The Buddy Guy Song Stevie Ray Vaughan "Stole"

Blue Morris
5 days ago
5 min read

What if I told you that one of the most famous Stevie Ray Vaughan songs isn't actually a Stevie Ray Vaughan song at all? It's a Buddy Guy song!

Buddy Guy influenced blues guitar player Stevie Ray Vaughan

And when you hear them side by side, you can hear something really fascinating: the evolution of blues guitar from the 1960s to the 1980s. Buddy Guy's version is simpler, rawer, but still full of energy. Stevie Ray Vaughan's version is more complex, more ornamental — fancied up in a way that became his signature style. Even more curious is that the song was based on an old nursery rhythm. The song is Mary Had a Little Lamb, and the story behind it is better than most people realize.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWSJRHbDxj0

Buddy Guy Wrote It First — and He Wrote It as a Joke

Buddy Guy recorded Mary Had a Little Lamb in 1968 for his album A Man and the Blues. He took a children's song and made it funky and bluesy. Honestly, when I first heard about it, I thought the idea was kinda lame. But then I actually listened to it, and it's really cool.

The original Buddy Guy version features a horn section playing in between the main melody. It runs at a fast 127 beats per minute. Those 16th notes are not easy — and here's the thing most people miss: Buddy Guy is picking almost every one of those notes individually. No hammer-ons, no pull-offs to help manage the speed. Just raw picking. And if you listen closely to the original recording, he does duff a couple of notes. But hey, it was 1968, and it still sounds great.

The guitar tone on that recording is very clean, a little too much bass, and doesn't really cut through the mix in the modern sense. But there's something about those vintage guitar tones that puts the music in a specific time and place. I always love that about old recordings.

Stevie Ray Vaughan Heard It as a Kid

Stevie Ray Vaughan grew up in Texas and heard Buddy Guy's version of Mary Had a Little Lamb when he was young. And he never forgot it.

In the early days, SRV and Double Trouble were a relentless touring bar band. They played multiple sets in sweaty Texas bars every night, and they needed high-energy material to keep the crowds drinking and dancing. Mary Had a Little Lamb was perfect for that set list. It paid homage to one of his heroes and it had exactly the kind of groove that kept audiences having fun.

Stevie Ray Vaughan once said: "Buddy Guy is the best guitar player alive. He can play Hendrix better than Hendrix." That's how much he admired the man.

72 Hours, No Budget, No Record Label

The story of how Mary Had a Little Lamb ended up on SRV's first album, Texas Flood, is legendary, so much so that I'm not sure it's entirely true.

Jackson Browne helped Stevie Ray Vaughan to record his first album Texas Flood — Jackson Browne

In 1982, just before the album was recorded, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble played the Montreux Jazz Festival. Stories say that some acoustic blues purists in the audience actually booed because they didn't like the loud, electrified set. I'm not totally sure that story is accurate — it sounds a little like it might have been borrowed from the famous Bob Dylan Newport Folk Festival controversy, but many do claim that really happened.

What is confirmed is that folky icon Jackson Browne was in the audience that night, and he was completely blown away. He generously offered the band three days of free time at his personal recording studio in Los Angeles.

But they had no budget, no record label, and only 72 hours to work with. There was no time to write new material or mess around with overdubs. As bassist Tommy Shannon recalled:

"It was really just a big warehouse with concrete floors and some rugs thrown down. We just found a little corner, set up in a circle looking at and listening to each other, and played like a live band."

So they simply ran through their standard, well-rehearsed club set list as if they were playing a live gig. Mary Had a Little Lamb was on that set list, and therefore it ended up on the album, probably captured in just a take or two.

What's Actually Different Between the Two Versions?

Here's the interesting part for guitar players and music lovers alike. Stevie Ray Vaughan's version is only about two beats per minute slower than Buddy Guy's. But what he does with that song is stylistically quite different. I'd describe it like this: if Buddy Guy shows up in a sharp suit, Stevie Ray Vaughan shows up in a big hat with feathers and a colourful scarf. His style has been fancied up quite a lot.

Stevie Ray Vaughan had a blues guitar style that was more ornamental than Buddy Guy — The more colourful style of Stevie Ray Vaughan

A few specific things stand out:

Extra chord hits. Where Buddy Guy moves cleanly from phrase to phrase, SRV adds extra chord hits right before the melody returns. It sounds effortless, but fitting those extra strums in right before you have to pick up the melody again is actually quite difficult to play.

Hammer-ons and pull-offs. Buddy Guy picks almost every 16th note individually. Stevie Ray Vaughan makes more use of hammer-ons and pull-offs in those same passages, which technically makes the fast sections a little easier to play, but also adds an extra layer of ornamentation. There's always more going on with SRV.

The turnaround. Buddy Guy doesn't play a melodic lick over the turnaround at the end. He just plays the chords. And honestly? It still sounds cool. Stevie Ray Vaughan, on the other hand, plays a blazing, very classic SRV-sounding lick over the turnaround.

The final chord. And then there's that chord SRV hits at the very end of the song — an E7#9. Funky, harmonically complex, and unmistakably Stevie Ray Vaughan.

What This Song Tells Us About Blues Guitar

What I love about comparing these two versions is that it shows you something deeper than just two guitarists playing the same song. It shows you how one generation learns from the one before it, and then adds their own style.

Buddy Guy's raw, energetic picking style was the foundation. Stevie Ray Vaughan absorbed that, honored it, and then layered on his own ornamental language with the the extra chord hits, the hammer-ons, the turnaround lick, the richer chords. He made it more complex. But underneath all of it, the bones are Buddy Guy's.

Throughout the 1980s, the two guitarists shared the stage numerous times, frequently jamming together — including on Mary Had a Little Lamb. That cover may have helped cement a lifelong bond between them.