Lost 1989 blues and soul concert, featuring Stevie Ray Vaughan, gets PBS airdate in March
By Robert Wilonsky
4:08 pm on February 3, 2014
Writing in The New York Times on January 23, 1989, music critic John Rockwell declared the four-hour blues-and-soul concert dubbed a “Celebration for Young Americans” nothing less than “a night for boogying and head-scratching.” It was the final event of George H.W. Bush’s inaugural weekend, but was far more down-home than D.C. thanks to a line-up assembled by the late Lee Atwater, the GOP dirty-trickster who’d done some time playing guitar with Percy Sledge. Among the performers were Oak Cliff’s own Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan (who shared a stage during “Frosty” and “Love Struck Baby”), Rolling Stone Ron Wood, Albert Collins, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Fort Worth’s Delbert McClinton, Sam Moore and other bold-faced bluesmen and woman whose names appear in myriad halls of fame.
The concert was recorded, using seven cameras and 24-track audio, but it never surfaced — because, PBS says now, it was thought to be lost. But according to PBS it was found six years ago — where, we’re not sure — at which point it was dusted off and polished up: “The original video was restored, re-mastered, color-corrected, and converted to HD, and the audio was remixed to a 6-channel, 5.1 format.”
And in March it will make its official bow on PBS as the newly christened A Celebration of Blues & Soul: The 1989 Celebration Concert.
“PBS viewers are in for a once-in-a-lifetime musical treat,” says Joyce Moore, wife of Sam Moore and one of the show’s producers, in a prepared statement. “This broadcast of the concert originally called ‘A Celebration for Young Americans’ is especially significant because it contains truly magnificent performances from brilliant American icons we have since lost — Billy Preston, Willie Dixon, Albert Collins, Bo Diddley, Duck Dunn, Lafayette Leake and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It was an honor and the thrill of a lifetime to have been part of and associated with this inaugural event when it occurred in 1989.”
It’s not yet clear when it’ll air on KERA-Channel 13; after all, we’re a few weeks away from airtime. And we’ve asked for some more details concerning the discovery of the “lost” footage. Till we get some, this four-minute sneak peek, featuring Stevie Ray and Double Trouble performing “Superstition,” will no doubt do.
