Just learned…

The 12 Bar Blues chord progression (Stevie Ray Vaughan”s Pride and Joy) on M8 L5, and I’m absolutely ecstatic with this! Great job @JoshFossgreen incorporating all these concepts into this lesson! :+1:t3::+1:t3: I feel like I’m really on my way to understanding a lot of the theory and at the same time I’m so proud of where I am in my ability to play some music. I kept shouting to my wife - “Michelle, look at this! I’m playing a 12 bar Blues chord progression.” :rofl:

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Very cool, man! I live in Austin and have for decades. I love the blues and I would see Stevie for free back in the day, then for a $1.00 cover a bunch. That was before anyone outside of Austin knew of him, of course.

I met him twice. Once when he was shooting a PSA at the video production company where I was a producer. I came back from lunch one day and coming up the hall towards me was the familiar poncho and hat, with the brim facing almost straight down. I approached him and he looked up warily: he was obviously strung out and on the way to the bathroom for some relief. I fanboyed him big time, saying, “Man, I love your shit.” And he looked at me incredulously and said, “You do?” Of course, I said hell yes!

The next time I met him was a couple of years later, at a recording studio where I was producing a commercial. Again, Stevie was there to tape a PSA, this time for a “Don’t Mess with Texas!” anti-littering campaign. This time, he was entirely different: he looked healthy, smiling broadly, and looked me straight in the eye. He had gone through rehab and was all good. When he went down the hall to the bathroom this time, it was for all the right reasons. And, when he stepped out of the studio, he left his fave strat called “Number One”, sitting on a stool. I checked it out and was blown away to see that he was using super-heavy gauge strings with sky-high action! Holy crap, you’d have to have the strength of a gorilla to press them down, but he made them sing at hypersonic speed. He was a Texas Guitar Slinger like no one before or since.

Oh, and he wrote Pride and Joy for his wife, Lenny, who he mentions in the lyrics:

I love my Lenny
She’s long and lean
You mess with her
You see a man get mean

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Wow!! Really cool to hear these stories @MikeC! I first started hearing about him in the 80s. I know many guitarists have tried to mimic his style and some have even made a living by becoming players that basically copy his style. He was a legend.

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@JoshFossgreen, I was super stoked to have “just learned” a 12 Bar Blues progression but equally happy to have just learned the bass line to Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, even though I was never a fan of Journey it was fun and my wife always liked that song. #accomplishments #justlearned #thankyoujosh

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I was still living in Dallas when Stevie became popular and bought his CDs as soon as they came out. I had hoped to see him perform when he came to Dallas, but unfortunately that hope came to an end when he was tragically killed in August 1990.
Stevie was a perfect example of someone who couldn’t read a lick of music, but just tore it up on the guitar.

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Stevie and Jimmy, his older brother and lead player for The Fabulous Thunderbirds, had an interesting journey with guitar. Their dad knew they wanted to learn to play, so he bought them a cheap electric. Problem was: Dad didn’t realize they would need an amp! The boys not only fought over who would get to play the guitar, but in order to hear the notes louder, they resorted to pushing the guitar’s headstock against their mother’s armoire while they strummed the strings. The resulting vibrations were thereby “amplified.” Once Dad saw what they resorted to, he bought them a small amp, and the rest is history.

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It May not be your cup of tea. But you gotta admit that’s a beautifully composed line. The whole song is amazingly fun to play, and not quite as challenging as it may seem. I actually play that line quite a lot. It’s just fun.

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such a sad day. it was at alpine valley in wisconsin, a big outdoor concert venue. here in chicago alpine valley was THE place that you went to to see all the big 70’s stadium acts, so it felt like it happened here in chicago.

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The most tragic aspect of it all was that the helicopter that went down wasn’t the one Stevie was scheduled to be on initially. He was eager to leave the venue, so he took a seat on the first available flight out. He was happy, healthy and at the top of his game following a spectacular show. Heaven got a hell of a player in the band that night.

Rest in badassery, Stevie.

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Oh, it is most definitely my cup, mug, tumbler, and 10-gallon jug of Texas Sweet Tea.

@MikeC, I think @autumnsdad1990 was referring to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ Oh I totally agree! :+1:t4: 100% Just being able to play anything that sounds musical feels amazing. I like all kinds of music and there is plenty of stuff (genres) that I might not be into but I LOVE music and am in awe of ALL musicians.

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Many folks don’t realize that the blues was born and raised simultaneously in the Mississippi Delta and Texas.

Just a smattering of our most influential Texas bluesmen: Mance Lipscomb, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightning Hopkins, Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, Gatemouth Brown, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, Billy Gibbons, Gary Clark Junior, and, of course, the Vaughn bothers: Stevie and Jimmy, and many, many more.

Texans have a generalized reputation for being yeehaw-shouting rednecks. Texas blues folks have a proud history of singin’ it ain’t necessarily so. :wink:

Ah, OK. I didn’t get that.

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I THINK so, because I had said how I wasn’t too crazy about that song but my wife did like it. But I really enjoyed learning it and being able to play it.

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I was. I should have clarified.

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