In The Beginning: Live In Austin, Texas 1980 [Live]

He opens with the powerful "In the Open", a loud and fast guitar workout. You can hear the ease as he moves around the guitar in the instrumental piece. The notes drip from his fretboard. Moving straight into "Slide Thing" he plays with a slide across the strings in another instrumental track. Definitely a cool piece. A few of his standards appear here for the first time, like "Love Struck Baby" his jump blues which opens "Texas Flood", a tad faster played live. "I'm Crying" closes this album under the title of "Live Another Day". The star of this concert is the heartfelt "Tin Pan Alley", which is full of signature Stevie licks and his powerful blues voice. He would record this later as "Roughest Place In Town" on "Couldn't Stand the Weather". This raw version is a must have for any Stevie fan. Another great cut is a cover of Otis Rush's "All Your Love I Miss Loving."

"In the Beginning" is aptly named for we hear Stevie at the beginning of his recording career. This is him before the record deals, just an Austin local bending strings and playing the blues on the verge of stardom. He's not quite refined here, but his sound is raw and powerful, and you can already hear how special of a performer his is. No Stevie fan's collection is complete without this early live recording.

Stevie Ray does a funky rendition of Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones' "They Call Me Guitar Hurricane", a supremely groovy "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)" (the Otis Rush classic) with some excellent syncopated drumming by Chris Layton, and a very good and very mature take on the slow blues "Tin Pan Alley".

His vocal prowess doesn't quite match that of Elmore James or Howlin' Wolf, obviously, but Stevie Ray still manages to pull off a fine performance of Wolf's "Tell Me", and he and the band swing mightily on Willie Dixon's "Shake For Me", proving (if proof was needed) that Vaughan actually had a powerful and often underrated singing voice.

And you get to hear early versions of his own "Love Struck Baby", the opening track on his debut album three years later, and the wonderful, swinging blues-rocker "I'm Cryin'", which was called "Live Another Day" back in 1980, after the line "(If) I can't love my baby / I can't live another day".

This is a really, really good "live in the studio" album, with only a few SRV originals, but featuring some well-chosen and masterfully executed cover songs. A very worthy addition to Stevie Ray Vaughan's catalogue.