Headed to Dallas for a gig, Jackson Browne — and fate — helped launch Stevie Ray Vaughan

Dallas resident Don Henley and his band, the Eagles, made news recently by announcing a concert tour that they say will be their last. It’s called “The Long Goodbye.” Henley and Jackson Browne were part of the same Southern California sound in the 1970s, when they first appeared on the musical landscape. (”Take It Easy,” arguably the Eagles’ biggest hit, was co-written by Browne and Glenn Frey, who co-founded the Eagles with Henley.) Henley is now 75, and although Browne is 74, he has made no such pronouncements about his current tour being his last. His swing through the South brings him to the 6,350-seat Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie on Wednesday night.

What many locally may not know about Browne is the role he played in shaping the career of Dallas blues icon Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the early 1980s, Browne and longtime bass player Bob Glaub met Stevie Ray in Montreux, Switzerland, and were blown away by his ferocious guitar playing. When they learned he had not yet released a record, Browne offered to let him use his Los Angeles recording studio for free, leading to Stevie Ray’s sensational debut album, Texas Flood. And the rest, as they say, is music history. Days after Stevie Ray died in a helicopter crash in East Troy, Wis., in 1990, at age 35, Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Wonder sang “Amazing Grace” at his Dallas funeral. Stevie Ray is buried in Laurel Land Memorial Park in Oak Cliff, where he grew up and where a monument in his honor and that of his brother, Jimmie Vaughan, was erected in Kiest Park in 2020. There is also a Stevie Ray Vaughan statue in Austin. Earlier this year, Stevie Ray Vaughan Park opened in Cockrell Hill, three miles from the blues icon’s boyhood home.

Reached at his home on the West Coast, Glaub recalled when he and Browne met Stevie Ray. “We had just played that night,” Glaub said. “Jackson had just performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Stevie had played the night before. When we finished playing, I was walking around the casino in Montreux, and in the basement, there was a club. And I opened the doors to the club — I was by myself — and immediately was blown away. My jaw was on the ground, hearing this band just burning on a real fast blues shuffle. And I just stood there with my mouth wide open for a couple of minutes.”

In an era long before cellphones, Glaub rushed to the house phone outside the door to the club. “I immediately called everyone in the band and said, ‘You gotta get down here and hear this guy.’ Jackson was having dinner in the casino somewhere. I went up and found him and told him to get his [expletive] down there right now. So, we hung out all night. We jammed with Stevie. Lifelong friendships were formed.”

Which led directly to Vaughan using Browne’s personal recording studio, for free, during the three days before Thanksgiving in 1982 to lay down the tracks for his debut album. Released June 13, 1983, Texas Flood sold more than 2 million copies in the United States alone, leading to a certification of Double Platinum — and most important of all, launching Vaughan’s career.