How To Play Oreo Cookie Blues

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Lonnie Mack Play "Oreo Cookie Blues" and "Wham!" in 1986

Stevie Ray Vaughan fans got a nice little bonus in 1985, when Alligator Records released Lonnie Mack's masterful Strike Like Lightning album.

The album, which was co-produced by Vaughan and Mack, features Vaughan on several tracks, playing electric and acoustic guitar, something that very rarely happened.

Vaughan even sings a duet with Mack on one of the songs, "If You Have to Know," making it the closest thing to a straight-ahead SRV tune.

In August 1986, about a year and a half after the album's release, Mack joined Vaughan on stage at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis, Tennessee, to perform a few tracks from the album, including "Oreo Cookie Blues," a comical acoustic-blues number, and "Wham!," one of Mack's best-known instrumental songs.

Although Mack originally released "Wham!" in 1963, he and Vaughan covered it on Strike Like Lightning as "Double Whammy." Vaughan's official studio recording of "Wham!" is available on 1991's posthumously released The Sky Is Crying.

Below, you can check out both songs from that night in August of '86.

Although we don't hear his name often enough these days, Mack—along with Jimi Hendrix and Albert King—was one of Vaughan's biggest guitar influences. "I got a lot of the fast things I do from Lonnie," Vaughan once said. (Let's just say that SRV's "Scuttle Buttin'" was very muchinspired by Mack.) In 1987, Vaughan listed Mack first among the guitarists he listened to, both as a youngster, and as an adult.

For more information about Vaughan's studio guest appearances, check out Stevie Ray Vaughan's Top Five Studio Guest Appearances. It was written by that Damian Fanelli guy.

Mack died April 21, 2016. He was 74.

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado. His New York-based band, the Blue Meanies, has toured the world and elsewhere. Fanelli, a former member of Brooklyn jump-blues/swing/rockabilly band the Gas House Gorillas and New York City instrumental surf-rock band Mister Neutron, also composes and records film soundtracks. He writes GuitarWorld.com's The Next Bend column, which is dedicated to B-bender guitars and guitarists. His latest liner notes can be found in Sony/Legacy's Stevie Ray Vaughan: The Complete Epic Recordings Collection. Follow him on Facebook,Twitter and/or Instagram.

Damian is editor-in-chief of Guitar World magazine. From 1998 to 2014, he was one third of Mister Neutron, an instrumental rock act that toured the universe and elsewhere and released three albums via Austin-based Deep Eddy Records. These days he performs with several New York City-area bands and can often be spotted with one of his many, many, many B-bender-equipped guitars. In past lives he was GW's managing editor and online managing editor – and he still can't believe he got to write the liner notes for the latest SRV box set.