THE TRACK IS called “Take Me Down Easy,” off of Marc Benno and the Nightcrawlers’ 1973 opus, Crawlin’, very possibly the best blues-rock album of the early 1970s you’ve never heard. Like every track on the album, it features heavyweight singer/guitarist Benno and his band — including noted drummer/singer Doyle Bramhall — knocking out some of the most fluid and sophisticated blues-rock this side of the Allman Brothers and Leon Russell. Indeed, Russell is one of the many artists Benno has collaborated with over the years, along with Rita Coolidge, Eric Clapton, J.J Cale and, of course, the Doors, with whom he recorded four songs, including the title track, at the sessions for L.A.Woman. (Never released by A&M, Benno’s Crawlin’ was finally issued on his own Texasize imprint in 2006.)
I almost forgot: The smokin’ teenage Texas lead player on “Take Me Down Easy” and the rest of Crawlin’? A lanky kid from Dallas named Stevie Ray Vaughan. “The very first time I met Stevie, I was playing a gig down on Cole Street in Dallas in the late ‘60s,” Benno recalls. “In walks this kid, about 13-years-old, 90-pounds dripping wet in a T-shirt, and he says, ‘Can I sit in?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m Jimmie Vaughan’s little brother.’ I said, ‘Here, you can play this guitar!’”