Before the Flood

ADAPTED FROM TEXAS FLOOD: THE INSIDE STORY OF STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN BY ALAN PAUL AND ANDY ALEDORT Copyright (c) by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press

IN OCTOBER 1979, Stevie Ray Vaughan met a person who’d change his fate. Edi Johnson was a bookkeeper at the Manor Downs horse track outside of Austin and, after getting to know Stevie for most of a year, she asked her boss, Frances Carr, if she might offer financial backing to the guitarist, whose talent and need for help were equally obvious. Carr was from a prominent South Texas family, not to mention a friend of the Grateful Dead. Sam Cutler, ex-Dead and Rolling Stones road manager, helped her open Manor Downs in 1975. Chesley Millikin, an Irishman who had been general manager of Epic Records in Europe and also was close to the Dead, was another friend and the track’s general manager. Carr and Millikin formed Classic Management specifically to manage Vaughan, starting in May 1980. Stevie finally had some outside support to help propel him beyond the club circuit.

After eight years of honing his craft and finding his own artistic voice, the 12-month period from January 1980 to January 1981 would prove to be pivotal in Vaughan’s career. After years of toughing it out in beer joints, couch surfing and riding in broken-down vans for weeks at a time, with no place to call home and no money in his pocket, the essential elements to Stevie’s success began to fall into place one by one. His old friend Cutter Brandenburg was back by his side, along with bassist Tommy Shannon, who would become his closest friend. With the financial assistance of Frances Carr and the music industry connections