STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN NEWS
Recent and Upcoming Releases & Products

A. RECORDINGS
    * 1978-79 recordings found: Double Trouble recordings from January 1978 through February 1979 at Hole Studios in Austin have been rediscovered. There are said to be 21 songs, mostly covers, but some early versions of Pride and Joy and other Vaughan tunes. The story was first released by the Austin Chronicle on September 5, 2008, but keep in mind there is an error in the story regarding the band's history. The writer claims Double Trouble did not debut until the spring of 1979, which is of course a year off. The writer notes that Jimmie Vaughan has had opportunities to release material from this period and has declined to do so. I'll not be holding my breath to see these tracks released.
     * Stevie Ray Vaughan X2: repackaging of Texas Flood and In the Beginning. No new tracks. Released 2/26/08.
    * Stevie Ray Vaughan & Friends: Solos, Sessions & Encores,  CD released November 6, 2007. It contains live and studio tracks of Stevie playing with B.B. King, Johnny Copeland, A.C. Reed, Lonnie Mack, Albert Collins, Bonnie Raitt and others. Approximately six of the tracks are previously unissued; the others are from somewhat harder to find releases by other artists. By the way, there is a liner notes error on "Goin' Down;" it should be identified as from the 1989 tour with Jeff Beck, not Hawaii 1984. There is a podcast of the promo radio special at http://blogs.legacyrecordings.com/podcast/category/stevie-ray-vaughan/
    * Pride and Joy, new DVD released November 6, 2007, includes Stevie's music videos and MTV Unplugged Click for more info
    * Stevie Ray Vaughan, Live at Carnegie Hall on 180-gram vinyl said to have been released October 10, 2007, by the SPD label in the UK. This is the first release of that material on vinyl. I have not found any place to order it yet, so it may have not been released after all. If you see it, let me know.
      *  Jennifer Warnes' Famous Blue Raincoat was re-released in Sept. 2007 as a 20th Anniversary package. I'm not aware of any extra SRV content. The video featuring Stevie is said to be posted on Warnes' website.
      *  Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble: Live - Play Hard & Floor It!, released in July 2007, a 24-minute DVD of five songs from previously released DVDs, made for PBS TV stations to use as a pledge drive premium. Limited quantity made. Contact your local PBS TV station to see if they are offering the DVD, or see www.KERA.org.   
      *  The Ultimate Stevie Ray Vaughan: The Real Deal: Greatest Hits Vol. 1, released December 2006. Simple repackaging of previously released material. This is the fifth "hits" repackaging Sony has released. Of the six CDs in these releases, there are a total of three tracks not available on other releases. How many more superlatives can be added to one CD title (Ultimate, Real Deal, Greatest Hits)? They left out "Essential," but of course they already have a repackaging called "Essential." And where does the original 1995 Greatest Hits fit in this scheme? And why was The Real Deal: Greatest Hits Vol 2 released six years before volume 1? Obviously the only scheme is to try to get fans to repurchase the same material as many times as possible. Don't buy it. The argument that a greatest hits package is for the casual fan, not the SRV collector, was used up on the first hits package in 1995. 
     *  Recent DVD releases of Daytona and Japan shows are not authorized by Sony or The Estate of SRV, and are reported to be of poor quality video and audio. I don't understand how these are getting into mainstream distribution channels in the US online and in music stores.
     * Stax Profiles: Albert King was released April 25, 2006, with "Born Under a Bad Sign" previously unreleased track from the In Session program in 1983. Antone's Home of the Blues, a DVD documentary available since 2004 overseas release June 6, 2006 in the US, and contains some footage of Stevie.
     * Pure Pleasure Records released a two-disc 180-gram vinyl reissue of Couldn't Stand the Weather on February 3, 2006, complete with the bonus tracks from the remastered CD. For the audiofile, this may be the best sound quality you can get.
     * The B.B. King Cinemax special from 1987, released under various titles, was released Oct 11, 2005 on DVD, CD and a DVD/CD package. The title is now "B.B. King Blues Session" and it is getting horrible reviews for video quality. Some are saying the old VHS is better. What a disappointment that this historic event was not treated with more care.
    * Angela Strehli's new CD (2005) contains a track with Stevie from Carnegie Hall, but it was on Stevie's Carnegie Hall CD years ago.
    *  The 1973 Marc Benno & the Nightcrawlers album recorded for A&M featuring Stevie Vaughan and Doyle Bramhall was finally released in Japan with some bonus tracks (12 songs in total) in September 2005. The discs were released by Marc Benno, and intended only for sale to those attending shows on his Japanese tour.  Only 800 discs were sold.  In the spring of 2006, Benno released the CD in the USA, but with one less track than the Japanese CD. Better cover artwork, though. Get it at CDBaby.com or marcbenno.com.
    *  Mama Mia! A 14-year mystery has finally been solved. In 1990 the first SRV guitar transcription and tablature book was published (Lightnin' Blues 1983-1987). At the end of the book a discography listed Stevie appearing on a single by Adelmo Fonaciari (sic) titled "Madre Dolcissima" on the Polygram label in Italy in 1989. That set off years of research trying to obtain a copy of this SRV guest appearance. I discovered that the artist's name was misspelled (Fornaciari is correct) and that he went by the nickname "Sugar" ("Zucchero" in Italian). (Click here for photo of Zucchero and SRV) I was able to find a CD with "Madre Dolcissima" but there was no credit for SRV and I could not detect his guitar work in the music. Neither Zucchero's management or fan club was able to shed any light on the mystery, and after five years of searching, I concluded that the discography was erroneous, probably mistaking Clapton who does appear as a guest on the CD. In August 2004, a fan named Luciana Rzegocki emailed me about a Zucchero website purporting to show Stevie in a video clip with Zucchero, but the web clip was very grainy and I wasn't convinced it was Stevie. (See it at http://www.zucchero.it/ZUandCOmpany/ and click on Limited CD+DVD) Within a couple of days, new research revealed that Stevie had in fact recorded with Zucchero, but the version with Stevie's solo had never been released. Further confusing things, the original song "Madre Dolcissima" (sung in Italian) had now become "Mama" sung primarily in English. The song was released 17 May 2004 on "Zu and Co.," a collection of Zucchero's songs on which special guests appear (Sting, Miles Davis, Jeff Beck, John Lee Hooker, Sheryl Crow, Clapton, BB King, etc.). With help from Luciana, I discovered that "Mama" with SRV appears only on the bonus DVD (with brief glimpses of Stevie in the video) on the Italian limited edition version, and on a CD single; the German, British and all other versions are just the CD which does not have "Mama." The internet was full of places selling the CD-only version, but the CD+DVD version was released only in Italy (I'm guessing for copyright reasons). The only website I could find selling the Italian version was in Switzerland, but I couldn't read the German, French or Italian languages of the website. I emailed my friend Dieter in Switzerland and he ordered it for me. Sure enough, this is a different version from the 1989 release, and Stevie is in fact in the video and does a guitar solo near the end of the song. After five years listing this as "unconfirmed" and almost ten more years assuming it was an error, this track can now be added back to my SRV discography. Update: the video with Stevie now also appears on a Zuccero DVD "Live at The Royal Albert Hall" in the UK. I'm not sure if it's being sold in the US. Update: Italy released a new 3-disc version of Zu & Co on November 11. 2005. I haven't seen details yet of how much SRV content is there.

Info about MTV Unplugged availability: From a fan in Europe: "The DVD only has 'Pride and Joy' on it. But there was three volume VHS-PAL (not compatible in US players) set called 'MTV Unplugged Finest Moments' released here in Europe. One of them featured 'Pride and Joy', but also featured the aborted and unbroadcast 'Life Without You'. It lasts 1 minute 40 seconds." (Thanks, Paul.) Update: Paul says the "Finest Moments" compilation was also released on laserdisc in Europe, so there is a digital version available. Update:  the 3 songs will finally be released on DVD in the USA on November 6, 2007, as part of the Pride and Joy DVD.

Antone's film documentary is being shown at a few independent theaters. Visit www.Antones-HomeOfTheBlues.com for details. UPDATE: It has now been released on DVD.

I am not aware of any other upcoming releases at this time, nor do I have significant input on record company decisions. Please don't ask for information not posted here.

PAST RELEASES:  Click here. See also the discography on the BIO page.

B. BIOGRAPHY & MOVIE

**The massive new SRV biography is called Stevie Ray Vaughan: Day By Day, Night After Night. 432 pages and 970 illustrations.  Click HERE for more information and to order now!**

    The Weinstein Company holds the movie rights to the Patoski/Crawford bio, Caught in the Crossfire. Miramax owned the rights to a biography to have been written by Dan Forte, but given the change in leadership of Miramax in 2005, and the fact the book was never finished, the status and ownership of rights to Forte's research is unknown. I called Miramax and Weinstein Company in the fall of 2006, and each company said they thought the other owned the movie rights to the Forte book. 
    Robert Rodriguez was originally slated to direct the movie for Miramax. From a March 2001 story in The Chicago Sun-Times: "The proposed movie based on the life of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan is still in the works, but Director Robert Rodriguez, who has worked on the project for two years, has not made a decision on who will portray Stevie. Rodriguez took the project for simple reasons. 'Harvey Weinstein from Miramax got the rights to Stevie's story, [and] I said, 'I'll do it.' Mostly, I signed on because I didn't want someone to take it as just another gig and put out a terrible movie. This was my way of protecting Stevie. Being from Austin, and a big fan of his music, I felt like I was the right person to bring Stevie's story to the screen. So I worked on a script about a man who wanted to live the blues. He became the blues.'" I am not aware of Rodriguez commenting publicly about the project since that 2001 article. 

    VH-1 planned a made-for-TV biopic, to be produced by Cosgrove-Muerer which produced the "Unsolved Mysteries" series on cable. The movie was to be written by Robert Johnson who wrote the Temptations mini-series, and a Showtime feature on Bill Bojangles Robinson starring Gregory Hines. Around 2000, new management at VH-1 shelved the SRV project, perhaps permanently.

    The A&E network also expressed interest, more than once, in doing a TV biography of Stevie, but it is believed those efforts have been discontinued as well, possibly due to a lack of participation by the Estate.

C. BOOKS/MAGAZINES
click photos for larger image. I depend on YOU to tell me about magazines in your region or country with Stevie on the cover.

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