Some nice solo trombone work in “Efemera” by Tulipa Ruiz (starts at 1:15, them more throughout)
In live prformances, she does that part with a comb and paper.
Mexican restaurants around here often have a feed from some mariachi version of MTV playing, and I’ve noticed those guys love their accordions. Almost every song has an accordion solo, with the squeezebox player looking like a Mexican Jimi Hendrix playing Accordion Hero or something. It’s inspiring, and makes me want to learn to play the accordion.
Traffic’s “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” - I’m not even sure what the instrument is that is being played in the solo. To me it sounds like a sax being run through an effects box of some sort, but it could be keyboards, or I don’t know what.
This song by the band Eluvite has a pretty awesome Violin and Flute solo in it.
Another one of theirs has a pretty good bagpipes one in it too.
What a weird-ass band…
Interesting topic
The French chanteuse ZAZ plays something like a kazoo at about 2:10 in this song:
Kazoo or no, it’s a cool tune
If we’re listing kazoo solos, we mustn’t forget Ringo Starr’s version of “You’re Sixteen” (which may or may not have involved an actual kazoo).
There’s an interesting background to that. In the 1800s, a bunch of eastern European workers came to Mexico to work in the mines, and some brought their instruments with them. They sat around in the evening and played polkas, and the Mexicans fell in love with it, and it is still the central theme of the music of northern Mexico.
Thimble solo–very cool. Might tie “More cowbell” on the slick-o-meter.
Randy VanWarmer’s Just When I Needed You Most has an autoharp solo.
Jakcyl’s The Lumberjack has a chainsaw solo.
Flute solo - California Dreaming. Love that song.
Quite famously, there’s also a neat flute solo in Men at Work’s “Down Under”…
You don’t expect a trombone solo in folk music, but Jeb Loy Nichols has always used fun-yet-funky trombone in haunting reggae-tinged songs like “As The Rain”. At 2:25 he mutters “Now let it rain…” and trombone ensues.
And his old band Fellow Travellers did a lot of early funk/folk/roots/dub music, like the sparse “Big Mistake” (mostly just drums and trombone… and great lyrics*).
*Well, they got married/
And that was Big Mistake…
Eh, that’s an altered electric guitar (think Boxtops’ Cry Like a Baby) on the BJ Thomas tune, not a sitar, right?
I like the brief tuba solo in “Go Down Gamblin’” by Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Bass guitar solo (starts at @4 minute mark, gets heavy at 6 minute mark) Tim Bogert of Beck, Bogert, & Appice Live Lose Myself With You.
I saw BJ Thomas perform that song on one of those PBS pledge-drive shows. Large band with an electric sitar like the one in the YouTube clip. Sounded just like the song, so I’m assuming there was one in use then.
As for “White Queen,” I’m not really sure what Brian May is playing; the lead has the twang of a sitar but none of the drone string sound like on a Ravi Shankar or George Harrison tune.
Speaking of which, “Within You, Without You” has a sitar solo as well as sitar throughout.
on the subject of sitars wanting to be guitars or vice versa, consider the solos on Face to Face and Mind Ecology (John Mclaughlin on a custom scalloped-fretboard Gibson with drone strings):
ETA: It's a whole band, Shakti, ftrHow about Clare Torry in Great Gig in the Sky? She thought it was a mess, but it really is pretty awesome.
There are a number of vibes solos on Frank Zappa records, most notably at the 3:23 mark of this song.
And for the all time most bizarre instrument used in a rock solo, ever heard of the theremin? That weird squeaky thing you hear on old horror movies and “Good Vibrations”? Well in the 60s an obscure band called Lothar and the Hand People used a theremin regularly, like 1:30 into this song.