THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS, ca. 1980 | PHOTOGRAPHY OF ART MERIPOL

So I recently came across these incredible images of the Fabulous Thunderbirds taken back in the ’80s by photographer Art Meripol that really grabbed me. The shots of Jimmie Vaughan are epic, and Kim Wilson is also looking pretty damn good. The bands’ storied bassist, Keith Ferguson (July 23, 1946 – April 29, 1997), the most colorful character in the bunch (and the original hipster), was even in a few of the pics. Ferguson was an anchor in the Austin music scene whose longtime drug use and increasingly odd behavior eventually led to his separation from Austin’s legendary Antone’s and many of those he once called friends. One thing’s for certain, he will always be an Austin legend (in many ways) and a revered musician. They say that to see Keith Ferguson in his prime was unforgettable. I dug through the archives of The Austin Chronicle and Dallas Observer to get the skinny…

“…When I first saw Ferguson with the Fabulous Thunderbirds at Rome Inn in 1976, about a year after they’d formed, it was one of the most memorable musical experiences of my life. Not quite 30, Ferguson was the oldest member of the band, yet he, like the rest of them, played the blues like a grown man– and they sure as hell didn’t sound like a bunch of “white kids.” Still a decade away from commercial success (there were about 25 disinterested patrons at Rome Inn that night), Ferguson, Kim Wilson, Jimmie Vaughan, and the soon-to-join Mike Buck already showcased the indelible influence they would have on blues bands coast to coast, and around the world. Collectively and individually, the original T-Birds sired cults and mini-cults, changing the way musicians played, dressed, stood, combed their hair.

At the center of all this was Ferguson– a unique, colorful, even charismatic persona, but that was just the icing on the mystique. At its core was one simple truth– he was as good a blues bass player as there was in the history of blues bass players. Even in capable hands, the subtle art of blues bass can be the musical equivalent of the witness protection program, yet Ferguson carved out a singular niche without ever saying ‘look at me’ with his instrument.” 

–Dan Forte for The Austin Chronicle

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Austin, Texas, 1980– Blues guitar great Jimmie Vaughan playing with his band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. “Jimmie Vaughan playing behind his head (with broken foot!)” –image by © Art Meripol. via “It’s whispered that the T-Birds were the only white blues band that intimidated the Rolling Stones, for whom they opened twice at the Dallas Cotton Bowl, and twice at the Houston Astrodome during the 1981 tour.” –Josh Alan Friedman for the Dallas Observer

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ca. 1980– The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ lead singer/harpist Kim Wilson with legendary bassist and band mate Keith Ferguson in Austin, TX. –image by © Art Meripol. via “…there were knock-down, drag-out, shit-kicking fist-fights between Ferguson and Wilson — the distinguished, sharply dressed ambassadors of the blues.” via

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“Keith Ferguson died with a monkey on his back. I’m not speaking figuratively– the man literally died with a picture of a monkey on his back. It was tattooed there, the head of a fang-toothed baboon permanently inked into his shoulder. That was Keith Ferguson’s statement to the world. So, when a friend called last week to tell me that Ferguson was in the hospital and probably wouldn’t make it out alive, it didn’t come as much of a surprise. Not to me, and probably not to Ferguson, either. The obituary cited liver failure as the cause of death, and that may indeed be what’s on the death certificate– but that’s like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and having the resultant death termed a swimming accident. Liver failure was the cause of death in name only, because for 30 of his 50 years, Ferguson shot heroin.” 

–Dan Forte for The Austin Chronicle

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“The Fabulous Thunderbirds Onstage” –image by © Art Meripol. Jimmie Vaughan plays the guitar behind his head, with Kim Wilson and legendary bassist Keith Ferguson onstage. via “The Fabulous Thunderbirds spearheaded a re-animation that stabilized the course of blues, spawning back-to-basics bands that proliferate to this day. Blues cognoscenti even began to emulate Jimmie Vaughan’s slicked-back hair and open-collar, Fifties rayon shirts, newly designed and imported from India by Trash & Vaudeville in the East Village. Ferguson’s transparent camisas tripled in price at Austin clothing stores. ‘That’s just the way we dressed in high school,’ Ferguson says. ‘The fashion of pachucos and thugs who’ve long since died — or gone double-knit'”. –Josh Alan Friedman

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Kim Wilson of The Fabulous Thunderbirds blows his harp onstage. –image by © Art Meripol. via “Kim Wilson applied no fake rasp to his voice, no black affectations, no phonetic imitations of slurred words. He sang it straight.”  –Josh Alan Friedman 

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The Fabulous Thunderbirds, ca. 1980– Blues guitar great Jimmie Vaughan (stringing his guitar), and lead singer/harp player Kim Wilson (enjoying a smoke) backstage in Austin, Texas before a gig. –image by © Art Meripol. via “Muddy Waters heard us at Antone’s. We fried him. We were told we sounded like his best band from the Fifties, with Jimmy Rogers. We weren’t trying to. It was innate. He went back North ravin’ about us, and Jimmie started gettin’ calls. So we got in our little van from Austin to Boston, nowhere in between. We started openin’ for [Kansas City jump-blues revivalists] Roomful of Blues. Then it got to where they were openin’ for us. People seemed astonished by us.” –Keith Ferguson

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Kim Wilson lights up, with bassist Keith Ferguson in the background –image by © Art Meripol. via “It wasn’t until his mid-twenties that Ferguson found out who his father was– John William Ferguson, concert pianist with the Chicago Symphony. He never even knew his father was a musician. ‘You ass-wipe,’ he told the maestro during their next encounter. ‘I’ve been beat, ripped off a thousand times playin’ clubs. There’s so much you could have taught me.’ After the Thunderbirds tore up the Houston Juneteenth Festival, being the only white band there, they received a four-page spread in the Houston Post. From then on, the elder Ferguson began showing up at Thunderbirds gigs. ‘He would point me out to his friends, ‘My son, the rock star,’ recalls Ferguson. ‘He picked up girls at our shows. Johnny Winter and ZZ Top sent their limos for him to attend concerts. After I left the T-Birds, I never heard from him again.'” –Josh Alan Friedman

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ca. 1980– The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ lead singer/harp player Kim Wilson enjoying a smoke backstage in Austin, Texas before a gig. –image by © Art Meripol. via

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1982– The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ legendary guitar great Jimmie Vaughan onstage at Antone’s in Austin, TX. –image by © Art Meripol. via “The Fabulous Thunderbirds were the first white blues group that didn’t look and play like hippies. The T-Birds took it back 20 years. Jimmie Vaughan exorcised all the rock-guitar innovations– as if Beck, Hendrix, Clapton, Winter, and Bloomfield never existed– and threw it back to a long-abandoned, spare, Fifties Chicago groove, more authentic than early Rolling Stones. Countless guitarists took heed.” –Josh Alan Friedman

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1982– The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Jimmie Vaughan and Kim Wilson onstage at Antone’s in Austin, TX. –image by © Art Meripol. via  “Ferguson played bass on the first four Thunderbirds albums (the essential ones), as well as on the Havana Moon collaboration with Santana. He was fired in the mid-Eighties, about the period when the Thunderbirds switched to CBS Records and began scoring on Top 40. Ferguson leveled a lawsuit at the T-Birds claiming owed money, refused to settle, and was trounced in court. For many years, there was acrimony and scorched earth.” –Josh Alan Friedman

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1982– Blues guitar great Jimmie Vaughan playing with The Fabulous Thunderbirds at Antone’s in Austin, TX. –image by © Art Meripol. via “Jimmie Vaughan and Kim Wilson never did anything to hurt him. You can’t guess at this. It’s too deep. Don’t even try.” –Clifford Antone “Perhaps he was too bluesy, too primitive, too tattooed — The Illustrated Man, The Man With the Golden Arm — or couldn’t cross borders. Maybe he got so hip, he just hipped himself right off the planet.” –Josh Alan Friedman

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1982– Playing in one-time home club Antone’s in Austin with his original band the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Jimmie, brother of Stevie Ray Vaughan, has an amazing smooth style steeped in the vintage sounds of fellow Texan T-Bone Walker and Slim Harpo. –image by © Art Meripol. via

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