American musician Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of the most influential guitarists in the revival of blues in the 1980s, was killed in a helicopter crash.

Stephen Ray Vaughan, also known abbreviated as SRV, was an American musician, best known as the guitarist and frontman of the blues rock trio Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Although his mainstream career spanned only seven years, he is considered one of the most influential musicians in the history of blues music, and one of the greatest guitarists of all time. He was the younger brother of guitarist Jimmie Vaughan.

Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

In the early morning of Monday, August 27, 1990, American musician Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash near East Troy, Wisconsin, at age 35. He was one of the most influential blues guitarists of the 1980s, described by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as "the second coming of the blues".