IV BBF Award 2025

JIMMIE VAUGHAN, IV BILBAO BLUES FESTIVAL AWARD

The great blues festival returns to the city this summer, consolidated as a first class international reference. The fourth edition of the Bilbao Blues Festival will be held from 25 to 27 July with the Arenal as the main stage. In this edition the prize of the event will go to the blues legend Jimmie Vaughan (Texas, 1951), winner of four Grammys, who will offer his only concert in the Villa in Spain.

In 1976 he formed the legendary band The Fabulous Thunderbirds with singer and harmonica player Kim Wilson, bassist Keith Ferguson and drummer Mike Buck. After leaving the band in 1989, he began a brilliant solo career.

‘Little by little the festival has become more and more established, it has become an important part of the city’s festival calendar and is already an international benchmark. This year we are especially happy to be able to put the txapela on for none other than Jimmie Vaughan. We have been after him for many years but there has always been some complication that has made it impossible. The public will once again enjoy a great festival with Vaughan and the rest of the artists that we will be announcing soon’, congratulates Carlos Malles, director of the event.

THE ELEGANCE OF A GREAT BLUES GUITAR STAR

Jimmie Vaughan (Oak Cliff, Texas, 1951), one of the most outstanding guitarists in the history of American blues, has four Grammy Awards and eight nominations throughout his successful career. Encouraged by his father, he began playing at a very early age, also acting as mentor and teacher to his younger brother Stevie Ray, considered one of the greatest guitar legends, who died prematurely in a plane crash in 1990 at the age of 35.

In the mid-1970s he formed The Fabulous Thunderbirds with Wilson, a band that modernised and refreshed the blues of the time and in which he recorded seven albums until 1990, when he undertook the ‘Family Style’ project with the revered Stevie Ray, who disappeared shortly afterwards.

Vaughan resumed his solo career three years later. To date, he has released five albums: ‘Strange Pleasure’ (1994), ‘Out there’ (1998), ‘Do you Get the Blues?’ (2001), ‘Plays Blues, Ballads & Favourites’ (2010) and ‘Baby please come home’ (2019).