The indelible image of legendary guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan is him
standing at the front of the stage, growling into the microphone, and
doing things to the guitar no one will ever completely duplicate as he
worked himself into a sweaty mess of revitalized blues. But even for a
once-in-a-lifetime artist like Stevie Ray, there was still a rhythm
section grounding him, supporting him, pushing him, and taking him to
new places. For Vaughan, that rhythm section was Tommy Shannon and
drummer Chris Layton, and they stuck together from 1980 all the way
until Vaughan’s untimely death in 1990. And on their fourth studio
album, In Step [1989, Sony], Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble
cooked up a combination of blues, rock, and funk on a tune called
“Tightrope” that served as the record’s greasiest groove.
It was also a breakthrough tune for the band’s development. Vaughan and Shannon’s rough lifestyle during the 1980s is well documented, and In Step was the first album they did clean. The results spoke for themselves; the songwriting was more focused and mature, and new ideas were being explored constantly. It was while they were working on what would become their highest-charting single, “Crossfire,” that they stumbled onto the foundation for “Tightrope.”
“It was just a funky groove,” Shannon says in his native- Texas twang. “Chris and I were jamming it in rehearsals for In Step, just messing around. Stevie was actually singing the lyrics to ‘Crossfire’ while we were playing it, and he liked it.” Eventually it became an entirely different song, and “Tightrope” was born. So even though Vaughan and Doyle Bramhall are the credited songwriters, it started with the groove by Shannon and Layton. “Everything in that band was a spontaneous thing—there was no plan to do that. A lot of things Chris and I played were just us messing around.”
Shannon used a ’79 Fender Jazz bass for the recording, which ran through one channel direct and another channel through an AMP amp to a miked Hartke 4x10 cabinet. It’s still a vintage tone, but it cuts with a little more midrange punch than some of the earlier Double Trouble material, and it fits the funky syncopation of “Tightrope” well. Everything in this song is swinging: the drums, the rhythm guitar, the Hammond organ, and certainly the bass. It’s not a hard swing; it’s more of a medium, laid-back, half-swinging groove that Shannon uses to get the 16th-notes bouncing.
Some transcription notes: Though Stevie Ray’s band always tuned down a half-step to Eb, they were always thinking E on their instruments, so that’s how this transcription is written. (To play along with the recording, just tune down a half-step, and then read along as if you hadn’t retuned.) The key is written as B minor, simply because there are far more minor 3rds in the bass line than major 3rds, despite the plentiful B7 chords.
After a quick introductory motif, Shannon establishes the main groove of the song at letter A. He hits two fat eighth-notes on the root, and then waits for the last 16thnote of beat two to play a very short open E (or even a muted E, depending on interpretation) and set up the beat three lick of B-A-B. Finally, he slides in another tight open E on the second 16th-note of beat four before using A# as a passing tone to return to the root. All of this happens in 1st position, is fairly regimented, and is played tightly, like a funk tune. That groove returns after a re-intro for a double verse at letter C, and pretty much anchors the whole song.
At bar 25 we reach the first chorus, where Shannon slides up the neck, moving between 5th and 7th position as he creates a slightly different motif under the alternating E7 and B7 chords. The band plays this section more loosely; Shannon gets in touch with his inner James Jamerson, using a variety of 16th-note syncopations to swing the tune even harder. He tends to improvise a little more over the E7 (check out bars 25 and 27 for the two most common variations), but he sticks with the pattern in bar 26 over the root B7 chord. All the while, he’s employing that open E as a way to mute or half-mute the offbeat 16thnotes for deeper levels of groove.
Tommy keeps this up in the guitar solo, which lasts for two blues forms and gives Shannon a chance to show off the innate songwriter’s awareness in his bass line. The first time around (letter E), he plays the verse groove (albeit in a different position, which he says he did on purpose) throughout the changing chords of the blues, leading to some nifty climbs and funky falls (bars 41 and 42). Then, the second time (letter F), he uses the root pattern from the chorus, originally established in bar 26, as a motif for the remainder of the solo, and he and Layton tear it up for another 11 bars before bringing it back to the intro motif.
Eventually, after another verse and chorus, Shannon throws in the kitchen sink at letter J, using busier lines, octaves, new syncopations, and climbs up and down the neck to elevate the groove to a new level of intensity as it starts to fade. Highlight passages include bars 79–81, 95–96, and the long climb from 101–104, which leads into the fade of one of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s most memorable—and irresistibly playable—later songs.
"We were coming together as a band,” says Shannon, “and we were leaning more toward songs like ‘Tightrope.’” So while the unfulfilled promise of Double Trouble’s new stylistic direction only serves to underscore the tragedy of Vaughan’s death, the groove-jam origin of “Tightrope” reminds us that, even when playing in a band with one of the most famous guitarists ever to pick up the instrument, a bassist has a special kind of musical power. Tommy Shannon is living proof.
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