In July 1982, an unknown guitarist from Texas in a wide-brimmed hat walked onto the stage of the Montreux Jazz Festival with his rhythm section Double Trouble and unleashed ear-splitting electric blues on a crowd expecting polite acoustic jazz. They booed him off. What Stevie Ray Vaughan did not know was that David Bowie and Jackson Browne were in the audience, and both were blown away. Bowie recruited him to play lead guitar on Let's Dance, and Browne offered free use of his Los Angeles studio, where Vaughan and the band cut their 1983 debut Texas Flood in a couple of days. That supposed disaster launched a mainstream career that lasted only seven years yet is credited with reviving the entire blues genre in the 1980s.

This episode traces the whole arc: a volatile Dallas childhood with an alcoholic, violent father; learning by ear from Mud ...