Stevie Ray Vaughan - Mary Had a Little Lamb - Guitar Tab

Texas Flood (Legacy Edition)

1983 2:47

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About Mary Had a Little Lamb

Few nursery rhyme melodies have been put to better use on guitar than this one. Stevie Ray Vaughan transforms the familiar tune into a strutting shuffle, and playing it well means getting deep into his rhythm feel before you worry about the lead lines. The groove sits in E minor at 120 BPM, which sounds comfortable until you try to lock in that behind-the-beat swagger he brings to every phrase. The challenge is not the notes themselves but the tone and touch: heavy strings, a strong pick attack, and vibrato that finishes every phrase with conviction. Vaughan weaves the nursery rhyme theme into a call-and-response pattern between vocal lines and guitar fills, so knowing where to sit back and where to cut through is the real lesson here. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop any of those fill moments slowed down until the timing feels natural rather than rushed. Blues Rock phrasing at its most direct.

• The song is played in E Standard tuning at 120 BPM, so fretting-hand endurance and consistent pick attack matter more than navigating unusual string tension.
• Vaughan's fills follow the vocal melody closely, making call-and-response phrasing between singing and guitar the central technique to practise here.
• Getting the shuffle feel right requires relaxing the picking hand and letting notes breathe slightly behind the beat, a detail easy to miss at first.