Happy birthday to Jimmie Vaughan. I had the great good fortune to move to Austin in 1977, just in time to drop into the middle of the blues community centered around the original Antone’s club on Sixth Street. Jimmie was the inspirational force who drew many great blues players to that remarkable scene.

Jimmie was in his mid-twenties but had already been a Texas guitar legend for nearly a decade. After seeing Muddy Waters at a Dallas club in 1968, Jimmie had an epiphany that the blues was his natural home, and ever since he has relentlessly pursued the best aspects of the blues—space, tone, playing behind the beat, and telling a story. The original T-Birds were a quartet, and Jimmie mesmerized audiences and fellow musicians with his ability to play rhythm and lead simultaneously. Blues legends like Buddy Guy and rock stars like Billy Gibbons and Eric Clapton thought of him as a peer.

When I met Jimmie and Kim Wilson in the late ‘70s, I was just as impressed with their attitude as I was with their heavy chops. I knew other white bluesmen with unique talents, but they tended to buy into the entire blues lifestyle and the professional limitations that came with it. Kim and Jimmie were absolutely convinced that the way to become rich and famous rock stars was to only play the real blues shit. And then they proceeded to demonstrate that their preposterous notion was dead right.

After quitting the T-Birds and taking a few years off in the ‘90s, Jimmie re-emerged with a very different approach. He fronted his Tilt-A-Whirl band as the singer, added a rhythm guitarist, and carved his guitar style down even further to lean hard on the soulful, elemental basics that make the blues so irresistible.

Jimmie is still out there playing the real Texas blues and adding new aspects to his mastery. Most recently he’s been working a lot with an organ trio. Whatever he does, Jimmie’s less-is-more approach is always nothing less than the real deal. He’s a national treasure. Every time I listen to Jimmie I remember why I fell so hard for the blues so many years ago.