Lonnie Mack

Lonnie Mack

Lonnie Mack (born Lonnie McIntosh, 18 July 1941, Harrison County, Indiana) is an influential rock and blues guitarist.

Career

Mack's career followed a path marked by ground-breaking recordings and extended periods of non-stop touring, punctuated by periods of self-imposed exile from the music scene. His legacy is that of rock & roll's first virtuoso lead guitarist, and the first recording artist to comprehensively merge blues guitar concepts into the rock mainstream. For these accomplishments, and their profound influence on the development of rock music, Mack is considered a pivotal figure in the history of rock & roll. In addition, his early vocal recordings rank him among the finest of the "blue-eyed soul" singers.

Throughout his career, Mack's recordings reflected a unique, genre-stretching mix of black and white musical roots, which ultimately made his music impossible to pigeonhole stylistically. He has been classified as a "rockabilly" or "Southern rock" artist for his many recordings which blend roots-rock, country, R&B and blues styles. However, such classifications do not do full justice to Mack's career, because many of the tunes he recorded do not represent a blend of styles, but were entirely within a single, distinct style or genre, i.e., country, roots-rock, classic R&B, soul, post-war urban blues or gospel music. Regardless, he is best-known today for his genre-founding "blues-rock" guitar recordings in the early 1960s.

1941-1954: Childhood and early influences

Only weeks before his birth, Mack's parents relocated his family from the Appalachians of eastern Kentucky to the small subsistence farm in southern Indiana where Mack was raised. They brought with them a deep appreciation of traditional country music, which they instilled in all of their children. Many of Mack's close relatives were active country and bluegrass pickers, and he has a childhood memory of Ralph Stanley visiting and playing at his home while he was still a child. Although there was no electricity on the farm, Mack's family had a primitive battery-powered radio, and it was their custom to listen to "The Grand Ole Opry" every Saturday evening. After the rest of the family had retired for the night, Mack would log some radio time of his own, listening to early-50s R&B and gospel music.

Mack started playing acoustic guitar at the age of seven, and recalls the day that some railroad workers near his home gave him a quarter to play. He decided, then and there, that he wanted to play guitar for a living.

Mack has cited an unknown blind guitarist from his childhood, Ralph Trotto, as his earliest blues guitar influence. He has also cited '50s R&B vocalists Hank Ballard and Bobby "Blue" Bland, R&B guitarist Robert Ward, blues guitarist T-Bone Walker, country guitarist Merle Travis, country vocalist George Jones and '40s-era "big band" jazz music as significant early musical influences.

1954-1962: Pre-"Memphis" career

Mack quit school at the age of 13, after an altercation with a teacher. Big for his age, he got a fake ID and began playing the roadhouse circuit around Cincinnati while still in his mid-teens.

During the same period, Mack played guitar on two recordings, "Too Late to Cry" and "Hey, Baby", with his cousins, country-bluegrass artists Aubrey Holt, Harley Gabbard and Harold Sizemore, who later performed and recorded as "The Boys From Indiana". Mack recalls the session itself taking place in the mid-1950s. However, one source shows the Sage label releasing these singles in March 1959. Also during the mid-to-late '50s, Mack waxed a cover of Clarence Poindexter's western swing classic, "Pistol-Packin' Mama" on the long-since-defunct Dobbs label. None of these early recordings are still available.

In 1958, Mack bought the seventh Gibson Flying V guitar ever made, which he used almost exclusively during his long career. Mack, who is of Scottish and Native American ancestry, was attracted to the arrow-shaped instrument because of his Indian heritage. By the late '50s, Mack had put together a solid R&B band, and they were soon in great demand as performers throughout Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, playing R&B-driven rock & roll.

In the early '60s, Mack moonlighted as a session artist for Fraternity, a small record label in Cincinnati. There, he played guitar on a number of singles by local recording artists, including Cincinnati's premier female R&B trio, The Charmaines ("Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu" and "Goodbye Baby Goodbye" among others) and smooth-singing blues balladeer Max Falcon ("I'm So Satisfied" and "Carol Made Her Choice"). Long out-of-print, most of The Charmaines' recordings (and one of the Falcon cuts on which Mack played) were recently reissued in the UK on a CD entitled Gigi and the Charmaines (Ace, 2006).

1963: The birth of blues-rock guitar: "Memphis" and "Wham"

In late 1962, at the end of a Charmaines recording session, Mack off-handedly recorded one of his long-standing roadhouse mainstays, a fast-paced, toe-tapping guitar improvisation using the harmonic foundation and general style of Chuck Berry's UK vocal hit, "Memphis, Tennessee".

By the time Mack's "Memphis" hit the airwaves in early 1963, he had already forgotten recording it and was engaged in a nation-wide performing tour with country singer/songwriter Troy Seals. Mack recalls that he didn't know "Memphis" had been released until a friend tracked him down in Miami, and told him to listen for it on the radio. By late June, "Memphis" had risen to #5 on Billboard's pop chart and #4 on Billboard's R&B chart. Up to that point, only two other rock guitar instrumentals had managed to crack Billboard's "Top 5", Duane Eddy's "Because They're Young" and The Ventures' "Walk, Don't Run", both released in 1960. Mack's success with "Memphis" prompted singer Johnny Rivers to release his own hit version a few months later, incorporating elements of both Berry's and Mack's arrangements.

Mack and Berry later became friends and touring partners. Berry's own performances of his original tune changed to include Mack's faster tempo and longer guitar solos. (See Wikipedia article entitled "Memphis, Tennessee (song)").

Eager to exploit the momentum of "Memphis", Fraternity rushed Mack back into the studio with instructions to record another instrumental. Mack obliged with the self-penned "Wham!," a gospel-inspired guitar rave-up which reached #24 on Billboard's Pop chart in September, 1963. Mack used a Bigsby tremelo arm to achieve "distortion" effects on "Wham!", producing a sound so distinctive for its time that the tremelo arm became better-known as the "whammy bar". Later that year, Mack recorded his most challenging guitar piece, "Chicken-Pickin'".

According to music historian and guitar professor Richard T. Pinnell, Ph. D., Mack's "Memphis" was the first recorded rock guitar instrumental to use a five-note "blues scale" as the basis for its melody, making it "one of the milestones of early rock and roll guitar". Although the term "blues-rock" had not yet been coined in 1963, "Memphis" is now recognized as the first hit recording of the blues-rock guitar genre. Only weeks after "Memphis" was released, Mack's "Wham!" became the second.

1963: Mack's "Blue-Eyed Soul" ballads

Mack's roadhouse performances had featured his guitar and R&B singing equally since the late 1950s, so, at his request, Fraternity also recorded a number of Mack vocals. No singer of Mack's era (excepting the great Ray Charles) could match his genre-spanning capacity to sing both country and soul ballads with equal conviction and authenticity. As it turned out, Mack ultimately became better-known for his guitar. However, today's casual listener, hearing all of his Fraternity recordings for the first time, would probably have a hard time guessing whether it was his guitar--or his singing--that had earned him greater renown.

In a 1983 essay entitled "Blue-Eyed Soul: Colour Me Soul", music critic Bill Millar said:

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.

R&B radio stations throughout the South played Mack's gospel-fired soul ballad "Where There's a Will" in 1963, until he appeared for a live radio interview with a prominent R&B disc jockey in Birmingham, Alabama. There, according to Mack, he was initially mistaken for Lonnie Mack's white manager, after which it became embarrassingly apparent that Mack was not the manager, but the singer. At that time (as Ray Charles had already discovered) the use of African-American gospel music in secular recordings was still considered controversial, even for African-American artists. It probably didn't help that the singer turned out to be a grizzly-looking white man who spoke with a hillbilly accent. The interview was scuttled on the spot.

After that, Mack recalls, there was a precipitous drop in the airplay time devoted to his vocal recordings on R&B radio stations. An unfortunate by-product of this experience was that Mack's most moving soul ballad, "Why?", recorded in 1963, was not released as a single until 1968, and then only as the "B" side of a re-release of "Memphis". As recently as 2001, one music critic wrote:

"Why?", Mack wails, transforming it into a word of three syllables. "Why-y-y?" It's sweaty slow-dance stuff, with an organ intro, a stinging guitar solo, and, after the last emotional chorus, four simple notes on the guitar as a coda. There's no sadder, dustier, beerier song in all of Rock".

Despite being blacklisted on R&B radio stations, Mack's 1963 cover version of Jimmy Reed's "Baby, What's Wrong," managed to become a cross-over pop hit, particularly in the Midwest, Fraternity's traditional distribution market.

Mack recorded fewer blues and soul ballads after the 1960s. However, 1983's Live at Coco's contains several bluesy vocals, including an outstanding version of T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday". In addition, a moving rendition of Mack's own soul ballad, "Stop", can be heard on 1985's Strike Like Lightning.

1964: "The Wham of that Memphis Man!"

The Wham of That Memphis Man!
album cover

In late 1963, Mack returned to the studio to cut additional tunes, including instrumentals, vocals and ensemble pieces. Fraternity packaged several of these with Mack's 1963 singles into a 1964 album, The Wham of that Memphis Man!.

The Wham of that Memphis Man! was an album of stand-alone importance. Mack played the guitar instrumentals in an impressively rapid, fluid and precise style. The instrumentals featured both distortion (mild by later standards) and a distinctive "watery" Magnatone amplifier sound which Mack had adopted from Robert Ward. Although decidedly bluesy, the instrumentals were also catchy, rhythmic and upbeat, in keeping with pop styles of the time. Mack's compelling vocals were strongly influenced by black gospel music. All of the tunes were backed by the typical combination of bass guitar and drums, and many also featured keyboards and horns. Several cuts included a top-notch R&B backup chorus, provided by The Charmaines. Mack himself was the force behind all of the arrangements.

The Wham of that Memphis Man! was a hit, despite the obscurity of the Fraternity label. In the wake of the album's success, Mack spent the next few years performing on tour.

Most of Mack's Fraternity recordings are not found on The Wham of that Memphis Man!. Many were released piecemeal over the years, while some gathered dust in a vault for decades. In 1999, original tapes of 39 Mack tunes from the early 1960s were re-mastered and released as a 2-CD set entitled Direct Hits and Close Calls on Mack's own Flying V label. This set remains available on Mack's website.

The significance of Mack's guitar solos

The full significance of Mack's Fraternity recordings was not apparent when they were first issued. However, as blues-rock evolved into a distinct and recognizable genre in the late 1960s, and, from there, grew into a dominant force within rock, observers began to trace its historical and stylistic roots. In so doing, they found that all paths led back to Lonnie Mack.

As noted in section 1.3 above, "Memphis" was the first recorded rock guitar instrumental built around a five-note "blues scale". In addition, "Memphis", "Wham!", "Chicken-Pickin'", "Suzie-Q" and many of Mack's other early instrumentals were notable for his use of distortion, another stylistic element which soon became a hallmark of both blues-rock guitar and (in exaggerated form) its late 1960s off-shoot, psychedelic rock. Finally, Mack's solos and instrumentals represented a quantum leap in rock guitar musicianship, establishing a standard of virtuosity for a generation of rock lead guitarists, and yet another lasting hallmark of the blues-rock guitar genre.

According to his peers, music critics and historians, Mack's impact upon rock guitar was profound:

In July, 1980, seventeen years after "Memphis" was first released, the editors of Guitar World magazine ranked it the premier "Landmark" rock guitar recording of all time, ahead of full albums by blues-rock giants Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. In July 1990, fully twenty-seven years after "Memphis" was released, Guitar World re-ran the 1980 "Landmark" article, unchanged.

The way I look at it, we're just giving back to him what he did for all of us. [A] lot of producing Lonnie is just... reminding him of his influence on myself and other guitar players. Most of us got a lot from him.

— guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, Guitar World, Nov., 1985, p82

God bless the Beach Boys, but I was really gettin' tired of "Little Deuce Coupe" and all the beach songs, and "Louie, Louie"---which are all great songs, but I'm talkin' about guitar-playin'. And then, here come Lonnie Mack right down the middle of it all. God, what a breath of fresh air that was.

— Allman Brothers guitarist Dickie Betts

[Lonnie Mack] is the first guitarist I know of to take elements of blues, country and earlier rock and bring them to what you could call a 'rock and roll' energy level...Plus, I think its safe to say that he brought more elements of blues into rock guitar than anyone before him. He was both a groundbreaker and a brilliant musician.

— Blues producer Bruce Iglauer

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 are considered '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, p25

[Mack's early work] was an aggressive, sophisticated, original and fully-realized sound, [all] 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, pp55-56

[Mack's] instrumentals and his solos are staggeringly fluid and self-assured. What most of today's virtuosos are still trying to master, Lonnie Mack had all down pat way back in '63.

— Rolling Stone, 1 October 1970

Mack's own take on his early guitar work is simple and modest. He has been quoted as saying that it was "a bridge between the standard country licks of the '50s and the screamin' kinda stuff" that came later.

1964-1968: Transition period

Within a year after the release of Mack's first album, the public's musical tastes had shifted radically as a result of the initial, "pop", phase of the "British Invasion", led by The Beatles. However, by about the same time, the "folk music" movement in the US, and the popularity of African-American musical forms in the UK, had triggered a massive awakening of interest in classic rural and urban blues among young whites of the "baby boom" generation. Soon, a handful of predominantly white blues bands rose to prominence, including John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in the UK and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the US. The appearance of blues-based rock groups followed, all featuring virtuoso lead guitarists. These included The Yardbirds, and the "power trios", Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, among others. By 1968, blues-rock was recognized as a distinct and powerful force within rock & roll on both sides of the Atlantic.

These developments undoubtedly influenced the rediscovery of Mack's pioneering blues-rock recordings of the early '60s. Before that occurred, however, Fraternity loaned Mack to Cincinnati's premier record label, King Records, where Mack worked for a time as a recording-session artist. In 1967, Mack played rhythm guitar on at least four recordings by "The Bluesmaster", singer-guitarist Freddie King. The same year, he played lead guitar on a number of recordings by "The Godfather of Soul", James Brown, including "Kansas City" and "Stone Fox".

Brown was so impressed with Mack's R&B guitar chops that he turned over the recording of "Stone Fox" to Mack. Troy Seals provided back-up on one or more instruments. Ironically, while the tune was released both as a single and on an album, under Brown's name, neither Brown nor his band, "The Famous Flames", performed on this, the original version of "Stone Fox". It was, and remains, an uncredited Lonnie Mack instrumental.

Much of Mack's session work at King Records remains available on numerous James Brown and Freddie King compilation CDs.

1968: Mack's re-discovery

In 1968, with the blues-rock movement approaching full force, Mack landed a multi-record contract with Los Angeles' Elektra label, and relocated to the West Coast. The 23 November 1968 edition of the influential music journal, Rolling Stone, contained a major feature article on Mack, including a full, and highly complimentary ("As a rock guitarist, Lonnie Mack is in a class by himself") review of his 5-year old Fraternity album, and called upon Elektra to reissue it. Mack and his band found themselves in demand once again, and for the next few years they played all of the major rock venues, including Bill Graham's Fillmore East and Fillmore West.

In 1970, Elektra reissued The Wham of that Memphis Man!. However, Elektra inexplicably re-named the album For Collectors Only. That, combined with outdated cover art depicting Mack in early-'60s attire and sporting a pompadour hairstyle, suggested obsolescence more than anything else. This potent combination of marketing gaffes seemingly doomed the album to the "oldies" niche market. However, a 1 October 1970 follow-up review in Rolling Stone, comparing Mack's guitar work on For Collectors Only to "the best of [Eric] Clapton", helped to overcome these obstacles, and the album proved to be a commercial success for a second time in six years.

The Wham of that Memphis Man/For Collectors Only remains Mack's most significant early album and now ranks as a rock classic. It has been reissued many times under a variety of titles over the years. Upon one reissue in 1987, Gregory Himes of The Washington Post wrote: "With so many roots-rock guitarists trying to imitate this same style, this album sounds surprisingly modern. Not many have done it this well, though." (Himes, The Washington Post, February 20, 1987).

1968-1971: The Elektra years

Mack recorded three new albums with Elektra, including Glad I'm in the Band and Whatever's Right, both released in 1969. These were eclectic collections of both country and soul ballads, Chicago-style blues, and a few updated versions of Mack's earlier rock/r&b hits. Both albums were critical successes. This, from a contemporary review of Glad:

Mack's taste and judgement 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, its the solidest.

— Rolling Stone, May 3, 1969, p. 28.

However, the musical diversity of these two albums highlighted a marketing dilemma which dogged Mack for decades: How to position--and sell--an artist who could perform equally well in a bewildering variety of popular music genres (each with its own fan base) and insisted on recording in all of them? It was a problem which Mack's many producers and record labels never fully resolved. Mack himself was acutely aware of the issue, and even wrote a good-natured song about it, 1988's "Too Rock and Roll for Country, Too Country for Rock and Roll". In the end, Mack simply played what he loved, sometimes favoring one style or genre over the rest, and at other times mixing them within individual albums or tunes.

While still under contract to Elektra, Mack made a well-chronicled contribution to The Doors' blockbuster 1970 album, Morrison Hotel. In the ensuing years, the November 6, 1969 recording session itself has become the fodder of urban legend.

What is known: Mack played bass guitar (an instrument he rarely played) on "Roadhouse Blues" and "Maggie M'Gill". Beyond that, some contend that Mack also played lead guitar on these (and other) tracks. Much of the speculation involves "Roadhouse Blues". Bandleader Jim Morrison's spoken voice is heard at the outset of a guitar break on that cut, exhorting "Do it, Lonnie, do it!", words he was not likely to have directed to a fill-in session bassist. In addition, many have commented that the guitar work on that track simply does not sound like lead guitarist Robbie Krieger's style.

Adding to the speculation is a 2006 release of an out-take from the session, recorded before Mack arrived. The album's producer is heard bemoaning Krieger's efforts on "Roadhouse Blues" up to that point. Mack himself recalls composing and recording some blues guitar lines at The Doors' request, using Krieger's guitar. He remembers handing the guitar back to Krieger, who copied Mack's riffs until his final recorded effort was indistinguishable from Mack's original. Today, no one knows whose guitar track--Mack's or Krieger's--ended up in the final mix of 1970's "Roadhouse Blues".

Regardless, Mack made a lasting impression on The Doors. Twenty years after the recording session, the band's drummer, John Densmore wrote:

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 has asked to sit in with us was a living legend.

— Densmore, Riders on the Storm, Dell, 1990, p. 233)

Mack's final Elektra album, 1971's The Hills of Indiana, marked the beginning of his decade-long shift of focus away from R&B and blues-rock, towards the country end of the musical spectrum.

The reclusive '70s

In 1971, at the peak of his career, Mack virtually abandoned blues-rock and R&B, and ended up devoting the better part of the 1970s to introspection and musical experimentation. Exhausted from years of touring, Mack put his guitar aside and became a talent scout/producer for Elektra. However, he quickly discovered that his new job required navigating a maze of corporate politics for which his musician's temperment was not well-suited. Fed up, Mack packed his bags and returned to Indiana.

Not long after that, Mack found himself in Cincinnati, on the wrong end of a gun. According to Mack, he was crossing the street, mid-day, guitar in hand, on the way to a performing date. In the words of Mack's late-career signature tune, "Cincinnati Jail":

'Walkin' cross the street, a car almost run me down; I hit it on the fender, said "Better slow it down!".

The gist of what happened next, according to some contemporary accounts, is that the driver, an off-duty policeman, stopped and shot Mack in both legs, after which Mack was taken before a judge, who threw Mack in jail, where Mack suffered without adequate medical attention for several days. Mack himself has said little about the incident over the years, beyond the lyrics of his song.

Mack was released and eventually recovered from his wounds. After that experience, however, he flew under the radar for several years. During that period, he stopped recording and touring, reportedly expressed disenchantment with the musical style for which he was famous, and founded an informal music theme park (the "Friendship Music Park") in southern Indiana which featured bluegrass and traditional country music. In 1977, Mack emerged from the shadows long enough to record a highly listenable but low-circulation country album, Home at Last on the Capitol label.

Beginning in 1978, Mack entered into three notable musical collaborations. In retrospect, these were efforts by Mack to broaden his musical horizons and stretch his wings generally.

The first was with Graham Nash (formerly of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) in San Francisco, resulting in the Capitol LP Lonnie Mack with Pismo. The second was a six-month playing and songwriting collaboration with Ronnie Hawkins, a founder of The Band.

Finally, Mack spent the better part of 1979 and early 1980 working on a country-pop concept album, South, with a friend, producer Ed Labunski. However, Labunski died before the project was completed, and South was not released until many years later. South represented a major departure from Mack's earlier work. In it, both unison and harmony singing were emphasized, while Mack's role as lead guitarist was downplayed. South was also characterized by an unusually heavy (by Mack's standards) reliance upon electronic production enhancements.

Labunski's death also sidetracked Mack's and Labunski's plans to produce (and record with) a then-unknown Texas guitar prodigy named Stevie Ray Vaughan ("SRV"). However, Vaughan was soon to become a key player in Mack's blues-rock comeback.

The '80s: Mack's blues-rock comeback

In the early 1980s, Mack began to reassert himself as a touring artist, and eventually relocated to Austin, Texas, where he started performing with the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. Although Vaughan was little-known outside Austin at the dawn of the '80s, by 1983 he was well on his way to becoming a blues-rock legend in his own right.

Vaughan had idolized Mack since his teen years, and often said that Mack's "Wham!" was "the first record I ever owned". An intuitive guitar-player who had never learned to read music, Vaughan said that Mack had taught him "to play guitar from the heart", instead. Vaughan often ended his live performances with a stirring rendition of "Wham!", and his Grammy-winning albums included cover versions of both "Wham!" and "Chicken-Pickin'", which Vaughan called "Scuttle-Buttin'".

In 1984 Mack signed with Alligator Records, which in 1985 issued Mack's blues-rock comeback album, Strike Like Lightning. Vaughan and Mack co-produced the album, realizing their objective of recreating Mack's original sound. Vaughan played rhythm guitar on most of the album, and traded leads with Mack on two cuts, "Double Whammy", and "Satisfy Susie". Both played acoustic guitar on Mack's "Oreo Cookie Blues".

Consistent with Mack's customary live performance style, most of the individual cuts on Strike feature Mack's mature, gravelly vocals and driving guitar equally. The album is a collection of back-to-back stand-outs, containing some of Mack's finest recorded singing and guitar-playing since the '60s.

Strike propelled Mack back into the spotlight at age 44. Much of 1985 found Mack occupied with a promotional concert tour for Strike which included guest appearances by Vaughan, Ry Cooder and both Keith Richards and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, among others. Concert film footage of Mack and Vaughan playing cuts from Strike is now accessible on YouTube and similar websites. In addition, Sony's Legacy label recently released an 11-minute "live" performance of Mack's "Oreo Cookie Blues" featuring Mack and Vaughan trading leads on electric guitar.

That same year, Mack co-starred with guitarists Albert Collins and Roy Buchanan at a Carnegie Hall concert billed as Further On Down the Road (a tip of the hat to Mack's 1964 western swing-flavored recording of "Further On Up The Road"). The concert was marketed on home video and remains available on Mack's website.

Late 1985 found Mack in Memphis, recording with artist Tim Krekel on the album Over The Fence, produced by Terry Manning. Mack's 1986 Alligator album, Second Sight, was consistently strong, but attracted less attention than Strike. In 1988, Mack moved to Epic Records, where he recorded the rockabilly classic, Roadhouses and Dance Halls.

1990 to present: late career and awards

File:Lonnie Mack-Live-Attack of the Killer V.jpg

Live!: Attack of the Killer V
album cover

In 1990, at age 49, Mack returned to Alligator. There, he lobbied for a "concert" album, contending that his best work was inspired by playing before a live audience. The result was Lonnie Mack Live! Attack of the Killer V, Mack's most recent recording to date as a featured artist. Prized by both blues-rock and rockabilly aficionados, Attack successfully captured the excitement and spontaneity of Mack's live performances, and showcased him at his late-career best.

Later, a 1983 club-date performance, Live at Coco's, became available on Mack's Flying V label. Initially an unauthorized recording, Mack acquired the rights to Coco's, and in 1998 released it as a 2-CD set. The 26 tracks on Coco's include exemplars of Mack performing in every genre at which he excelled, and is Mack's only recorded mid-career roadhouse performance.

Mack continued to tour extensively through the mid-1990s, four decades into his career.

In 1993, Gibson honored him by issuing a limited-run Lonnie Mack "signature edition" of the "Flying V" guitar. In 1998, Mack received his first "Cammy", an annual award to outstanding musicians identified with the tri-State area of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. In 2002, Terry Stewart (CEO of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) was the presenter of Mack's second, "lifetime achievement", "Cammy". In 2005, Mack was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In 2006, he was inducted into The Southern Legends Entertainment & Performing Arts Hall of Fame. For his entire body of work, but especially his pioneering blues-rock guitar solos, he is also considered worthy of induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Lonnie Mack today

As in the case of Mark Twain over a century ago, the reports of Mack's death (Cooper & Haney, Rock Music in American Popular Culture, Haworth Press, 1999, p.2) have been greatly exaggerated. Now 66, Mack lives in a log house in rural Tennessee, where he occupies himself as a songwriter. He is also working on a manuscript about his experiences as a key player in the golden age of rock & roll. Mack still occasionally performs, most recently at a February 17, 2007 benefit concert in Nashville, where he sang with veteran R&B vocalist Bonnie Bramlett and tore his way through "Cincinnati Jail" on his '58 Flying V.

Discography (albums)

• The Wham of that Memphis Man! - (1964)
• Glad I'm in the Band - (1969)
• Whatever's Right - (1969)
• For Collectors Only - (1970)
• Morrison Hotel - (Session work for The Doors, 1970)
• The Hills of Indiana - (1971)
• Home At Last - (1977)
• Lonnie Mack With Pismo - (1978)
• South - (1980)
• Live at Coco's - (1983)
• Strike Like Lightning - (1985)
• Second Sight - (1986)
• Roadhouses and Dance Halls - (1988)
• Attack of the Killer V: Live - (1990)
• Direct Hits and Close Calls (1999; Compilation)

See also

• Rockabilly Hall of Fame
• Cincinnati Blues Festival
• Long Beach Blues Festival

External links

• Lonnie Mack's official site
• Lonnie Mack biography at the All Music Guide website
• Lonnie Mack profile at mnblues.com
• Rockabilly Hall of Fame website article on Mack
• Complete Lonnie Mack discography