Lonnie Mack

Lonnie Mack

Lonnie Mack (born Lonnie McIntosh, 18 July 1941, Dearborn County, Indiana) is a rock and blues guitarist.

In 1963, he recorded several full-length rock guitar instrumentals strongly grounded in the blues, the best-known of which are "Memphis", "Wham!", "Suzie-Q" and "Chicken-Pickin'". These instrumentals are often said to have formed the leading edge of the blues-rock guitar genre.

The earliest of these, "Memphis", was described by music historian Richard T. Pinnell, Ph. D., as "a milestone of early rock guitar" and was ranked by Guitar World magazine as the premier "landmark" rock guitar recording of all time. In 1992, music critic Jimmy Guterman rated the album containing these, and nine other early Mack tunes, 16th among the top 100 rock recordings of all time. Mack's solos influenced a generation of rock guitarists, including Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Lonnie Mack is also known for his "blue-eyed soul" ballads, and the diversity of his repertoire, which included country, blues, rockabilly, southern rock, R&B, roots-rock, bluegrass and gospel. In the 1960s his recordings emphasized roots-rock, blues-rock and R&B; in the 1970s, country, bluegrass and Southern rock; in the 1980s, rockabilly and blues-rock.

Mack released numerous singles and thirteen original albums as a featured artist. He also recorded with The Doors, Stevie Ray Vaughan, James Brown, Freddie King, Ronnie Hawkins, Albert Collins, Roy Buchanan, Troy Seals, Dobie Gray and the sons of blues legend Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, among others. For much of his career he performed in roadhouses and honky-tonks. However, he also toured internationally and performed at major venues, including Madison Square Garden, Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, the Fillmore East, the Fillmore West and Carnegie Hall.

Career

Lonnie Mack's music career began in the mid-1950s. It included recordings called "ground-breaking", and followed a path marked by critical acclaim, periods of inactivity, rediscovery and comeback, notable collaborations and historic session work. He recorded as a featured artist until 1990. He performed often, and occasionally worked as a session player, until approximately 2005. Now semi-retired, he still occasionally performs with his trademark 1958 Gibson "Flying V" guitar.

As a frontman, Mack has been described as perhaps rock’s first "virtuoso" guitarist and "the first rock guitar hero". In fairness, similar claims could be made concerning several other early rock guitarists, including Duane Eddy, Dick Dale, Link Wray, Tim Fuller (The Surfaris) and Bob Bogle (The Ventures). However, few would deny the significance of Mack's early solos in advancing the role of the lead guitar in rock, in accelerating the integration of blues guitar stylism into rock, and in laying the groundwork of the virtuoso blues-rock guitar genre.

By 1968, blues-rock had become the dominant rock guitar style, and Rolling Stone magazine had declared Mack to be "in a class by himself" as a rock guitarist. Today, critics view him as a pivotal figure in the history of rock guitar, having influenced every frontman, according to Guitar World magazine, "from Clapton to Allman to Vaughan" and "from Nugent to Bloomfield". His early vocal recordings also distinguish him amongst the "blue-eyed soul" singers of the 1960s.

Throughout his career, Mack's recordings reflected a unique mix of black and white musical roots, which often made his music difficult to define stylistically. Music critic Alec Dubro summed it up: "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". At times in his career, the music industry classified him as a "rockabilly" or "southern rock" artist, for his many recordings in which he blended roots-rock, country, rhythm & blues ("R&B") and blues styles. However, he also recorded entirely within single, distinct styles or genres, including country, roots-rock, classic R&B, soul, post-war urban blues and gospel music. Ultimately, the music industry coined the phrase "roadhouse rock" to describe Mack's music.

1941-1954: Childhood and musical influences

A few weeks before Mack's birth, his family moved from the Appalachians of southeastern Kentucky to the small share-cropping farm in southern Indiana where he was born and raised. They brought with them a deep appreciation of traditional country music, which they instilled in him. Several of Mack's close relatives were active country and bluegrass pickers. Although there was no electricity on the farm, his family had a primitive battery-powered radio, and they were devotees of "The Grand Ole Opry" radio show. After the rest of the family had retired for the night, Mack would log some radio time of his own, listening to early R&B and gospel music.

Mack began playing at the age of 7, using an acoustic guitar he had traded for a bicycle. While still a small child, he was playing guitar for tips at a hobo jungle near his home, and outside of the Nieman Hotel in nearby Aurora, Indiana.

Mack has cited his mother as his earliest country guitar and singing influence, and a blind guitarist/gospel singer from his youth, Ralph Trotto, as his earliest musical mentor and blues guitar influence. In several tunes, Mack refers to the influence (or his appreciation) of The Grand Ole Opry, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles and Bobby "Blue" Bland. Early in his career, Mack recorded tunes by Reed, Charles and Bland. As singing influences, he has also cited '50s R&B vocalist Hank Ballard and country vocalist George Jones. Mack recorded tunes by each of them, as well. Various sources have noted that, to one degree or another, Mack's playing shows influences of R&B guitarist Robert Ward, electric blues guitarist T-Bone Walker (one of whose tunes he recorded), country guitarist Merle Travis and jazz guitarist Les Paul. Finally, Mack's highest-charting single, the 1963 instrumental "Memphis", was based on the melody of a Chuck Berry vocal.

1954-1962: Pre-"Memphis" career

Mack dropped out of school at the age of 13, after an altercation with a teacher. In his mid-teens he began performing in roadhouse-type venues in and around Cincinnati.

During the same period, he played guitar on two recordings, "Too Late to Cry" and "Hey, Baby", with his older cousins, country-bluegrass artists Aubrey Holt, Harold Sizemore and Harley Gabbard, who performed and recorded during the '50s and '60s both as "The Logan Valley Boys" and as "The Boys From Indiana". According to one source, the Sage label released these singles in March 1959, when Mack was 17. As a teen-aged solo artist in the late '50s, Mack recorded a cover of Clarence Poindexter's western swing classic, "Pistol-Packin' Mama" on the long-since-defunct Dobbs label. These earliest Lonnie Mack recordings have been out-of-print for decades.

In 1958, Mack bought the seventh Gibson Flying V guitar from the first run produced by that firm, which he used almost exclusively during his long career. Mack, who is of both Scottish and Native American ancestry was attracted to the arrow-shaped instrument because of pride in his Indian heritage. The 1958 Flying V model is now considered highly collectible, only 123 of them having been manufactured.

By the late 1950s, Mack had assembled a competent R&B band, and they were soon in great demand as performers throughout Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, playing R&B-influenced rock & roll. In the early 1960s, Mack shortened his name from "McIntosh" to "Mack" and named his band "The Twilighters", after the Hamilton, Ohio club where they had a steady engagement.

About the same time, Mack started working 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 Max Falcon, Beau Dollar and the Coins, Denzil Rice and Cincinnati's premier female R&B trio, The Charmaines. The Ace (UK) label included several of these recordings on compilation CDs entitled From Nashville to Memphis (2004) and Gigi and the Charmaines (2006).

1963: "Memphis", "Wham!" and the birth of blues-rock guitar

On March 12, 1963, at the end of a recording session with The Charmaines, Mack was invited to use the remaining twenty minutes of studio rental time. He immediately recorded a bluesy, and largely improvised, rockabilly guitar instrumental based on Chuck Berry's 1959 UK vocal hit, "Memphis, Tennessee".

By the time "Memphis" was first broadcast in the Spring of 1963, Mack had already forgotten recording it and was engaged in a nation-wide performing tour with singer-guitarist and occasional bandmate Troy Seals, who later became an accomplished country songwriter. He did not know "Memphis" had been released until a friend located him in Minneapolis, and told him to listen for it on the radio. In a 1977 interview, Mack recalled: "I was completely taken by surprise. I never listened to the radio. I had no idea what was happening".

By late June, "Memphis" had risen to No. 4 on Billboard's R&B chart and No. 5 on Billboard's Pop chart. Up to that point in time, only two other rock guitar instrumentals had penetrated Billboard's "Top 5", Duane Eddy's "Because They're Young" and The Ventures' "Walk, Don't Run", both released in 1960.

Still in 1963, Mack released "Wham!", a gospel-inspired guitar instrumental, which reached No. 24 on Billboard's Pop chart in September. That same year, he recorded several more full-length rock guitar instrumentals using the blues scale, releasing "Suzie Q" and "Down in the Dumps" in 1963 and "Chicken Pickin'" and "Lonnie On The Move" in 1964. Mack used a Bigsby tremolo arm on "Wham!" and several other tunes to achieve sound effects so distinctive for the time that the tremolo arm became better-known as the "whammy bar". To enhance the vibrato on these tunes, he also employed a variant of Robert Ward's distortion technique, using both a Leslie organ speaker and a 1950s-era tube-fired Magnatone amplifier, to produce a "rotating, fluttery sound".

Paraphrasing the assessment of "Memphis" by music historian and guitar professor Richard T. Pinnell, Ph. D., Mack's expression of "blues stylism" in this instrumental was "unique" in the history of rock guitar 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". Although the term "blues-rock" had not yet come into common usage in 1963, "Memphis" is now widely regarded as the first genuine hit recording of the blues-rock guitar genre. Only weeks after "Memphis" was released, "Wham!" became the second.

Various prominent rock and country guitarists were influenced by these tunes early in their careers. In 1963, 17-year-old Duane Allman played "Memphis" repeatedly in his military academy dorm-room, stopping it, starting it, and slowing it down to play along, until he had finally mastered it. As a teenager, Stevie Ray Vaughan did the same with "Wham!". Vaughan later recorded covers of both "Wham!" and "Chicken-Pickin'". Western-swing instrumentalist Ray Benson, frontman for eight-time Grammy-winning Asleep at the Wheel, said: "Lonnie Mack was my guitar idol. When I picked up the guitar, the first thing I learned was "Memphis". I've always thought he was the greatest. He still is."

1963: "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. Although he ultimately became better known for his guitar recordings, his early "blue-eyed soul" vocal recordings also received critical acclaim.

According to one critic:

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"

R&B radio stations throughout the South played Mack's gospel-inspired version of the soul ballad "Where There's a Will" in 1963, until he was invited to appear for a live radio interview with a prominent R&B disc jockey in racially-polarized Birmingham, Alabama. There, according to Mack, he was initially mistaken for Lonnie Mack's white manager, after which it became apparent that he was not the manager, but the singer. As depicted in Ray, the 2004 film biography Ray Charles, the use of black gospel music in secular recordings was still considered controversial at that time, even for black artists. Mack recalls being told, "Baby, you're the wrong color", and the interview was scuttled on the spot.

After that, he recalls, there was a precipitous drop in the airplay time devoted to his vocal recordings on R&B radio stations. A consequence of this experience was that Fraternity delayed release of one of his signature soul ballads, "Why?", 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 characterized "Why?" as one of the "Lost Rock & Roll Masterpieces".

Despite the de facto blacklisting 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), particularly in the Midwest, Fraternity's traditional distribution market.

After the 1960s, Mack recorded fewer "pure" blues and soul ballads, and more country and rockabilly vocals. In his later albums, he adopted a singing style described by New York Times reviewer Peter Watrous as a "country-esque blues voice", and by blues historian Francis Davis as the "impassioned vocal style of...a white Hoosier with a touch of Memphis soul". 1983's Live at Coco's contains several bluesy vocals in this style, including a version of T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday". Other examples include Mack's own soul ballad, "Stop", on 1985's Strike Like Lightning, and a gospel-drenched version of Wilson Pickett's "I Found a Love" on 1990's Live: Attack of the Killer V.

1964: The Wham of that Memphis Man!

The Wham of That Memphis Man! album cover

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

The album was unique for its time. Mack played the guitar instrumentals in a rapid, seamless and precise style previously unheard in rock, featuring both aggressive use of the whammy bar and the aforementioned Magnatone/Leslie vibrato enhancement. His vocals were strongly influenced by Black gospel music. All of the tunes were backed by bass guitar and drums, and many also featured keyboards and a Stax/Volt-style horn section. Several cuts included an R&B backup chorus, provided by The Charmaines.

In his book, The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time, Jimmy Guterman ranked the album No. 16, saying:

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.

Mack went on tour to promote the album, augmenting his popularity and professional reputation in the process. However, he soon found that his career faced a potent combination of commercial challenges entirely beyond his control. First, by mid-1964, the intital, "pop" phase of the "British Invasion" had wrought a massive change in the musical tastes of the rock audience. Second, Mack did not fit the popular image of an R&B performer. In 1984, critic John Morthland wrote, "It was the era of satin pants and histrionic stage shows, and all the superior chops in the world couldn't hide the fact that [Mack] probably had more in common with Kentucky truck drivers than he did with the new rock audience".

Most of Mack's Fraternity recordings are not found on The Wham of That Memphis Man!. Fraternity sporadically released additional Mack singles during the 1960s, but never issued another album. Some of his Fraternity sides (including some alternate takes of tunes released in the '60s) were first released three or four decades after they were recorded, on a series of Mack compilation albums issued from 1992 through 2006 by the Ace (UK) and Flying V (US) labels. (See section entitled "Album Discography", below).

Guitar style and technique

Mack's extended solos displayed exceptional speed, dexterity and improvisational skill. Duane Allman's friend, guitarist Mike Johnstone, remembers: "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 going, 'How could anybody ever play as good as that? That's the new bar. That's how good you have to be now'."

Mack's 1963 instrumentals included "chicken picking" and "hybrid picking" techniques Mack had learned as a country-bluegrass guitarist, as well as machine-gunned, whammy-fired climaxes. He manipulated the whammy bar with the little finger of his right hand, while picking the string(s) at a 45-degree angle with the remaining fingers of the same hand, and bending them on the fret-board with his left. Stevie Ray Vaughan: "Nobody else can play with a whammy bar like [Lonnie]---he holds it while he plays and the sound sends chills up your spine". Mack fused these technical elements with powerful phrasing, "blues stylism" and "driving, complicated rhythms", to produce a radical new guitar style "now known...as blues-rock".

Historical significance of Mack's guitar solos

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, immediately ahead of full albums featuring blues-rock guitarists Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

Mack's guitar style was a significant early influence on blues-rock guitarists Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others. It is also said to have had a profound influence upon the history and development of rock guitar, generally:

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

1964-1968: Transition period

Within a year after the release of Mack's first album, the public's musical tastes had shifted radically due to 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 Black musical forms in the UK, had expanded the appeal of 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. During the mid-through-late 1960s, a new generation of electric blues guitarists emerged, including Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Paul Kossoff, Harvey Mandel, Jesse Ed Davis and Johnny Winter, 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 that point, blues-rock was recognized as a distinct and powerful force within rock music on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, in 1968, these developments led to the rediscovery of Lonnie Mack's seminal blues-rock guitar recordings of the early 1960s.

While these developments were still unfolding, however, Fraternity loaned Mack to Cincinnati's premier record label, King Records, where he worked for a time as a recording-session artist. In 1965, he played rhythm guitar on at least four recordings by "The Bluesmaster", singer-guitarist Freddie King. In 1967, he played lead guitar on several recordings by "The Godfather of Soul", James Brown, including "Kansas City" and "Stone Fox". Brown's band can be heard accompanying Mack on 1967's "Stone Fox"; beyond that, however, it was a Lonnie Mack R&B guitar instrumental. Some of Mack's session work for King during the '60s remains available on numerous Freddie King and James Brown compilation CD's.

During this same period, he also played guitar on a number of Fraternity recordings by R&B vocalist Albert Washington. In most of these cuts, Mack's guitar serves only in a backup role, but in "I'm Gonna Pour Me a Drink", "Hold Me Baby" and "Turn On The Bright Lights", Washington's vocal and Mack's guitar share the lead. Long out-of-print, these recordings can now be found on the CD, Albert Washington, Blues and Soul Man, with Lonnie Mack (Ace, 1999).

1968: Re-discovery

In 1968, with the blues-rock movement approaching full force, Mack landed a multi-record contract with Los Angeles' Elektra Records, and relocated to the West Coast. The 23 November 1968 edition of the Rolling Stone contained a major feature article on him, 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.

In 1970, Elektra reissued The Wham of that Memphis Man!, renaming it For Collectors Only. A 1 October 1970 follow-up review in Rolling Stone compared Mack's guitar work on the album to "the best of [Eric] Clapton".

The Wham of that Memphis Man! remains Mack's most significant early album. In 1992, music critic Jimmy Guterman ranked it No. 16 in his book, The 100 Best Rock 'N' Roll Records of All Time. When it was reissued 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."

The Wham of that Memphis Man! has been reissued, under a variety of titles, at least nine times. Three reissues remain available, The Wham of that Memphis Man! (Ace, 2006) and two expanded editions, Memphis Wham! (Ace, 1999) and Direct Hits and Close Calls (Flying V, 2000).

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, blues tunes, and updated versions of earlier recordings. By comparison with The Wham of that Memphis Man, both 1969 albums emphasized Mack's vocals and de-emphasized his guitar work. Indeed, only two instrumentals appear on these albums, a full-length blues guitar piece on Glad entitled "Mt. Healthy Blues", and a re-make of "Memphis". Despite the shift in musical emphasis, both albums were critically well-received. This, from a contemporary assessment 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, 3 May 1969, p28

Representative of these two albums were two 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 country tune, "Old House", and the soul tune, "Too Much Trouble" in sequence. Mack continued to record in these and other genres throughout the balance of his career.

While still under contract to Elektra, Mack was invited to participate in the recording of The Doors' 1970 album, Morrison Hotel. The original album's liner notes only credited him with having played electric bass on "Roadhouse Blues" and "Maggie M'Gill". However, in the ensuing years, some have questioned whether his contribution to the album stopped there.

Most of the speculation involves the tune "Roadhouse Blues". In an out-take from the first day of the two-day recording session, the album's producer, Paul Rothchild, is heard bemoaning guitarist Robbie Krieger's efforts on the tune ("Robbie, we're going to the roadhouse, not the bathroom!"). Mack appeared the next morning, and the recording session resumed. What happened next is not entirely clear, but in the final version of the tune found on the 1970 album, band-leader Jim Morrison is heard exhorting "Do it, Lonnie, do it!" at the outset of a bluesy guitar break. Twenty years later, the band's drummer, John Densmore, recalled the recording session:

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.

— John Densmore, Riders on the Storm, Dell, 1990, p. 235

Despite inferences which might be drawn from the foregoing, there appears to be no definitive answer to the question of whether Mack's work on the album went beyond playing bass on two tunes.

Mack's final Elektra album, The Hills of Indiana, was released in 1971. Foreshadowing the next decade of Mack's career, The Hills of Indiana represented a dramatic shift of focus away from R&B and blues-rock, towards the country end of the musical spectrum.

1970s: Flying "under the radar"

As the '70s began, Mack shelved his career as a featured artist, and briefly assumed a "Chet Atkins-Eric Clapton role at Elektra, doing studio dates, producing and A&R."

In this capacity, he was assigned to the career of gospel singer Dorothy Combs Morrison, formerly lead vocalist for the Edwin Hawkins Singers of "Oh Happy Day" fame. Mack recorded Morrison singing a gospel version of "Let It Be" before The Beatles released their own version, and urged Elektra to release it immediately. However, corporate red-tape at Elektra delayed the release, and The Beatles were first-to-market. Undeterred, he urged Elektra to capitalize on The Beatles' success by releasing Morrison's version next. When further delays at Elektra allowed the next release to be Aretha Franklin's own gospel version, Mack resigned in protest.

Instead of resuming his own music career, Mack returned to Indiana, where he spent several years in near-seclusion. Much later, he explained his decision to leave the music business at the age of 30, accolades in hand, but short of scoring the major commercial stardom of some of his peers. According to the lyrics of a tune from the mid-'70s, Mack yearned for the simple, anonymous, country life of his youth. In a 1977 interview, Mack added:

Man, I ain't never had so much junk [as I had then]. Seems like the times I've been happiest in my life is when I've possessed the least. The best way to do it is to just never own nothing. I just want to pick. I don't have to prove anything. The way I see it, I'd rather get close [to fame and fortune] a whole bunch of times and back off, than go all the way and have nothing else to look forward to....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.

In 1973, Mack teamed up with Rusty York on a traditional bluegrass LP, Dueling Banjos (QCA No. 304). This album is out-of-print.

For a short time during 1974, Mack played guitar in Dobie Gray's band. Gray is best-known for his hit tunes, "The 'In' Crowd" (later covered by many artists, most famously by The Ramsey Lewis Trio), "Drift Away" and "Loving Arms". As a Nashville-based black artist who wrote and performed both country and R&B material, his career can be seen as a mirror-image of Mack's.

Mack's guitar work from this period can be found on Gray's 1974 album Hey, Dixie. Mack wrote or co-wrote four tunes on the album, including the title track. The entire album is included in the compilation, Drift Away: A Decade of Dobie, 1969-1979 (Hip-O Select, 2004). In March, 1974, Mack performed as a member of Gray's band at the last broadcast of The Grand Ole Opry from Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, right before Johnny Cash, whose own performance closed out that historic show. Gray's website still displays a photo of Mack playing guitar in Gray's band at a Nashville performance.

During a 1975 visit to Cincinnati, Mack was the victim of a serious shooting incident. According to the lyrics of Mack's "Cincinnati Jail", Mack was crossing the street, mid-day, guitar in hand, when a car sped towards him, passing close enough for Mack to reach out and slap the rear fender as he yelled "Slow it down!". The motorist---an off-duty policeman---stopped abruptly, jumped from his car, and shot Mack in the leg. The policeman then took Mack before a judge, who threw him in jail, where Mack suffered without adequate medical attention for several days. Apart from the lyrics of his song, Mack has said little about this incident.

Mack eventually recovered from his wounds, but, once again, virtually disappeared from the music scene for a couple of years after this incident. During that period he neither recorded nor toured, but founded the "Friendship Music Park" in rural southern Indiana, which featured local bluegrass and traditional country artists.

In 1977, Mack signed with Capitol Records. There, he recorded Home at Last, his first album as a featured artist in six years. Home was a showpiece for Mack's country and bluegrass-influenced ballads, which he performed in a considerably more laid-back style than his better-known recordings from the '60s. In 1978, he recorded another Capitol LP, Lonnie Mack with Pismo. A faster-paced album, Pismo featured country, southern rock and rockabilly tunes.

In 1978 or 1979, Mack began working on an independent recording project with a friend, producer-songwriter Ed Labunski. The intended result was a country-pop album to be entitled South. However, Labunski died in an auto accident before the project was completed, and the unfinished album was not released for almost 20 years. Labunski's death also derailed Mack's and Labunski's plans to produce a young Texas blues-guitar prodigy named Stevie Ray Vaughan, who nonetheless was soon to become a key player in Mack's blues-rock comeback.

Shortly after Labunski's death, Mack traveled to Canada, where he entered into a six-month collaboration with rockabilly artist Ronnie Hawkins, founder of The Hawks, which, after Hawkins' departure, became more famously known as The Band. Mack's guitar work from this period can be heard on Hawkins' 1981 album, Legend In His Spare Time.

1980s: Comeback, SRV and Strike Like Lightning

By the early 1980s, Mack had been largely absent from the blues-rock music scene for over a decade and his visibility as a recording artist had waned considerably. He chose this low point in his career to resume performing and touring, adopting a hard-driving blues-rock/rockabilly fusion style that became the cornerstone of his sound for the next two decades.

His first album from this period is entitled Live at Coco's (1983). It is Mack's only mid-career roadhouse performance preserved on disc. On Coco's, Mack and his band can be heard playing familiar tunes from the Fraternity era, lesser-known tunes from the '70s, tunes which 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").

In 1983, Mack relocated to Texas, where he played regularly at clubs in Dallas and Austin. A 1983 photo of Eric Clapton jamming with Mack at one of the latter's Dallas performances is found on Mack's website. At that point, Clapton had already waxed a virtual duplicate of Mack's 1963 recording, "Further on Down the Road", and had scored a top-40 hit with Mack's 1974 southern rocker, "Watch Out For Lucy".

Early in this period, Mack entered into a performing collaboration with the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. Little known outside of Texas in 1980, Vaughan's own career took off during this period, and by 1985 he was an international blues-rock sensation. Mack and Vaughan had first met in 1979, when Mack, acting on a tip from Vaughan's older brother, guitarist Jimmie Vaughan, went to hear him play at a local bar. Vaughan recalled the meeting in a 1985 interview:

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.

— Sandmel, "Rock Pioneer Lonnie Mack In Session With Stevie Ray Vaughan", Guitar Player, April 1985, p33

Mack and Vaughan became close friends after that first meeting. 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". Mack regarded Vaughan as his "little brother" and Vaughan regarded Mack as "something between a daddy and a brother". 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 his house.

In the musical sense, their relationship had begun long before they met. Vaughan had idolized Mack since his teen years, and often said that "Wham!" was "the first record I ever owned". An intuitive guitar-player who, like Mack, had never learned to read music, Vaughan said that "[Lonnie] taught me to play guitar from the heart" instead. Vaughan recorded three different versions of "Wham!" during the 1980s. He also recorded Mack's "If You Have To Know", and "Chicken-Pickin'" in his own distinctive style, calling it "Scuttle-Buttin'".

File:Lonnie Mack-Strike Like Lightning.jpg

Strike Like Lightning cover

Mack signed with Alligator Records in 1984, and, upon recovering from his illness, began working on his blues-rock comeback album, Strike Like Lightning, released in 1985. Mack and Vaughan co-produced the album. It was a major hit for an indie recording. Mack himself composed most of the tunes. Consistent with his live performance style, most of the cuts 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 which included guest appearances by Vaughan, Ry Cooder and both Keith Richards and Ronnie 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 2007, Sony's Legacy label released an seven-minute "live" performance of Mack's "Oreo Cookie Blues" featuring Mack and Vaughan trading leads on electric guitar.

The Strike Like Lightning tour culminated in a Carnegie Hall concert billed as Further On Down the Road, a tip of the hat to Mack's 1964 recording by the same title. There, he shared the stage with blues guitar stylist Albert Collins and blues-rock guitarist Roy Buchanan. The concert was marketed on home video and remains available from Flying V Records on Mack's website.

In 1986, Mack recorded another Alligator album, Second Sight, which featured both introspective and up-tempo tunes (including "Cincinnati Jail") as well as an instrumental blues jam. In 1988, he moved to Epic Records, where he recorded the album, Roadhouses and Dance Halls. That album includes one of Mack's better-known late-career tunes, in which he makes light of the dilemma which characterized much of his career, "Too Rock For Country, Too Country for Rock & Roll".

Late career: Attack of the Killer V

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Live!: Attack of the Killer V
album cover

In 1989, 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 1990's Live! Attack of the Killer V. Popular among blues-rock and rockabilly aficionados, Attack displays a high level of audience involvement and captured the excitement of Mack's live performances. In addition to two extended guitar solos, it features expanded renditions of some of his better-known mid-career tunes, including "Stop", "Satisfy Suzie", "Riding the Blinds" and "Cincinnati Jail", as well as a gospel-imbued version of "I Found a Love".

Although Attack remains Mack's most recent recording as a featured artist, he continued to tour and perform regularly for another fifteen years. His most recent work as a session player can be found on The Crudup Brothers' album Franktown Blues, recorded in 2000. Several tunes on the album were written and first performed by the Crudups' father, blues legend Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Mack played electric blues guitar two cuts, "She's Got The Key" and "Jammim' For James".

Career recognition and awards

In 1993, Gibson issued a limited-run "Lonnie Mack Signature Edition" of the iconic 1958 "Flying V" guitar. In 1998, Mack received his first "Cammy", an award made annually to musicians identified with the tri-State area of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. In 2002, Terry Stewart, CEO of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, presented him with his second, "Lifetime Achievement", Cammy. In 2005, he was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. In 2006, he was inducted into The Southern Legends Entertainment & Performing Arts Hall of Fame. Mack is often mentioned as a potential candidate for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame .

Today

Despite reports of his demise, Lonnie Mack lives in a log house in the hills of Tennessee, where he occupies himself as a songwriter, while collaborating with writer Mike Vinson on a memoir of his experiences during the "golden age" of rock & roll. He still occasionally performs, most recently at a 2007 concert in Nashville, where he played his '58 Flying V and sang "Lonely Man", as well as a duet on "Cincinnati Jail" with veteran R&B vocalist Bonnie Bramlett.

Album discography

(A more complete discography, including singles, genre compilations, lesser-known session work and European releases, is found at Lonnie Mack discograpy website.

(1) Studio Albums as Featured Artist

• The Wham of that Memphis Man! - (1963, Fraternity)
• Glad I'm in the Band - (1969, Elektra)
• Whatever's Right - (1969, Elektra)
• The Hills of Indiana - (1971, Elektra, rec. 1970)
• Dueling Banjos: Rusty York and Lonnie Mack - (1973, QCA)
• Home At Last - (1977, Capitol)
• Lonnie Mack With Pismo - (1978, Capitol)
• Strike Like Lightning - (1985, Alligator)
• Second Sight - (1986, Alligator)
• Roadhouses and Dance Halls - (1988, Epic)
• South - (1999, Flying V, rec. 1979-1980)

(2) Live Albums as Featured Artist

• Lonnie Mack Live: Attack of the Killer V - (1990, Alligator)
• Live At Coco's - (1999, Flying V, rec. 1983)

(3) Re-issues of The Wham of that Memphis Man!

• For Collectors Only - (1970, Elektra)
• The Memphis Sounds of Lonnie Mack - (1976, Trip)
• The Wham of that Memphis Man! - (1985, Edsel)
• The Wham of that Memphis Man!(?) - (1987, ?)
• The Wham of that Memphis Man! - (1990, Alligator)
• Direct Hits and Close Calls (Vol. 1) - (1999, Flying V)
• Memphis Wham! - (2004, Ace)
• HiFive: Lonnie Mack - (2006, Rhino)
• The Wham of that Memphis Man! - (2006, Ace)

(4) Re-issues of Other Recordings

• Lonnie On The Move - (1993, Ace, rec. 1963-67)
• Direct Hits and Close Calls (Vol. 2) - (1999, Flying V, rec. 1963-67)
• From Cincinnati to California - (1999, Flying V, rec. 1969)
• From Nashville to Memphis - (2004, Ace, rec. 1963-67)
• Still On The Move - (2004, Ace, rec. 1963-69)
• Glad I'm in the Band - (2006, Sundazed, rec. 1969)
• Whatever's Right - (2006, Sundazed, rec. 1969)
• The Hills of Indiana - (2006, Sundazed, rec. 1970)

(5) On Albums of Other Artists

• Freddie King Sings Again (?) - (1965, Freddie King, King)
• James Brown Sings Raw Soul - (1967, James Brown, King)
• Morrison Hotel - (1970, The Doors, Elektra)
• Hey, Dixie - (1974, Dobie Gray, MCA)
• Legend In His Spare Time - (1981, Ronnie Hawkins, Quality)
• Over The Fence - (1986, Tim Krekel/The Sluggers, Arista)
• Mendo Hotel - (1996, Wayne Perkins, Reigning Creative)
• The Pressure's All Mine - (1998, Jack Holland, Flying V)
• Albert Washington with Lonnie Mack - (1999, Ace, rec. 1967)
• Franktown Blues - (2000, The Crudup Brothers, Warehouse Creek)
• Gigi & The Charmaines - (2006, Ace, rec. 196?-1963)
• Solos, Sessions & Encores - (2007, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Legacy, rec. 1987)

(6) Video

• Further On Down The Road - (1985, w/Albert Collins & Roy Buchanan, Flying V, VHS)
• Lonnie Mack: Acoustic Blues Guitar - (2004, Hot Licks, VHS, instructional video)
• Learn Southern Rock Guitar With 6 Great Masters - (2006, DVD, instructional video)

See also

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

External links

• Lonnie Mack's official site
• Lonnie Mack biography at Allmusic website
• Rockabilly Hall of Fame website article on Mack

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