For Your Weekend Listening Pleasure: Jimmie Vaughan Says Howdy to Fair Park in May '98

Jimmie's first band was The Pendulums, which bowed at the 1966 Sunset High School Bisonettes Winter Dance.

​Got an email from Kirby Warnock a few days ago that said Jimmie Vaughan would be returning to Oak Cliff on November 10 -- to the Texas Theatre, matter of fact, as part of his ongoing "Soul of Oak Cliff" series, which means seats are extremely limited with ticket prices running $45 for general admission and $95 for the VIP meet-n-greet. No doubt the place will be full of old friends: Kirby promises "the evening will begin with Jimmie and some of his former classmates taking part in a panel discussion about Oak Cliff and its influences on Jimmie and his younger brother Stevie Ray Vaughan." Then, the band'll play.

Now, Kirby notes that Jimmie -- whose new record, Plays More Blues, Ballads & Favorites, is but two months old -- was born and raised on Glenfield, near Kiest Park, and that he went to Browne Middle School and then Oak Cliff Christian Academy before he "ran off from home," as Jimmie put it. And while there's some debate over when he might have gone to L.V. Stockard Middle School, one thing's for sure: Jimmie was in the fourth and final lineups of The Chessmen, one of Dallas's greatest garage-rock bands of the mid- to late '60s, including the very same iteration that opened for Jimi Hendrix at the Fair Park Music Hall on February 16, 1968, a historic occasion we covered last September.

Exactly 30 years later, Jimmie would return to Fair Park for a show that surfaced just a few weeks ago. That was during ARTFEST, if memory serves, and it does. It's quite a set too, with much of the set focused on '94's Strange Pleasure, his first solo record. But there are also a few nods to baby bro: "DFW," which appeared on Family Style; and "Texas Flood," the Larry Davis tune from which Stevie would take the title for his debut. Appropriate too that on this first day of the State Fair of Texas, Jimmie would intro the former thusly: "Howdy, folks, welcome to DFW."