“Lenny” by Stevie Ray Vaughan

"Lenny" closes out Texas Flood, the first album Stevie Ray Vaughan made with Double Trouble, on a hush instead of a holler. He wrote the instrumental for Lenora, his wife at the time, named it after her, and played it on a guitar he'd given the same nickname.

It drifts along slow and free, Vaughan trading jazzy chord voicings for solo runs and working the whammy bar until a movable major-sixth chord shivers with vibrato. He's tuned down a half step, the solos move between major, minor pentatonic and blues scales, and the Jimi Hendrix of ballads like "The Wind Cries Mary" hangs over the whole thing. The Lenny guitar came back for his later instrumental ballad "Riviera Paradise", and the song stayed a regular in his live shows.

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