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Blues band The Fabulous Thunderbirds – who had perhaps one of the least likely chart hits of the ’80s – will release a box set this year chronicling their most mainstream years and showcasing their original and best-known guitarist.

The Jimmie Vaughan Years: Complete Studio Recordings presents seven complete albums over four CDs: the Chrysalis releases The Fabulous Thunderbirds (1979), What’s the Word (1980), Butt Rockin’ (1981) and T-Bird Rhythm (1982), and the CBS Associated albums Tuff Enuff (1986), Hot Number (1987) and Powerful Stuff (1989). As an additional treat, the set also includes 13 never-before-released tracks from a 1978 session, co-produced by rock legend Doc Pomus and Joel Dorn for an unreleased debut. The discs are packaged in a 12″ hardcover book-style package packed with rare photos and liner notes by Bill Bentley chronicling the band’s history. It’ll be available from The Last Music Company (who have put out several frontline and catalogue releases for Vaughan) on November 7.

A pride of the legendary Austin blues club Antone’s, The Fabulous Thunderbirds have been anchored since 1974 by lead singer/harmonica player Kim Wilson – the band’s sole consistent member – but Jimmie Vaughan, a Dallas-born guitarist who’d replaced the late Robert Patton in The Chessmen and opened for The Jimi Hendrix Experience with the group in 1969, was also there from the start. Vaughan’s searing six-string tone and attack were like few others, and the band had a sharp focus and style from their self-titled debut (alternately known as Girls Go Wild), hailed by AllMusic‘s Cub Koda as “one of the few white blues albums that works.” Despite respectable reviews and even the production of Nick Lowe on third album T-Bird Rhythm, the band could never break out the way Chrysalis had hoped, and they were dropped sometime in 1983.

That’s when things got interesting. Jimmie’s younger brother Stevie Ray had confounded audiences at the Montreux Jazz Festival with his brash blues-rock in 1982 – but significantly turned the head of David Bowie, who recruited him as lead guitarist on the Nile Rodgers-produced blockbuster Let’s Dance (1983). That same year, John Hammond – the legendary talent scout who’d signed Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to Columbia – drafted a deal for the younger Vaughan’s power trio Double Trouble on Epic Records. Debut Texas Flood was hailed by critics, and songs like “Pride and Joy” and “Cold Shot” inexplicably got airplay on the nascent MTV. With another well-loved Texas combo, ZZ Top, making a similar transition to sleek, blues-affected pop/rock around the same time, it seemed The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ time was arriving.

Signed to the catchall CBS Associated division of the record company that Stevie Ray recorded for, the group entered the studio with Dave Edmunds to make Tuff Enuff, a record that combined Wilson’s solid songcraft with Vaughan’s scorching leads and the odd modern flourish, like the heavily reverbed drums and needling low end sequencer of the title track. Augmented by a video that featured the newly-expanded quintet (now featuring Wilson, Vaughan, longtime drummer Fran Christina and new bassist Preston Hubband and keyboardist Junior Brantley) playing at a construction site run by scantily-clad models, “Tuff Enuff” did something that even Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble could not do: it ascended the Billboard Hot 100, nestling in at No. 10. The Fabulous Thunderbirds would never have as high-charting a single, although several others for CBS Associated, including a cover of Sam & Dave’s “Wrap It Up” and the title track to 1989’s Powerful Stuff, would reach the lower half of the Hot 100. (The Thunderbirds’ later years were also punctuated by a few killer members: the Edmunds-produced Hot Number featured keyboards by Chuck Leavell, who began his long association with The Rolling Stones a few years earlier, and the tour behind Powerful Stuff offered a dual-guitar approach by Vaughan and Doyle Bramhall II.)

Ultimately, Vaughan left the Thunderbirds in 1989 and started work on a duet record with his newly-sober brother – one that was unfortunately released a month after Stevie Ray was tragically killed in a helicopter crash in 1990. Jimmie has continued his solo career since then, releasing an anthology through The Last Music Company in 2021. This Fabulous Thunderbirds box will be released November 7 and can be pre-ordered through the links below at Amazon (as an affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases) or through the label, which is offering a bundle including the box, a band t-shirt and sew-on patch. The label has also promised individual vinyl reissues of the eight albums featured here in 2026. The full track list is below.

The Jimmie Vaughan Years: Complete Studio Recordings (The Last Music Company, 2025) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada / Official Label Store)

Disc 1

1. Dirty Work is Going On
2. The Things I Used to Do
3. I Searched All Over
4. I Can’t Quit You Baby
5. I Got Eyes
6. This Should Go On Forever?
7. She’s Tough
8. Scratch My Back
9. She’s My Baby
10. Baby Please Don’t Lie to Me
11. Snake Hips
12. Pecker Wrecker
13. Love At First Sight
14. Wait on Time
15. Scratch My Back
16. Rich Woman
17. Full-Time Lover
18. Pocket Rocket
19. She’s Tuff
20. Marked Deck
21. Walkin’ to My Baby
22. Rock with Me
23. C-Boy’s Blues
24. Let Me In

Disc 2

1. Runnin’ Shoes
2. You Ain’t Nothin’ But Fine
3. Low-Down Woman
4. Extra Jimmies
5. Sugar Coated Love
6. Last Call for Alcohol
7. The Crawl
8. Jumpin’ Bad
9. Learn to Treat Me Right
10. I’m a Good Man (If You Give Me a Chance)
11. Dirty Work
12. That’s Enough of That Stuff
13. I Believe I’m in Love
14. One’s Too Many
15. Give Me All Your Lovin’
16. Roll, Roll, Roll
17. Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White
18. I Hear You Knocking
19. Tip On In
20. I’m Sorry
21. Mathilda
22. Tell Me Why
23. In Orbit

Disc 3

1. Can’t Tear It Up Enuff
2. How Do You Spell Love?
3. You’re Humbuggin’ Me
4. My Babe
5. Neighbor Tend to Your Business
6. The Monkey
7. Diddy Wah Diddy
8. Lover’s Crime
9. Poor Boy
10. Tell Me (Pretty Baby)
11. Gotta Have Some/Just Got Some
12. Tuff Enuff
13. Tell Me
14. Look At That, Look At That
15. Two Time My Lovin’
16. Amnesia
17. Wrap It Up
18. True Love
19. Why Get Up
20. I Don’t Care
21. Down At Antone’s
22. Stand Back

Disc 4

1. Hot Number
2. Wasted Years
3. It Comes to Me Naturally
4. Love in Common
5. How Do You Spell Love
6. Streets of Gold
7. Sofa Circuit
8. Don’t Bother Tryin’ to Steal Her Love
9. It Takes a Big Man to Cry
10. Rock This Place
11. Knock Yourself Out
12. Mistake Number 1
13. One Night Stand
14. Emergency
15. Powerful Stuff
16. Close Together
17. Now Loosen Up Baby
18. She’s Hot
19. Rainin’ in My Heart

Disc 1, Tracks 1-13 previously unreleased
Disc 1, Tracks 14-24 released as The Fabulous Thunderbirds – Takoma TAK 7068, 1979
Disc 2, Tracks 1-12 released as What’s the Word – Takoma/Chrysalis CHR 1287, 1980
Disc 2, Tracks 13-23 released as Butt Rockin’ – Chrysalis CHR 1319, 1981
Disc 3, Tracks 1-11 released as T-Bird Rhythm – Chrysalis CHR 1395, 1982
Disc 3, Tracks 12-21 released as Tuff Enuff – CBS Associated FZ 40304, 1986
Disc 3, Track 22 and Disc 4, Tracks 1-9 released as Hot Number – CBS Associated FZ 40818, 1987
Disc 4, Tracks 10-19 released as Powerful Stuff – CBS Associated OZ 45094, 1989