Stevie was born in 1954 and died in 1990, so 35 years ago he was probably just getting a rudimentary handle on his innate prowess in 1968, as he would've been about fourteen or fifteen years of age.

His debut, Texas Flood, was released in 1983, when he was inching up on 30 (old by modern standards in the blues/rock world...so he had paid a LOT of dues by then). The album that guaranteed his spot in music history as a bona fide, larger-than-life guitar superstar was his follow-up, 1984's Couldn't Stand the Weather.

It received so much attention that even people like me who didn't listen to corporate radio were familiar with him. What floored me about his playing was the incredible cojones he displayed on songs like his remake of Chuck Berry's lukewarm "Things I Used To Do." When it comes time for the usual 12 bar (or for really good players 24 bar) guitar break, SRV steams up and really stretches out, playing through the 12 bar break four times, without ever making it sound repetitive. By the end of the song, the listener was making a vain effort to reassemble his aural molecules into a cohesive whole, but more than willing to have them blasted to smithereens again.   

Vaughan died in 1990 at the age of 35, giving him only six or seven years in the limelight.