Lonnie McIntosh (July 18, 1941 – April 21, 2016),^[1] known by his stage name, Lonnie Mack, was an American rock, blues, and country singer-guitarist. As a featured artist, his recording career spanned the period from 1963 to 1990. He remained active as a performer into the early 2000s.

Mack played a major role in transforming the electric guitar into a lead voice in rock music.^[2][3] Best known for his 1963 instrumentals, “Memphis” and “Wham!”, he has been called a rock-guitar “pioneer”^[4] and a “ground-breaker”^[5] in lead guitar soloing. In these, and several other early guitar instrumentals, “he attacked the strings with fast, aggressive single-string phrasing and a seamless rhythm style”.^[6] These tunes are said to have formed the leading edge of the virtuoso “blues rock” lead guitar genre.^[7]

His guitar recordings were a significant influence on many prominent rock guitarists, including Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Beck, Duane Allman, Dickie Betts and Ted Nugent.^[8] According to Guitar World magazine, Mack’s early solos influenced every major rock-guitar soloist from the 1960s through the 1980s, from “Clapton to Allman to Vaughan”^[9] and “from Nugent to Bloomfield”.^[10]

Mack is also considered one of the finer “blue-eyed soul” singers of his era.^[11]

Career[edit]

Lonnie Mack’s music career began in the mid-1950s. Between 1963 and 1990, he released thirteen original albums spanning a variety of genres. He enjoyed his greatest popularity as a rock artist, and was most productive, during the 1960s and the latter half of the 1980s. However, due to an aversion to notoriety,^[12] disenchantment with the rock music business,^[13] and a preference for the laid-back country lifestyle of his youth,^[14] he switched musical genres and interrupted his rock career with lengthy gaps between periods of major public exposure.^[15][16]

Mack’s career included historically significant and highly acclaimed rock recordings. While he achieved a measure of commercial success, he is known today more for his rock guitar innovations, his broad influence on a generation of guitarists who followed, and the emotional intensity of his gospel-inspired “blue-eyed soul” vocals.^[17][18][9] Crediting both Mack’s vocals and his guitar solos, music critic Jimmy Guterman ranked Mack’s first album, The Wham of that Memphis Man!, No. 16 in his book The 100 Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Records of All Time.^[19]

His recordings drew on rural and urban blues, country, bluegrass, rockabilly, vintage R&B, soul, and gospel styles. Attempts to classify his music proved challenging,^{[16][20][21][22]} but the common thread throughout Mack’s best-known music is a unique mix of black and white musical roots, later dubbed “roadhouse rock”.^[21][22][23] Writing for Rolling Stone, Alec Dubro summarized: “Lonnie can be put into that ‘Elvis Presley-Roy Orbison-Early Rock’ bag, but mostly for convenience. In total sound and execution, he was an innovator.”^[24]

His final album, “Lonnie Mack Live – Attack of the Killer V!”, was released in 1990. He continued to tour until 2004.

Beyond his career as a solo artist, he recorded with The Doors, Stevie Ray Vaughan, James Brown, Freddie King, Joe Simon, Ronnie Hawkins, Albert Collins, Roy Buchanan, Dobie Gray and the sons of blues legend Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, among others.^[25]

Mack’s managers over the years have included Fraternity Records co-founder Harry Carlson, John Hovekamp^[26] and James Webber,^[27] formerly an executive with Elektra Records.^[28]

Childhood and early influences[edit]

In 1941, Mack’s family moved from southeastern Kentucky to southern Indiana, where he was raised on a series of small subsistence farms near the Ohio River.^[29] Although his childhood homes had no electricity, the family had a primitive, battery-powered radio and were devotees of “The Grand Ole Opry” radio show. As a child, listening after the rest of the family had gone to bed, he became a fan of R&B and gospel music.^[17][30]

He began playing at the age of seven, using an acoustic guitar he had traded for a bicycle.^[31] While still a youngster, he played his guitar for tips at a hobo jungle near his home and outside of the Nieman Hotel in nearby Aurora, Indiana.^[16] Mack has stated, “I started off in bluegrass, before there was rock and roll. My family was like a family band. We sang and harmonized, and Dad played banjo. We were playin’ mostly gospel, bluegrass, and old-style country. We played a lot of that old-style Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams kinda music.”^[17][32]

His mother was his earliest country-guitar and singing influence, and Ralph Trotto, a local gospel singer, was his earliest musical mentor.^{[33] [34]}

Mack recalls that an uncle “showed me how you could take a Merle Travis sound on guitar and it was very similar to what a lot of the Black guys were doing; they just made it a little funkier. It was pretty easy to come over to that once I figured it out.”^[35] In addition to country guitarist Travis, various sources have observed that Mack’s playing shows influences of jazz guitarist Les Paul and blues guitarist T-Bone Walker.^[36][37]

He acknowledged R&B artists Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Hank Ballard as musical influences, as well as country singer George Jones and gospel singer Archie Brownlee of The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi.^[38][39] He recorded tunes by each of these artists.

Early career[edit]

Mack dropped out of school at the age of thirteen after a fight with a teacher.^[40] Using a fake ID, he soon began performing in roadhouses in the Cincinnati area.^[41]

As a teen-aged solo artist in the late 1950s, he recorded a cover of Al Dexter‘s 1944 western swing hit, “Pistol Packin’ Mama” on the Esta label.^[42][43] During the same period, he played lead guitar for his older cousins, Aubrey Holt and Harley Gabbard, on two recordings, The Stanley Brothers‘ “Too Late to Cry” and the cousins’ own “Hey, Baby”. These two singles were released in 1959 on the Sage label.^[44] “Pistol-Packin’ Mama” and “Too Late to Cry” have been out of print for decades. “Hey, Baby”, a rockabilly tune with close-harmony bluegrass vocals, was reissued by a German label, Bear Family Records, in 2010.^[45]

By the late 1950s, Mack had assembled a band of his own. They performed throughout Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, playing both rockabilly and, increasingly, R&B-tinged rock and roll. He began using the stage-name “Mack” and, for a time, called his band “The Twilighters”, a reference to the Hamilton, Ohio club where they had had a steady engagement.^[20]

Mack’s guitar[edit]

In 1958, he bought the seventh Gibson Flying V guitar from that model’s first-year production run.^[46][47] Mack, who is of Scottish and Native American ancestry^[46] was attracted to the arrow-shaped instrument because of his ethnic heritage.^[20] Dubbing his guitar “Number 7”, Mack used it almost exclusively during his career.^[48]

Today, the 1958 Flying V is now considered highly collectible, as fewer than 100 were produced in that inaugural year.

In 2010, Number 7 was featured in Star Guitars – 101 Guitars that Rocked the World.^[49] In 2011, it was featured in The Guitar Collection, a $1,500, two-volume set, that included a detailed essay and lush photo layout for each of the world’s 150 most “elite” and “exceptional” guitars.^[50] In 2012, it was included in Rolling Stone’s list of “20 Iconic Guitars”.^[4]

Mack’s guitar style and technique[edit]

While Mack’s rock-guitar style was firmly rooted in the blues and R&B, he routinely used fast-paced “fingerstyle” and “chicken picking” techniques from traditional country and bluegrass guitar styles, leading a reviewer of his earliest releases to puzzle over the “peculiar running quality” of his bluesy solos.^[51] These recordings prefigured the fast, flashy, blues-rock lead guitar style that dominated rock by the late 1960s.^{[2][52][18][53]}

He used a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece on “Wham!” (and several other tunes) to achieve sound effects so distinctive for the time that guitarists began calling it the “whammy bar“,^[20] a term by which the Bigbsy and othervibrato bars are still known. He was uniquely proficient with it. He typically manipulated it with the little finger of his right hand, while picking at a 45-degree angle with a pick or the remaining fingers of the same hand, and bending the strings on the fret-board with his left.^[54] Stevie Ray Vaughan observed: “Nobody can play with a whammy-bar like Lonnie. He holds it while he plays and the sound sends chills up your spine”.^[55]

His pioneering use of “lightning-fast runs”^[56] became a hallmark of virtuoso rock guitar by the end of the 1960s.

On most of his early guitar solos, he employed a variant of R&B guitarist Robert Ward‘s distortion technique, using a 1950s-era, tube-fired Magnatone amplifier to produce a distinctive, “watery” tone. Later, he plugged into an organ amplifier to enhance his vibrato with a “rotating, fluttery sound”.^[57]

“Memphis”, “Wham!”, and the advent of virtuoso rock-guitar soloing[edit]

In the early 1960s Mack often worked as a session player for Fraternity, a small record label in Cincinnati that rented the studios of the much larger King Records for its recording sessions.^[58] There, he played on a number of singles by local R&B artists, including Max Falcon, Beau Dollar and the Coins, Denzil Rice (who, as “Dumpy” Rice, went on to become the piano player in Mack’s band) and Cincinnati’s leading female R&B trio, The Charmaines.^[59][60]

On March 12, 1963,^[61] at the end of a recording session backing up The Charmaines, Mack and his band were offered the remaining twenty minutes of studio-rental time.^[36] Not expecting the tune to be released, he recorded a rockabilly/blues guitar instrumental grounded in the melody of Chuck Berry‘s 1959 UK vocal hit, “Memphis, Tennessee“.^[57] He had improvised the guitar solo in a live performance a few years earlier, when his keyboardist, who usually sang the tune, missed a club date. His instrumental version was so well received that he adopted it as part of his live act. Mack called it “Memphis”.

As recorded in 1963, “Memphis” featured a then-unique combination of several key elements, including seven distinct sections and an unusually fast twelve-bar blues solo, all set to a rock beat. “An extended guitar solo exploiting the entire range of the instrument rings in the climax of the song in the fifth section. Lonnie Mack begins this portion by quoting several measures of the riff one octave higher than before. From there, he breaks into his choicest licks, including double-picking and pulling-off techniques — all with driving, complicated rhythms and technical precision”.^[62]

By the time “Memphis” was first broadcast, in the spring of 1963, Mack had already forgotten the impromptu recording session and was engaged in a nationwide performing tour with singer-songwriter Troy Seals. A friend located him on tour and told him his tune was climbing the charts. In a 1977 interview, Mack recalled, “I was completely taken by surprise. I [hadn’t] listened to the radio. I had no idea what was happening”.^[36][63] By late June, “Memphis” had risen to No. 4 on Billboard‘s R&B chart and No. 5 on Billboard’s pop chart.^[36] It was only the fourth rock guitar instrumental to penetrate Billboard’s “Top 5”.^[64]

According to musicologist and baroque guitar professor Richard T. Pinnell, Mack’s fast-paced interpretation of electric blues-guitar in “Memphis” was unique in the history of rock guitar soloing to that point, producing a tune that was both “rhythmically and melodically full of fire” and “one of the milestones of early rock and roll guitar”.^[52] The track sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.^[65]

Still in 1963, Mack released “Wham!”, a gospel-inspired guitar instrumental that reached No. 24 on Billboard’s Pop chart in September.^[57] He soon recorded ^[66] several more rock-guitar solos in the style of “Memphis” and “Wham!”, including his own frenzied showpiece,”Chicken Pickin”, and an instrumental version of Dale Hawkins‘s “Suzie Q“.^[43][67]

Although the term “blues rock” had not yet come into common usage in 1963, “Memphis” and “Wham!” are now widely regarded as the earliest genuine hit recordings of the virtuoso blues-rock guitar genre.^{[68][69][70][43][71]}

“Blue-eyed soul” ballads[edit]

While Mack’s first recording successes were instrumentals, his live performances typically included vocals as well, and in 1963 he recorded a number of tunes featuring his singing talents.^[72] These early “blue-eyed soul” vocal recordings were critically acclaimed. In 1968, after extolling Mack’s talent as a guitarist, Rolling Stone said, “But it is truly the voice of Lonnie Mack that sets him apart. [His] songs have a sincerity and intensity that’s hard to find anywhere”.^[73] According to another review:

Ultimately—for consistency and depth of feeling—the best blue-eyed soul is defined by Lonnie Mack’s ballads and virtually everything The Righteous Brothers recorded. Lonnie Mack wailed a soul ballad as gutsily as any black gospel singer. The anguished inflections which stamped his best songs (“Why?”, “She Don’t Come Here Anymore” and “Where There’s a Will”) had a directness which would have been wholly embarrassing in the hands of almost any other white vocalist.

— music critic Bill Millar, 1983 essay “Blue-Eyed Soul: Colour Me Soul”^[74]

R&B radio stations throughout the South played Mack’s gospel-inspired version of the soul ballad “Where There’s a Will” in 1963; eventually, he was invited to give a live radio interview with a prominent R&B disc jockey in racially polarized Birmingham, Alabama. According to Mack’s own account, when he appeared at the radio station, the DJ took one look at him and said, “Baby, you’re the wrong color” and canceled the interview on the spot.^[57][75]

He recalls that this incident marked a precipitous drop in the airplay time devoted to his vocal recordings on R&B radio stations.^[76] Fraternity reacted by delaying release of one of his signature soul ballads, “Why?” (recorded in 1963), as a single,^[77] until 1968,^[57] and then only as the “B” side of a re-release of “Memphis”.^[43] “Why?” received scant notice and never charted, but was eventually recognized as a “lost masterpiece of rock ‘n’ roll”.^[78] In 2009, music critic Greil Marcus called “Why?” a “soul ballad so torturous, so classically structured, that it can uncover wounds of your own. Mack’s scream at the end has never been matched. God help us if anyone ever tops it”.^{[79] [80]}

Despite the de facto ban of Mack’s vocal recordings on R&B radio stations, his 1963 cover version of Jimmy Reed‘s “Baby, What’s Wrong” became a modest crossover pop hit (Billboard Pop, No. 93),^[43] particularly in the Midwest, Fraternity’s traditional distribution market.^[46]

During the 1970s, he recorded fewer blues and soul ballads, and more country and rockabilly vocals.^[81] His mature singing style has been described as a “country-esque blues voice”^[82] and the “impassioned vocal style of a white Hoosier with a touch of Memphis soul”.^[83] Examples from the 1980s include a rendition of T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday“,^[84] Mack’s soul ballad, “Stop”, and a live, gospel-drenched version ofWilson Pickett‘s “I Found a Love”.^[85]

The Wham of that Memphis Man![edit]

During 1963, after the release of “Memphis” and “Wham!”, Mack returned to the studio several times to cut additional recordings, including instrumentals, vocals, and ensemble tunes.^[86] In early 1964, Fraternity packaged several of these, along with his 1963 singles, into an album entitled The Wham of that Memphis Man!^[87]

Mack’s guitar instrumentals were blues-based, but unusually rapid, seamless, and precise.^[57] His vocals were strongly influenced by Black gospel music. All the tunes were backed by bass guitar and drums, and many also featured keyboards and a Stax/Volt-style horn section. The Charmaines provided an R&B backup chorus on several cuts.^[51] InThe 100 Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Records of All Time, Jimmy Guterman ranked the album No. 16:

The first of the guitar-hero records is also one of the best. And for perhaps the last time, the singing on such a disc is worthy of the guitar histrionics. Lonnie Mack bent, stroked, and modified the sound of six strings in ways that baffled his contemporaries and served as a guide to future players. His brash arrangements insure that [the album] remains a showcase for songs, not just a platform for showing off. Mack, who produced this album, has never been given credit for the dignified understatement he brought to his workouts.^[88]

The Wham of that Memphis Man! was released within weeks of the beginning of the British Invasion. Competing with the likes of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones was an obstacle encountered by many, but Mack faced an additional challenge: As observed by music critic John Morthland, “[All] the superior chops in the world couldn’t hide the fact that chubby, country Mack probably had more in common with Kentucky truck drivers than he did with the new rock audience”.^[89] He drifted back into relative obscurity until the late 1960s.

The Wham of that Memphis Man! has been reissued at least ten times.^{[90][91][92][93][94][95]} However, most of Mack’s Fraternity recordings are not found on the album. Fraternity released a few additional Mack singles during the 1960s, but none charted, and Fraternity never issued another album.^[43][96] Many of his Fraternity sides, including some alternate takes of tunes released in the 1960s, were first released three or four decades after they were recorded, on a series of Mack compilation albums.^[97][98][99]

Historical significance of Mack’s guitar solos[edit]

Mack’s extended guitar solos displayed unprecedented levels of speed, dexterity and improvisational skill in the world of early-’60s rock guitar. In July 1980, the editors of Guitar World magazine ranked 1963’s “Memphis” the premier “landmark” rock guitar recording to date, immediately ahead of full albums featuring blues-rock guitarists Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton.^[100]

In all, it is not an exaggeration to say that Lonnie Mack was well ahead of his time….His bluesy solos pre-dated the pioneering blues-rock guitar work of Jeff Beck… Eric Clapton… and Mike Bloomfield… by nearly two years. Considering that they [were] ‘before their time’, the chronological significance of Lonnie Mack for the world of rock guitar is that much more remarkable.

— Brown & Newquist, Legends of Rock Guitar, Hal Leonard Co., 1997, p. 25

[Mack’s early work] was an aggressive, sophisticated, original and fully realized sound, developed by a kid from the sticks. It’s questionable we’d have incandescent moments like Cream‘s [1968] rendition of “Crossroads” without Lonnie Mack’s ground-breaking arrangements five years earlier.

— Sandmel, Guitar World, May 1984, pp. 55-56

“Listen to the original ‘Wham!’ and ‘Suzie Q’ for the definitive touch, tone, lyricism and soulful musical attitude. Lonnie figured out before anybody else just how to project the right notes and the ultimate sound that penetrated deep into our sensual souls.”

— Ted Nugent, March 7, 2012 interview^[101]

Mack views himself as a transitional figure: “I was a bridge-over between the standard country licks [in early rock ‘n’ roll] and the screamin’ kinda stuff.”^[32]

Mack’s impact on other guitarists[edit]

Mack has been called a “guitar hero’s guitar hero”^[102] who “pushed a new generation of white kid guitarists in the unaccustomed direction of soul music”.^[103] In Skydog: The Duane Allman Story, guitarist Mike Johnstone recalled the impact of Mack’s solos upon rock guitarists in 1963: “Now, at that time, there was a popular song on the radio called ‘Memphis’ – an instrumental by Lonnie Mack. It was the best guitar-playing I’d ever heard. All the guitar-players were [saying] ‘How could anyone ever play that good? That’s the new bar. That’s how good you have to be now'”.^[104]

Prominent guitarists from a variety of popular music genres have acknowledged Mack as an influence:^[105]

Blues rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan considered Mack one of his “very big influences”.^[106] He honed his early guitar skills by playing along with “Wham!” (“the first record I ever owned”^[107]) incessantly until his father finally destroyed the record. Young Vaughan simply bought another copy and resumed his practice.^[108] Referring to his own musical style, Vaughn said that Mack had “invented a lot of this stuff”^[109] and that “I got a lot of the fast things I do from Lonnie”.^[110] Three years before his death, he listed Mack first among the guitarists he customarily listened to, both as a youngster, and as an adult.^[111]

Southern rock lead and slide guitarist Duane Allman played along with “Memphis” in his military academy dorm room, stopping, starting, and slowing the turntable with his foot, until the young prodigy had mastered the tune.^[112] His Allman Brothers band-mate, lead and rhythm guitarist Dickey Betts, said: “Lonnie is one of the greatest players I know of. He’s always been a great influence on me”.^[113]

Jazz-rock guitarist Jeff Beck considers Mack a “major influence”^[114] and typically includes Mack’s “Lonnie on the Move” in his live tour set lists.^[115]

Western swing guitarist Ray Benson, frontman for eight-time Grammy-winner Asleep at the Wheel, declared Mack “my guitar hero”.^[116]

Funk and Soul bassist-guitarist Bootsy Collins of Parliament-Funkadelic: “For me, at that time, Lonnie Mack was the master. Every note that mother played, was, like, Man! I would try to mimic all the notes he played. Same thing with [Collins’ brother] Cat. A Lonnie Mack song come out, he’d learn it backwards and forwards”.^[117]

Hard rock lead guitarist Ted Nugent considers Mack one of the eleven greatest rock guitarists of all time.^[118]

Transition period[edit]

In the mid-1960s, the public’s musical tastes shifted radically due to the initial, “pop” phase of the “British Invasion“. However, during the same period, the “folk music” movement in the US and the popularity of Black American musical forms in both the US and the UK expanded the appeal of classic rural and urban blues among young whites of the baby boom generation.

Soon, a handful of white and integrated blues bands rose to prominence, including John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in the UK and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the US. During the mid-through-late 1960s, a new generation of electric blues guitarists emerged, including Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, most of whom were, or soon became, frontmen for blues-based rock bands. The late 1960s witnessed the appearance of many such bands, most of which showcased the virtuosity of their lead guitarists. These included the enormously successful “power trios”: Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. By then, blues-rock was recognized as a distinct and powerful force within rock music on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, in 1968, this sequence of events led to the rediscovery of Mack’s seminal blues-rock guitar solos of the early 1960s.^[119][120]

Still in the mid-1960s, before Mack’s rediscovery, Fraternity released a handful of the many Mack tunes it had recorded, but none charted. Fraternity struggled to survive during this period and it was ultimately sold to a new owner for $25,000.^[121] Mack soon turned to R&B session work with larger, more successful record labels.

At Cincinnati’s premier record label, Syd Nathan‘s King Records, he played second guitar on a number of recordings by blues singer-guitarist Freddie King, and lead guitar on some recordings by “The Godfather of Soul”, James Brown.^[90] The uncredited guitar solo on Brown’s 1967 instrumental, “Stone Fox”, has been attributed to both Mack and Troy Seals.^{[122][123][124]}

During the same period, he found steady work as a session guitarist for John Richbourg‘s Soundstage 7 Productions in Nashville, backing soul singer Joe Simon and several other Richbourg R&B acts on Monument Records.^[125] He also played lead guitar on several Fraternity recordings of Cincinnati blues singer Albert Washington.^[126] Like most contemporary releases of the financially-distressed Fraternity label, Washington’s recordings attracted only modest attention at home. However, one featuring Mack’s guitar (“Turn On The Bright Lights”), stayed on the pop charts in Japan for several consecutive years^[127] and all were later reissued in the UK.^[128]

Rediscovery[edit]

In 1968, with the blues-rock and guitar-soloing movements approaching full force, Mack was re-discovered by Elektra Records of Los Angeles. He relocated to the West Coast to execute a three-album record deal. A feature article in the November 1968 issue of Rolling Stone magazine rated Mack “in a class by himself” as a rock guitarist, and compared his R&B vocals favorably with Elvis Presley‘s best gospel efforts. Rolling Stone urged Elektra to reissue Mack’s five-year-old Fraternity album, in addition to the three new albums. Elektra soon obliged, reissuing The Wham of that Memphis Man!, with two additional 1964 tracks, under the title For Collectors Only. Rolling Stone’s October 1970 review of For Collectors Only compared Mack’s guitar recordings from the early 1960s to the best of Eric Clapton’s more recent recordings.

The Wham of that Memphis Man! remains Mack’s most significant early album.^[129]

The Elektra years[edit]

Mack recorded three new albums with Elektra, Glad I’m in the Band (1969), Whatever’s Right (1969), and The Hills of Indiana (1971).

In the aggregate, the three Elektra albums represented a stark departure from the strengths and stylistic formula of Mack’s earlier work, previously touted by Rolling Stone. They were eclectic collections of country and soul ballads, blues tunes, and updated versions of earlier recordings. In contrast to The Wham of that Memphis Man, both 1969 albums emphasized Mack’s vocals and de-emphasized his guitar work. Only two instrumentals appear on them, i.e., a full-length blues- guitar piece on Glad entitled “Mt. Healthy Blues”, and a re-make of “Memphis”.

Despite the shift in musical emphasis, his output from this period was well received by music critics. This, from a contemporary assessment of Glad:

Mack’s taste and judgment are super-excellent. Every aspect of his guitar bears a direct relationship to the sound and meaning of the song. [H]is voice is strong without straining and of great range and personality. [I]f this isn’t the best rock recording of the season, it’s the solidest. – Rolling Stone, May 3, 1969, p. 28.

Representative of these two albums were consecutive vocals on Whatever’s Right. Mack sings Willie Dixon‘s “My Babe” in a soul style typical of that era. Within seconds of the closing measure on that tune, he begins his vocal on “Things Have Gone To Pieces”, a country tune previously recorded by George Jones. He repeated the pattern in Glad by performing a soul tune, “Too Much Trouble”, and a country tune, “Old House”, in sequence.

In addition to his solo dates during this period, he toured with Elektra label-mates The Doors^[130] and served as a session-player on their album “Morrison Hotel“.^[131] The Doors’ John Densmore recalls: “Lonnie sat down in front of the paisley baffles that soak up the sound. A hefty guy with a pencil-thin beard, he had on a wide-brimmed hat that had become his trademark. Lonnie Mack epitomized the blues—not the rural blues, but the city blues; he was bad. ‘I’ll sing the lyrics for you’, Jim [Morrison] offered meekly. [Morrison] was unusually shy. We all were, because to us, the guitar player we had asked to sit in with us was a living legend.”^[132][133] While in the studio for “Morrison Hotel”, The Doors recorded an instrumental entitled “Blues for Lonnie”, which was released many years later as a recording session out-take.^[134]

Upon completing his 1969 albums, Mack assumed a “Chet Atkins-Eric Clapton role at Elektra, doing studio dates, producing and A&R.”^[135] In that role, he helped to recruit a number of country and blues artists from Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Elektra considered the launch of a specialty label to record them.^[136] Mack tried to sign Carole King, but Elektra rejected her on the grounds that they already had Judy Collins.^[102] He then attempted to interest Elektra in gospel singer Dorothy Combs Morrison, the former lead vocalist for the Edwin Hawkins Singers of “Oh Happy Day” fame. Mack had recorded Morrison singing a gospel-esque version of The Beatles’ “Let It Be“, and sought permission to release it; management’s response was delayed, however, due to ongoing negotiations for the label’s sale to Warner Brothers,^[137]allowing a competing label to grab the initiative and release Aretha Franklin‘s own gospel version first. “That bummed me out”,^[102] Mack said, and he resigned his corporate job.^[13]

By that point, Elektra had put together a musical whistle-stop touring group, including Mack, billed as “The Alabama State Troupers and Mount Zion Choir”.^[138] According to Elektra producer Russ Miller, Mack disappeared six days before the tour was to begin. Miller found him ensconced at a rustic farm in backwoods Kentucky, and implored him to join the tour. Mack refused, citing a nightmare during his last night in Los Angeles, in which he and his family had been pursued by Satan. He told Miller that when he awoke in a sweat, he found his Bible opened to a passage commanding him to “flee from Mount Zion”. Miller returned to California without Mack, stating later: “[Lonnie’s] a real country boy. [T]hat was it for Lonnie”.^[139]

The Country years[edit]

Mack’s final Elektra album, The Hills of Indiana, was released in 1971. Foreshadowing the next phase of his career, The Hills of Indiana completed Mack’s shift of focus away from high-octane R&B and blues-rock, towards the pastoral, country end of the musical spectrum. The album sold poorly. His contract with Elektra fulfilled, Mack left Los Angeles behind and went home, both physically and musically, adopting the roles of low-profile country recording artist, sideman, session-player, and occasional roadhouse touring performer. His recordings during this period display only rare glimpses of his celebrated guitar virtuosity. Over the next fourteen years, he slipped back into a state of relative anonymity.^[140]

Years after leaving Los Angeles, Mack reflected on his retreat from the rock ‘n’ roll spotlight while he was still in his twenties: “Seems like every time I get close to really making it, to climbing to the top of the mountain, that’s when I pull out. I just pull up and run”.^[12] The lyrics of several Mack tunes shed further light on the topic. According to two, he yearned for the simple, anonymous, country lifestyle of his youth.^[141] In another, he equated the pursuit of “fortune and fame” with selling one’s soul to Satan.^[142] In yet another, he stated simply: “L.A. made me sick.”^[143]

Country music was not just a refuge for Mack; his affection for it was genuine. In the ’60s, he was fond of organizing after-hours country jam sessions with like-minded rock performers. He recalls one such session in which he and Janis Joplin sang a duet on a George Jones song, “Things Have Gone To Pieces”, accompanied by Jimi Hendrix on electric guitar and Jerry Garcia on pedal steel.^[144]

Between 1973 and 1978, Mack recorded a few country-flavored albums^[145] that went largely unnoticed at the time,^[146] although some garnered favorable reviews many years later.^[147]

In 1975, Mack was shot during an altercation with an off-duty police officer. His account of the incident is preserved in one of his better-known late-career tunes, “Cincinnati Jail”.^[148] According to the lyrics of that tune, the officer’s unmarked car narrowly missed Mack while he was walking across a city street. As it brushed past him, Mack hit it on the fender, shouting “better slow it down!”. The officer stopped, emerged from his car, shot Mack “in the leg”, then hauled him before a judge, who threw Mack in jail. Mack recovered, but once again virtually disappeared from the music scene. For the next several years, he rarely performed in public, except at his “Friendship Music Park” in rural southern Indiana, where he showcased bluegrass and traditional country artists.^[16]

In 1977, he performed at a “Save the Whales” benefit concert in Japan.^[149]

In 1979, Mack began working on an independent recording project with a friend, producer-songwriter Ed Labunski.^[150] The intended result was a country-pop album ultimately entitled South,^[151] but Labunski died in an auto accident before the album was completed, and the project was shelved for twenty years.^[152] Labunski’s death also derailed Mack’s and Labunski’s plans to produce then-unknown Texas blues-guitar prodigyStevie Ray Vaughan, who was destined to play a key role in Mack’s blues-rock comeback a few years later.^[150][153]

Blues-rock comeback[edit]

By the early 1980s, Mack had been largely absent from the rock-music scene for over a decade, and his visibility as a recording artist had waned considerably. His first album from this period was Live at Coco’s, recorded in 1983. It is Mack’s only mid-career roadhouse performance preserved on disc. Originally a bootleg recording, it was released commercially in 1998.^[90] On Coco’s, Mack and his band can be heard playing familiar tunes from the Fraternity era, lesser-known tunes from the 1970s, tunes that appear on no other album (e.g., “Stormy Monday”, “The Things I Used to Do” and “Man from Bowling Green”) and tunes which did not appear on his studio albums until several years later (e.g., “Falling Back in Love with You”, “Ridin’ the Blinds”, “Cocaine Blues” and “High Blood Pressure”).

Also in 1983, he relocated to Texas, where he played regularly at venues in Dallas and Austin. Early in this period, he entered into a professional collaboration with local guitar phenom Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was soon to become an international blues-rock guitar sensation. Mack and Vaughan had first met in 1979,^[20] when Mack, acting on a tip from Vaughan’s older brother, went to hear him play at a local bar. Vaughan recalled the meeting:

I was playin’ at the Rome Inn in Austin, and we had just hit the opening chords of “Wham!” when this big guy walked in. He looked just like a great big bear. As soon as I looked at his face, I realized who he was, and naturally he was blown away to hear us doing his song. [W]e talked for a long time that night. [Lonnie said] he wanted to produce us.

— Stevie Ray Vaughan, as quoted in Sandmel, “Rock Pioneer Lonnie Mack In Session With Stevie Ray Vaughan”, Guitar Player, April 1985, p. 33

Mack and Vaughan became close friends. Despite the generation gap between them, Mack said that he and Vaughan “were always on the same level”, describing Vaughan as “an old spirit…in a young man’s body”.^[154] Mack regarded Vaughan as his “little brother” and Vaughan said Mack was “something between a daddy and a brother”.^[155][156] When Mack was stricken with a lengthy illness in Texas, Vaughan put on a benefit concert to help pay his bills; during Mack’s recuperation, Vaughan and his bass-player, Tommy Shannon, personally installed an air-conditioner in Mack’s house.^[155]

Vaughan called Mack “the baddest guitar player I know”^[157] and credited Mack with “[teaching] me to play guitar from the heart”.^[158] Vaughan’s musical legacy includes four versions of “Wham!”, i.e., two solo versions^[159] and two dueling-guitar versions with Mack.^[160] He also recorded Mack’s “If You Have to Know”^[161] and an instrumental homage to “Chicken-Pickin” that Vaughan called “Scuttle-Buttin'”.^[162][163]

Mack signed with Alligator Records in 1984, and, upon recovering from his illness, began working on his blues-rock comeback album, Strike Like Lightning. It became one of the top-selling independent recordings of 1985.^[164] Mack and Vaughan co-produced the album. Mack himself composed most of the tunes, which featured his vocals and driving guitar equally. Vaughan played second guitar on most of the album and traded leads with Mack on “Double Whammy” and “Satisfy Susie”. Both played acoustic guitar on Mack’s “Oreo Cookie Blues”.

Strike propelled Mack back into the spotlight at age 44. Much of 1985 found him occupied with a promotional concert tour for Strike that included guest appearances by Vaughan and Ry Cooder, as well as Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, among others. Videos of Mack and Vaughan playing cuts from Strike are found onYouTube and similar websites. In 2007, Sony’s Legacy label released a 1987 “live” performance of Mack’s “Oreo Cookie Blues” featuring them trading leads on electric guitar.^[165]

The Strike Like Lightning tour culminated in a Carnegie Hall concert billed as Further on down the Road. There, he shared the stage with blues-guitar stylist Albert Collins and blues-rock guitar virtuoso Roy Buchanan. The concert was marketed on home video.^[166]

Late career[edit]

In 1986, Mack recorded another Alligator album, Second Sight, which featured both introspective and up-tempo tunes as well as an instrumental blues jam. In 1988, he moved to Epic Records, where he recorded the critically acclaimed^[167] rockabilly album, Roadhouses and Dance Halls, including the autobiographical single, “Too Rock For Country”.^[43] In 1989, Mack performed on Saturday Night Live, as the special guest of the SNL house band’s guitarist.^[168]

In 1989, he returned to Alligator to record a live blues-rock album, Lonnie Mack Live – Attack of the Killer V, featuring two extended guitar solos and expanded renditions of earlier studio recordings. From one review: “This disc has everything that a great live album should have: a great talent on stage, an exciting performance from that talent, a responsive crowd and excellent sound quality … This is what live blues is all about!”^[169]

Later years and death[edit]

In 2000, Mack appeared as a guest artist on the album Franktown Blues, by the sons of blues legend Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. He provided guitar solos on two cuts, “She’s Got The Key” and “Jammin’ For James”.^[170]

He continued to tour in both America and Europe until 2004, and, for the next few years, occasionally appeared at benefit concerts and special events.^{[53][171][172]} On November 15, 2008, he was a featured performer at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame‘s thirteenth annual Music Masters Tribute Concert, soloing on “Wham!” in honor of electric-guitar pioneer Les Paul.^[173] On June 5–6, 2010, he appeared in an invitation-only reunion concert with the surviving members of his original band.^[174]

In 2011, he was working on a memoir^[175] and engaged in a songwriting collaboration with award-winning country and blues tunesmith Bobby Boyd.^[176] Also in 2011, he released some informally recorded compositions on his website, including the acoustic blues single “The Times Ain’t Right”.

Lonnie Mack died following an undisclosed illness on April 21, 2016. Although retired for several years before his death, he was known to “tear the roof off” his favorite Tennessee country roadhouse with a borrowed guitar.^[177]

Discography[edit]

• 1964: The Wham of that Memphis Man!
• 1969: Glad I’m in the Band
• 1969: Whatever’s Right
• 1971: The Hills of Indiana
• 1973: Dueling Banjos (with Rusty York)
• 1977: Home At Last
• 1978: Lonnie Mack With Pismo
• 1980: South (rel. 1999)
• 1983: Live at Coco’s (rel. 1999)
• 1985: Strike Like Lightning
• 1986: Second Sight
• 1988: Roadhouses and Dance Halls
• 1990: Attack of the Killer V
• Further info at: http://www.discogs.com/artist/252843-Lonnie-Mack

Career recognition and awards[edit]

Year	Award or recognition
1993	Gibson Guitar Corporation issued a limited-run “Lonnie Mack Signature Edition” of Lonnie Mack’s iconic 1958 “Flying V” guitar[178]
1998	Lifetime Achievement “Cammy” (presented annually to musicians identified with the tri-State area of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana)[179]
2001	Inducted into the Southern Indiana Musicians’ Association Hall of Fame[180]
2001	Inducted into the International Guitar Hall of Fame[181]
2002	Second “Lifetime Achievement” Cammy[182]
2005	Inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame[183]
2006	Inducted into The Southern Legends Entertainment & Performing Arts Hall of Fame[184]
2011	Mack’s 1958 Flying V judged among the world’s 150 “most elite guitars”.[185]

See also[edit]

• Rockabilly Hall of Fame
• Cincinnati Blues Festival
• Long Beach Blues Festival
• Blues-rock
• Gibson Flying V

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Lonnie Mack’s official site
• Lonnie Mack at the Internet Movie Database
• Lonnie Mack biography at Allmusic website
• Rockabilly Hall of Fame website article on Mack

Authority control WorldCat Identities VIAF: 54348260 ISNI: 0000 0000 5518 432X BNF: cb14043675t (data) MusicBrainz: 8d7e3ee7-f391-43a5-84ae-3b830d4eba81