Pete Huttlinger has died at the age of 54, after suffering a stroke.

A phenomenal arranger, composer, and performer of fingerstyle guitar music.

Huttlinger’s precision playing made the most challenging pieces appear easy as pie, even though the degree of difficulty was anything but.

Here is his signature arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”, with the original story of how he came to perform it. There was once a very clean video of Pete in a TV interview telling the same story before playing the tune, but it is no longer on Youtube. So this one will have to do.

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 Born in Washington, D.C. in June, 1961. Pete Huttlinger was a 1984 graduate of Berklee School of Music, in Boston. He toured with John Denver and has performed with and for many other A List recording and touring artists. He also won the 2000 National Fingerstyle Championship.

Steely Dan’s “Josie” ala one-man-band Pete Huttlinger.

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Born with congenital heart problems, Huttlinger had a massive stroke in 2010 and heart failure some months later. But after a long and arduous recovery, including a battery powered pump to keep his heart going, he regained the ability to play the guitar. His final performance was in Atlanta, on January 9, 2016.

He released the album Parnassus in 2015 in collaboration with Mollie Weaver. And his 2013 album McGuire’s Landing was critically acclaimed. Here is the title cut.

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