Denny Freeman, who helped give rise to Austin’s blues scene in the 1970s playing with Stevie Ray Vaughan and later became the touring guitarist in Bob Dylan’s band, died Sunday after being diagnosed with abdominal cancer last month. He was 76.
Born Aug. 7, 1944, in Orlando, Fla., Freeman grew up in Dallas, playing in a high school band called the Corals before moving to Austin in 1970. Freeman and Vaughan soon were playing together with singer Paul Ray and others in a group called the Cobras at venues including the One Knite and Soap Creek Saloon.
They were part of a wave of musicians who arrived here around that time, including guitarist Jimmie Vaughan (Stevie’s older brother), singers Angela Strehli and Lou Ann Barton and University of Texas student Clifford Antone, who eventually opened a downtown nightclub that became the community’s mecca.
”Hey dude, you from the States?” Neal inquired.
“Yeah man, I’m from San Francisco. My name is John. Where are you guys from?”
“John, I’m Mort and this is Neal. We’re from from upstate New York. Where did you get that awesome Arab robe?” I asked.
John, a classic American hippie, was tall, blonde, skinny and stoned. The odor of hashish permeated his body–a smell our noses knew only too well. He was dressed in a hooded blue and white Arab robe that swept the station’s cement floor.
In one long run-on sentence, John wowed us with tales of Moroccan days and nights. “Man you got to go, the Moroccans are really nice folks, man dope is real cheap, it’s the best hash you’ll ever taste, man food is real cheap, in Tangiers you’ll blow your brains out, you won’t ever want to leave the place, it’s far-fucking out.”
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so wherever and whenever i can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more american families, that s what i m going to do. and now not to skip to the end too quickly, we ll parse it all for you tonight. don t worry. but i want to get to the most emotional moment of the evening when the president introduced the man sitting next to the first lay lady, sergeant first class corey remsburg who served ten tours in iraq and afghanistan and nearly lost his life to a roadside bomb near kandahar in 2009. sergeant first class corey remsburg never gives up and he does not quit. corey. at an event where applause was the ultimate thermometer it