these people were going to be there. And he called me and he said, you got to come. Everybody's going to be here. Buddy guys come in and everybody's coming. And that's when it happened. So and that was a month. And the record was already scheduled. And we, you know, the first single was going to be Good Texan.

Yeah. And we got together at the record company. And he said, single was going to be Good Texan. Yeah. And we got together at the record company and said, we can't put out Good Texan. It's silly. Under these circumstances, it's not going to. After he passed, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Because it was all, you know, it was a shock and it's tragic.

It's devastating. Just, you know, all that. Yeah. You know, so you don't want to put out a comedy record right uh right it didn't feel right so so they put out tick tock which was kind of time sticking you know it was more a little heavier more heavy yeah yeah how that and then it did all right though right yeah the record ended up selling really good but it wouldn't i think it would have sold better had that not happened everything would have been better absolutely had that not happened

but i mean it was more of a it was such a shock yeah the whole thing yeah and he just gotten it together right you know he's like just sober he just got sober sober. Yeah. And I had three months. Oh, you just had three months when he got sober? You know what I thought? I don't know if I can talk about this on the radio. Sure you can. But I said, well, I got three months. I said, if I went out and really tied one on, nobody would blame me.

And then right after that and i thought no my mother and then stevie will come back and kill me but you know what's funny is what they say is that like you know like that the disease was looking for a reason was looking for a reason oh man well i'm glad you didn't i'm glad i didn't too it might so you guys were both out there at the same time just watching each other you know well tear it down he got sober first yeah he broke down a couple of times and went to hospital and uh for the coke right just yeah drinking and whatever yeah and so he was in the hospital in London.

So I called Eric and said, hey, my brother's down the street at so-and-so. He went over and visited him. Yeah, Clapton did, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and he planted the seed? That's what did it. Yeah. And then Stevie got sober, went to treatment, got sober. And then, you know, he had two or three years more than me.

And we would be on tour, and he would be all sober, and they would be in their room, and they would have Cokes and iced tea. And I'd be standing across the hall with my screwdriver that was about this tall. Yeah, yeah. And I'd be like, would you like one? Come on over. Oh, you're like the devil over there. I was. Yeah, still having a good time.

But I was at that point where I couldn't imagine life with it or without it. You know what I mean? Waking up shaking and shit. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody, when I quit drinking, it you know what i mean waking up shaking and shit yeah yeah it's that's that's that and everybody when i quit when i quit drinking everybody was like man we are so glad nobody said come on man

start drinking again right yeah you were you were not the life of the party no no so what's your set list like when you do uh when you're opening for Clapton? What do you run through? You change it up? Yeah. Yeah? We pretty much just, we get out there and play blues, and we do a couple of things off of each record. Yeah, yeah.

But not with any, it's not like we have a radio hit now that everybody wants to hear exactly sure so uh you know we just go out there and have a good time really yeah yeah you playing some of the original stuff or mostly covers what are you doing mostly covers but but yes some original yeah are you putting out a record i got a organ trio record coming out with mike flanagan yeah on the b3 and george rains on the drums did you self-release it no it's on proper okay from england oh cool they're gonna do vinyl yes great then i'll take it i'll take one of those vinyls and it's on uh you know it's on all those digital things too you want to try to play a song sure all right well i mean you're going to get to jam on this too it's just got some lyrics all right um go for it

let's do a roll roll roll how about that yeah yeah yeah okay you go ahead b flat or B flat? B flat. Okay. This is Guitar Junior. The great Guitar Junior. We're gonna cheer up the living Gonna wake up the dead Midnight girl, we're gonna paint this town red

We're gonna roll We're gonna roll Roll Roll all night long. We're gonna pull back the rug, we're gonna kick up the floor. Midnight girl, we're gonna boogie some more. We're gonna roll, we're gonna roll, roll, We can roll Roll Roll all night long, Clayman Let's roll, baby... Thank you. We're gonna book it fast, we're gonna book it slow Midnight girl, we're gonna book it some more

We're gonna roll, we're gonna boogie some more, we're gonna roll We're gonna roll Roll baby Roll all night long, let's roll We're gonna roll, baby Roll all night long Yeah, and that was a tune by Guitar Junior from Louisiana who we all know now as Lonnie Brooks. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and that was a tune by Guitar Junior from Louisiana, who we all know now as Lonnie Brooks. Oh, yeah.

Well, thanks for hanging out, man. I really had a good time. Thank you. I loved it. Thanks, man. There you go. There you go. Me and Jimmy Vaughn.

I think we're okay with music. So just please, be careful this weekend. Try to be kind to yourself, kind to other people. Reflect on what you can do better and how you can be there for others. All right? And you can fight a little. You can fight a little. Happy Thanksgiving.

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