Blues guitar hero Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954–1990) ended his final gig with a vibrant all-star jam of “Sweet Home Chicago” alongside Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, and his brother Jimmie in Wisconsin.

After the show, he boarded a helicopter bound for Chicago that tragically crashed in dense fog. The world lost a musician who played his Fender Stratocaster with unmatched passionate abandon and beautiful reverence.

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

Born in Dallas, Texas, Stevie Ray began guitar at age seven, inspired by his brother Jimmie and Jimi Hendrix. By 12, he was already playing in bands. “I was gifted with music for a reason and it wasn’t just to get famous,” he said in 1978.

Clapton, considered a guitar god by many, recalled watching him on stage and thinking, “I have to go on after this guy?” He later said, “He was like a channel—one of the purest I’ve ever seen—where everything he sang and played seemed to flow straight down from heaven.”

B. B. King called playing with Stevie exciting: “His ideas were limitless. He flowed. He was like water, constantly dripping with rhythm.”

Stevie Ray couldn’t read or write sheet music, but played from the heart with explosive finger-picking. “Sometimes in trying to find things, I’d just stick my hand on the neck. Sometimes it’s a surprise and sometimes it becomes what I wanted to hear. I visualize… Some of my favorite things to play started as mistakes.”

King called Stevie Ray’s death a loss to music and to mankind: “The only thing that keeps me from crying is knowing the joy he brought to us. I can see his smile right now, him sitting there with his Mexican hat on, saying, ‘Hey, it’s all right.’”