DON'T COME HOME A'DRINKIN' (GUITAR SOLO)

The guitar solo on "Don't Come Home A'Drinkin' " comes in at 1:01. here's the link.
www.last.fm/music/Loretta+Lynn/_/Don't+Come+Home+A-Drinkin'+(With+Lovin'+on+Your+Mind)?autostart

In an allmusicguide review, Eugene Chadbourne said this about the album this track came from.
"The series of lead guitar/pedal steel interchanges that run through this album are certainly more attractive than the Nashville freeway system, and definitely contributed more to 20th century civilization." Well put.

This guitar solo, probably played by Grady Martin, (although it may have been Johnny Russell) is a perfect illustration of how a country solo should be played.

The basic vocabulary is a mixture of major scale and major pentatonic ideas, plus a bent blue note or two. This analysis could describe what many rock and "alt-country" players have done on records, but the solo on the Loretta Lynn record has something those many "almost country" solos and fills don't have-- country phrasing. Notes are syncopated through the use of ties, pre-bent strings enable the player to "unbend" to a note, and the articulation throughout is mostly staccato. These are all things that rock players often omit when they are trying to play country. On top of that, the solo begins in a pickup measure, i.e. before beat one of the next section. This is a valuable technique for adding excitement to a solo.