Some were raised on Mother Goose, while others grew up listening to the riffs of guitar legends like blues-rock masters Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Remarkably, those two worlds collided in a song everyone knows (but maybe hasn’t heard).
As August marks the anniversary of Vaughan’s death, the moment is ripe to revisit when a nursery rhyme became fuel for some of rock’s most masterful guitar work.
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The rhyme in question is “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
View this post on InstagramA famous poem reportedly based on an incident in the life of Mary Sawyer, of Sterling Massachusetts, which involved a pet lamb following her to school, the rhyme dates back to the 19th century and is credited to Sarah Josepha Hale, a writer and editor from New Hampshire, who published it in a children’s magazine called The Juvenile Miscellany.
Since then, the story has become embedded in American childhoods, but there’s no way Hale could have known her poem would also become the backbone of some truly great guitar shredding roughly 140 years later.
The first major blues artist to turn Hale’s nursery rhyme into a recorded blues performance was blues pioneer and electric blues-rock guitarist Buddy Guy. Adapting the verses for a song released on his 1968 album A Man and the Blues, Guy transformed it into a rock staple.
According to an interview with New York Times bestselling author Alan Paul, Guy came up with the song on the spot during a live show at the Fillmore East when a jam groove needed lyrics. The result was a bouncy yet hypnotic Chicago blues shuffle hit with expressive vocals and fiery guitar licks.
Initially received as a fun novelty track, “Mary Had a Little Lamb” gained massive secondary fame when Vaughan adopted Guy’s arrangement for Texas Flood, his 1983 debut studio album with Double Trouble.
Another quickly produced landmark feat, Texas Flood came together in days, with the record showcasing explosive, high-energy guitar riffs, as Vaughan pounds on and strums his battered “Number One” Stratocaster at blistering speed against deep traditional blues-rock sounds.
Of course, one of the moments that continues to stand out 43 years later comes at Track 7 of the 10-track album. Vaughan’s version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” stays loyal to Guy’s original, with his guitar tone, riffs, bends, solos, and intensity matching the previous effort. Still, Vaughan’s version is entirely his own.
“When I go out and play [‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’], I can hear people say, ‘Oh, that’s Stevie’s number,’ ” Guy once said, per Guitar World. “So I say, ‘OK man, that’s Stevie’s number.’ But Stevie knows whose number it was.”
“Mary Had a Little Lamb” is one of many compositions Vaughan borrowed from Guy, but, according to the outlet, which ranked “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as Vaughan’s 11th best recording, this song was the ideal canvas for the guitar hero to paint with his own skills.
The blues-rock showcase became one of Vaughan’s most celebrated guitar performances, and after his death on Aug. 27, 1990, at just 35, its legacy has only grown more visceral.
Now more than four decades after Texas Flood, the song that began as a 19th-century nursery rhyme still sits comfortably alongside Vaughan’s signature shuffles like “Pride and Joy,” slow blues masterpieces like “Texas Flood,” and soaring instrumental guitar tributes like “Little Wing.”
In a 1988 interview with Guitarist magazine, Vaughan summed up transformation and evolution best by saying, “If you stop growing, what good is it musically?”
Related: ‘1984’ Rock Hit, Revived 20-Plus Times by Its Own Band, Marked the End of an Era
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