Bar Room Blues is an exclusive series of video guitar lessons by Steve “Red” Lasner covering classic blues songs from historically great guitarists like B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, and many others. A new lesson will be released each week, so be sure to subscribe and check back often! Also, if you want more guitar lessons like these, be sure to check out Red’s Guitar Sherpa class.
Little Wing” is a song written by Jimi Hendrix. It was first recorded by The Jimi Hendrix Experience on their 1967 album Axis: Bold as Love. It is ranked #366 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
Hendrix spoke to a Swedish journalist about the song in January 1968, saying “Well, that was one song on there we did a lot of sound on, you know. We put the guitar through the Leslie speaker of an organ, and it sounds like jelly bread, you know.Its based on a very, very simple American Indian style, you know, very simple. I got the idea like, when we was in Monterey, and I just happened tojust looking at everything around. So I figured that I take everything I see around and put it maybe in the form of a girl maybe, something like that, you know, and call it ‘Little Wing’, in other words, just fly away. Everybody really flying and theys really in a nice mood, like the police and everybody was really great out there. So I just took all these things an put them in one very, very small little matchbox, you know, into a girl and then do it. It was very simple, you know. Thats one of the very few ones I like.”
When asked by a London reporter in 1967 what his favorite track off the Axis: Bold as Love album was, Hendrix listed “Little Wing” and “You Got Me Floating” as his favorites.Author Rotimi Ogunjobi states that “‘Little Wing’ is the name of Hendrix’s guardian angel (like ‘Waterfall’, that is mentioned in the song ‘May this Be Love’ on the debut album).”
Little Wing can be a really fun song to play! There are a bunch of cool options for both rhythm and lead and the slow tempo gives you plenty of room to “spread your wings” and really be creative! In this video guitar lesson, I show you how to play this classic song on guitar in your own style. Check it out:
Video Guitar Lesson
Jam Track
Bar Room Blues is an exclusive series of video guitar lessons by Steve “Red” Lasner covering classic blues songs from historically great guitarists like B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, and many others. A new lesson will be released each week, so be sure to subscribe and check back often! Also, if you want more guitar lessons like these, be sure to check out Red’s Guitar Sherpa class.