Old Jam, Blood

Robert Cray began to learn guitar in his early teens while attending high school in his hometown of Newport News, Virginia. By the age of 20 he had seen many of his blues heroes, such as Albert Collins, Freddie King and Muddy Waters, and decided to form his own group. Having moved to the North West by this time, The Robert Cray Band began playing college towns on the West Coast. After several years of regional success, Cray was signed to Mercury Records in 1982. Two albums on High-Tone Records in the mid-1980s, Bad Influence and False Accusations, were moderately successful in the United States and in Europe. His fourth album, Strong Persuader, received a Grammy Award, while the crossover single 'Smokin' Gun' gave him wider appeal. The live performance by The Robert Cray Band featured on this CD comes from a show played at The Redux Club in Dallas on 21st January 1987. Transmitted by FM Radio Station Q102, ensuring near perfect audio quality and a set-list to die for, the recording here could hardly be bettered. However, joining Cray and his group for the final three numbers on this legendary evening almost 30 years ago was none other than Stevie Ray Vaughan himself, and as the two blues greats bounced licks and solos off each other - most memorably on the delightful ten minute jam which forms the penultimate cut - and the era of the 1980s blues revival was defined in no uncertain terms. Tragically, on the next occasion that the pair would share a stage at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin, when they both joined Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy and Stevie's elder brother Jimmie Vaughan, for a performance of 'Sweet Home Chicago,' Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash following the show, along with three members of Clapton's entourage and the flight pilot. We can be thankful only that Robert Cray was spared a similar fate that night and continues to fly the flag for a style without which there would be no contemporary rock music at all.