At 70, guitar great Jimmie Vaughan is still strumming along and coming to WoodSongs

Our assignment for today: How to best measure the musical inspiration, innovation and legacy of Jimmie Vaughan.

Estimate it by length and it would stretch from his teens, when the multi-Grammy winning Texas guitarist shared the stage in 1969 with Jimi Hendrix, to last month, when he opened a series of concerts throughout the South for Eric Clapton (a collaborative pal for over three decades.)

Rather use sound and style as units of measure? Okay. Let’s start with the blues and roots-rock influences that abounded around Vaughan in his native Dallas and, eventually, his longtime cultural home base of Austin. Then toss in the assorted swing, jump blues and rustic Americana sounds he absorbed as his career progressed.

Maybe you prefer you to use the size, atmosphere and location of the international venues he has played, from the Austin clubs that kept him gigging almost every night of the week during the 1970s to the arenas he played with the likes of Clapton, revered younger brother Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Lone Star rock tribe The Fabulous Thunderbirds. The latter took Vaughan to Lexington for the first time in 1986 via a Rupp Arena show with Bob Seger.

Whichever way you add up the many moving parts and glorious sounds that Vaughan has reveled in for over a half century, what you end up with is one of the most prestigious guitar-savvy careers in or out of Lone Star country.

“I just love to play, man,” said Vaughan, 70, who returns to Lexington to perform for the Oct. 18 taping of the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. “I mean, from the first time I ever had a gig in the early ’60s, there was something exciting about it. You never knew exactly what was going to happen.”

What has Vaughan back on the road this fall is a new five-disc box set retrospective titled, aptly enough, “The Jimmie Vaughan Story.” Like many similarly designed anthologies, it samples and surveys the music of a mammoth career. In Vaughan’s case, the package covers plenty of works from the Fabulous Thunderbirds and his subsequent solo career. Where it surprises, though, is in an exhaustive array of collaborative recordings with fellow Lone Star legends (Delbert McClinton), roots rock pioneers (Bo Diddley), blues icons (John Lee Hooker) and high-profile peers (Bonnie Raitt.)

“It’s kind of … vast, if you know what I mean,” Vaughan said of the “Story” collection. “I don’t really know if I’ve been able to soak it all in yet, you know? We dug all the stuff out. It was all in storage. Some it was on cassettes, some of it was on reel-to-reel. Malcolm Mills (who compiled and curated the music) really put the package together. He dug, dug, dug and found a lot of interesting stuff.”

The Fabulous Thunderbirds

All of the boxed set’s first disc and much of its second is devoted to recordings with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the blues-rooted rock troupe Vaughan co-founded with harmonica stylist/vocalist Kim Wilson. The band was one of Central Texas’ most popular roots-driven acts, serving as the house band at Austin’s famed blues club Antone’s. The Thunderbirds eventually became a national sensation during the ’80s heyday of MTV with hits like “Tuff Enuff” before Vaughan departed in 1990.

“Kim and I met up at a club called Alexander’s. It was a place way in South Austin, almost out of town, where they used to have gigs on Sunday afternoon. I was playing with a band called Storm, which is also on the box set. Kim sat in and was terrific. He was a great harmonica player and a great singer, so we hit it off. Then, after a couple of months we got together and decided to start the Fabulous Thunderbirds.”

Late brother Stevie Ray Vaughan

“The Jimmie Vaughan Story” turns personal with two very different versions of “Six Strings Down,” a tune written by New Orleans keyboard titan Art Neville as a requiem for Stevie Ray Vaughan. The younger Vaughan, who enjoyed enormous popularity during the 1980s, died in a helicopter crash following an August 1990 concert at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Michigan that also featured Clapton and sibling Jimmie.

One version is an electric ensemble jam that enlists fellow bluesmen Buddy Guy, Robert Cray and Dr. John as well as Clapton, Neville and Raitt. The other is a stark, sobering solo reading by the elder Vaughan that reflects a greater sense of the tragedy’s weight.

“I used to take Stevie to school,” Vaughan recalled. “I was his big brother. I was four years older, so I had to take him to school and bring him home, as a big brother would, when he was little. We used to go stand out by the bus stop. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

“Even though there was nothing I could do about the tragic accident, I felt that, somehow, part of me had let my mother down. I didn’t bring him home that night.”

Sitting in vivid contrast to “Six Strings Down,” are two versions of the 1958 Larry Davis blues favorite “Texas Flood,” which was a staple of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s repertoire. The first is a spirited, full band performance highly respectful of the tune’s blues heritage. The second, though, was cut not with blues players in a recording studio, but with the University of Texas Longhorn Band at a football game. It stands as one of the box set’s most distinctive works.

“I’m real proud of that one,” Vaughan said. “You know, it was raining cats and dogs when we did that. We found the track from this college student who got it on her phone. You can hear all the echoing in the big stadium and you can hear all the horns. And, man, you should have seen the marching band. It was really something.

“You know what you’re going for with this music. A lot of these tunes we do have a theme at the beginning that you repeat at the end. But in the middle? In the middle you don’t know what’s going to happen because the music’s open, right? The music is very exciting that way.

“It’s like jumping off a cliff. Maybe you’ve got wings. Maybe you don’t.”

Jimmie Vaughan performs at 6:45 pm Oct. 18 at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, 300 E. Third for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Tickets are $10. Call 859-280-2218 or go to www.tix.com/ticket-sales/lexingtonlyric/3544.

Keith McCutchen jazz piano concert

Though he has been a versed and visible member of the Central Kentucky jazz community for decades as a bandleader as well as band member, pianist Keith McCutchen has been most active lately as an educator. He teaches music history, composition and arranging at Kentucky State University while also directing the KSU Jazz Ensemble. On Oct. 15, he gets to showcase his new Latin Jazz Experience band (tenor saxophonist Kirby Davis, trombonist Dave Henderson, bassist Tyrone Wheeler and drummer Paul Deatherage) with performances for the Origins Jazz Series. McCutchen will play at Base249, located at 249 E. Main (7 and 9:15 p.m.; $20 for each set, $30 for both.) Please review Origins’ COVID-19 protocol if you’re planning on attending. For info and tickets, go to originsjazz.org.