The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time: Honorable Mentions

"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"
The Allman Brothers Band (1971)

Guitarist Dickey Betts titled his instrumental, first recorded on the Allmans' 1970 album, Idlewild South, after a name on a tombstone in a Macon, Georgia cemetery. This legendary Fillmore East performance is twice as long and transcendant. Betts and guitarist Duane Allman slipping into coyote-choir harmony during the theme, then taking solos with torrid sax-like trills, low snake-like crawls and swan-dive sustain the language of jazz charged with electric R&B futurism. Eight months after that show, Allman died in a motorcycle accident. He and bassist Berry Oakley, who died in 1972, are both buried in the same cemetery as Elizabeth Reed.


"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"


"Taxman"
The Beatles (1966)

By the time they recorded 1966's Revolver, the Beatles were restlessly seeking out new guitar sounds. The slashing, beat-defying solo on George Harrison's caustic album opener was actually played by Paul McCartney, but George's rhythm part is a fuzzed-out wonder too, taking its cues from up-to-the-second American R&B.


"Green Onions"
Booker T. and the MGs (1962)

The greatest guitarist in Memphis soul, Steve Cropper was one of the core members of the Stax Records house band. Cropper lets keyboardist Booker T. Jones carry the riff of this percolating 12-bar blues; his guitar part is urgent punctuation, dazzling filigree, and proof that where soul is concerned, less can be a lot more.


"Green Onions"