It was 1990 and Vaughan’s amp tech had just died.
“Stevie Ray’s guitar tech Rene Martinez and I have been friends for years and
years and years,” Swancy said. “Rene called me up and said, ‘We’ve lost our amp
tech. Would you be interested in taking us on?’ I said, ‘No problem. What do we
need to do?’ Rene said, ‘I need to get some information from you and I need to give
you some information. Then I need to tell you some things that Stevie Ray likes and
so forth. After we have this concert up in Wisconsin, Alpine Valley, I’ll be flying
home and we can sit and talk for a day.’”
Swancy and his staff prepared to take on the amp work of the famed blues great
on a long-term basis. But, sadly, the account never materialized. On Aug. 26, 1990,
Vaughan performed two shows with Eric Clapton at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in
East Troy, Wisconsin. The musicians boarded four Chicago-bound helicopters waiting on a nearby golf course. Visibility was poor due to haze and fog with patches
of low clouds, according to news reports. Despite the conditions, the pilots were
instructed to fly over a 1000-foot ski hill. Vaughan, along with three members of
Eric Clapton’s entourage (agent Bobby Brooks, bodyguard Nigel Browne, and assistant tour manager Colin Smythe) boarded the third of the four helicopters—a Bell 206B Jet Ranger—flying to Meigs
Field. At about 12:50 in the morning of Aug. 27, 1990, the helicopter departed from an elevation of about 850 feet,
veered to the left and crashed into the hill, about fifty feet from the summit. In Clapton: The Autobiography, Clapton
said that, contrary to rumors, his seat was not given to Vaughan, but as indicated above, three members of Clapton’s
entourage were on board with Vaughan at the time of the crash.
The years of counting Vaughan as one of his famous clients didn’t happen for Swancy. Maybe you could call it a
near miss.
Zach Lundy, Photographer
“When I lived in Maryland when I was 5, LeVar
Burton came to my daycare class and read Reading
Rainbow to us,” Lundy said. “He read a story to us,
but I don’t remember much else because I was so
little; but I remember thinking it was all very cool.”
JUNE 2016
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
A Girl, a Fiesta and a Camera
Evon Markum, Executive Vice President
Marketing and Community Development, First National
Bank
Fiesta is held in San Antonio in April. The celebration is enormous, with thousands of
people from all over the globe.
“In 1995-ish myself, husband and daughter wanted to make a quick trip to watch
the parade and enjoy the great food and celebration,” Markum said. “While we were
watching the parade a news reporter with the Hispanic news channel came over and
asked, ‘where are you from?’ Of course, I replied in Spanish, ‘We traveled here from
Weatherford, Texas, for the day, to come and enjoy Fiesta.’”
Little did she know that the clip aired not only in San Antonio but also nationally.
“Cell phones were just getting popular and my mother called on my ‘new’ cell
phone, from Fort Worth, to tell us that ALL of our hundreds of relatives have started
to call Fort Worth to ask if we really were in San Antonio. … Needless to say our ‘quick trip’ to San Antonio became a
three-day-long stay to visit aunts and uncles and many other relatives. Note to self: Don’t give interviews while on vacation!”
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