The Fabulous Thunderbirds played stripped-back blues-rock with roots that showed, and briefly broke through to the mainstream in the 1980s.

Looking and sunding like the archetypal Texas bar band, they played an energized fusion of no-frills blues, R&B and good old-fashioned rock’n’roll.

When it came to live performance, they were up there with contemporaries like Southside Johnny & The Asbury Dukes and George Thorogood & The Destroyers.

The charismatic Kim Wilson was the perfect front man for what was still essentially a bar band transplanted to a bigger stage, wailing on his harmonica while Jimmie Vaughan – even more talented brother of Stevie Ray – tossed off blues licks.

I remember buying their 1979 debut album Girls Go Wild, which sent me on a voyage of discovery into the earlier blues that influenced them, listening to masters like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf for the first time.

The T-Birds had formed five years before that in Austin, Texas, making a name for themselves in local bars and roadhouses, and supporting visiting blues musicians.

Despite a high-profile tour supporting The Rolling Stones in 1981, it took them five more years to break through with their 1986 album Tuff Enuff, recorded in London and produced by Dave Edmunds.

He shaved the rougher edges off their sound but brought them mainstream appeal as part of a resurgence of interest in “authentic” roots music.

A backlash against the Eighties excess of the New Romantics, it introduced a wave of new American bands including Los Lobos, Lone Justice, The Blasters and Beat Farmers.

The T-Birds faded from view after Vaughan left in 1990 to team up with his brother – a brief partnership ended by Stevie Ray’s death that year – but Wilson has kept his band going for more than half a century amid multiple lineup changes. 

Here they are playing the title track of that breakthrough album, Tuff Enuff, with Stevie Ray Vaughan joining his big brother Jimmie.