'The only thing missing is Stevie': Double Trouble's Tommy Shannon on getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Tommy Shannon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 18 -- one hell of a way to spend your 69th birthday. "No kidding," says the bassist who spent a decade anchoring Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. "No kidding."

There were so many things that made it an unforgettable occasion, Shannon says weeks later in advance of Saturday night's induction-ceremony special on HBO. He begins with the guest list: "Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Bill Withers, Miley Cyrus, Stevie Wonder -- one of those once-in-a-lifetime things." He'd never even seen one Beatle in person. Having to deliver a thanks-y'all speech in front of two? "Nerve-racking," he says. "It was nerve-racking."

Then, there was the actual performance -- two of Stevie's standards, "Pride and Joy" and "Texas Flood," capped by Jimmie Vaughan's "Six Strings Down," a 21-year-old farewell to the little brother he lost in that helicopter crash in Wisconsin on August 27, 1990. Shannon and his bandmates -- drummer Chris Layton and keyboardist Reese Wynans -- were joined by special guests: John Mayer, who inducted the band; former Arc Angel Doyle Bramhall II, whose late father was a former bandmate of both Vaughan boys; and Gary Clark Jr., who owes his career to the Vaughan boys.

Double Trouble didn't pick their bandmates that night. It didn't matter. "We were happy about playing with those guys," says Shannon, who used to play with Doyle II in the Arc Angels, "because it was so great."

An enormous photo of kimono-clad Stevie hovered behind them -- a reminder of who got them to Cleveland, and who wasn't with them to celebrate that very special birthday one month ago.

"All the way through it was an incredible experience," Shannon says a few days before HBO's May 30 broadcast of the ceremony. "To be honest I'd never been to anything like that. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the pinnacle. You can't go higher. But I kept thinking: 'The only thing missing is Stevie. ' It was such a great night, but I felt ... "

Shannon takes a pause to make sure he gets the words just right.

"It brought up the fact Stevie had died."

You play rock and roll long enough -- and Shannon's been playing since the late 1950s -- and live long enough, you're automatically classified "survivor." Just last year, time claimed the first Texas-born guitar player with whom Shannon established his rep: Johnny Winter.  He was 70. Stevie died 36 days of his 36th birthday.

"You learn to live with it after a while," Shannon says. "It leaves a hole in your heart, but you do move on with your life. I don't know. Playing with Stevie? Those were the best years of my life."

Shannon met Winter in a club on Lemmon and Oak Lawn in the late 1960s -- The Fog, which dissipated a forever ago. Shannon and Winter, with Johnny's bro Edgar and drummer Uncle John Turner acting as the rubber cement, stuck together for a couple of years -- long enough for them to play Woodstock at midnight. But by 1970 the band went bust, and Tommy came back to Texas, working the Dallas-to-Austin blues circuit.

Strange thing is, around 1970, in that same Dallas joint where he'd met Johnny, he found himself string to string with a kid from Kimball starting to climb out of Oak Cliff.

"A bunch of us were talking, and all of the sudden I heard this guitar playing," Shannon says. "I walked inside expecting to see this old man, and it was this 15-year-old! Awkward-looking kid with pigeon toes named Stevie. I knew after I sat in with him he as very special. Stevie and I would go on to play in Krackerjack and Blackbird, and the whole time I played with Stevie, through Double Trouble, he brought my playing up to a different level. It's hard to explain. It was just an intuitive thing."

Theirs was a mighty sound from the very beginning; they filled every club like it was an arena, every arena like it was a stadium.  They didn't invent blues-rock; they weren't the first to turn it up to 11. But they did it better than anyone before or since.

"A lot of it had to do with the fact Stevie and I had so much in common, including the same spirituality," Shannon says. "And playing-wise it came together. It was meant to happen. It was intuitive, and it was there very early when I met Stevie, when I played in Blackbird. Two of us made three of us."

And now they're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame together -- finally.

"I wondered if it would ever happen," says Shannon. "I cared, but I wasn't really out to see it happen. It was like something that could have gone either way, but I was very happy when it happened." But, no, he says: "I wasn't surprised." The reason why: He played with Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony premieres Saturday night at 7 p.m. Dallas time.