In 1969, a teenage guitarist from a Fort Worth band called the Chessmen lent his Vox wah-wah pedal to Jimi Hendrix, who destroyed it on stage and handed back his own road-tested pedal as an apology. That teenager was Jimmie Vaughan. This episode traces the foundational architect of Texas blues rock from his birth in March 1951 in the gritty Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, his first gig at L.V. Stockard Junior High in 1965, and his move to Austin in the late 1960s, where he played with Paul Ray and W.C. Clark before forming the Fabulous Thunderbirds with Kim Wilson, Keith Ferguson and drummers Mike Buck and later Fran Christina, mentored by Antone's founder Clifford Antone.

We look at why the Thunderbirds' first four albums from 1979 to 1983 became paramount texts of modern electric blues yet sold so poorly the band lost its contract in th ...