Rolling Stone Essential Guitar Playlist—#18 | ‘How High the Moon,’ Les Paul and Mary Ford (1951)
Paul claimed he sketched his arrangement of this jazz standard while eating White Castle sliders in a bar. A masterpiece of multitrack recording, it’s also a showcase for Paul’s fleet fingerpicking, blurring jazz and country and forecasting the clear, harmonic athleticism of metal.
(via ashbury-wonderland)
Rolling Stone Essential Guitar Playlist—#12 | ‘Little Wing,’ Stevie Ray Vaughan (original by Jimi Hendrix) (1991)
Vaughan’s epic, profoundly emotional instrumental version of Jimi Hendrix’s classic is a showcase for both his guitar technique and his reverence for his roots. This seven-minute studio version was released posthumously, and its beauty is all the more haunting in the absence of its creator.