Blues guitar hero Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954–1990) played the final gig of his life with an all-star jam of Sweet Home Chicago, sharing the stage with Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, and his brother Jimmie in Wisconsin.

Tragically, shortly after takeoff, the helicopter carrying him to Chicago crashed in dense fog. The world lost a musician whose Fender Stratocaster expressed passionate reverence and raw beauty.

“I never cry,” blues legend John Lee Hooker confessed. “But when I heard the news, I sat down on my bed and cried like a little baby.”

Born in Dallas, Vaughan began playing guitar at seven, inspired by his brother Jimmie and by Jimi Hendrix. By twelve, he was in bands. “I was gifted with music for a reason, and it wasn’t just to get famous,” he said in 1978.

That gift left even Clapton in awe. Watching Vaughan play, Clapton admitted thinking, “I have to go on after this guy?”

“He was like a channel,” Clapton said. “The purest I’ve ever seen. Everything he sang and played flowed straight down from heaven... After half an hour of watching him, I had to leave just to preserve my confidence.”

Music icon B.B. King called playing with Stevie “exciting.” His ideas were limitless. “He was like water, constantly drippin’ with rhythm.”

Though he couldn’t read sheet music, Stevie Ray played from feeling, from somewhere deep inside. His explosive style came from instinct. “Sometimes I just stick my hand on the neck... sometimes it becomes what I wanted to hear,” he explained. “Some of my favorite things started as mistakes.”

His music still lingers—bending notes, vibrating truth.

“The only thing that keeps me from crying,” King said of Stevie’s death, “is knowing the joy he brought. I can see his smile right now, wearing that Mexican hat, saying, ‘Hey, it’s all right.’”