Lonnie Mack

Lonnie Mack
Mack performing at Rising Sun, Indiana, in 2003.
Background information
Birth name	Lonnie McIntosh
Born	(1941-07-18)July 18, 1941 West Harrison, Indiana, U.S.
Died	April 21, 2016(2016-04-21) (aged 74) Smithville, Tennessee, U.S.
Genres	Blues rock, blues, country, southern rock, rockabilly, blue-eyed soul, bluegrass, gospel
Occupation(s)	Musician, singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar
Years active	1954–2004
Labels	Alligator, Elektra, Fraternity, Capitol, Flying V Records, Jewel, King, Ace, Epic, Sage Records, Dobbs Records
Website	lonniemack.com

Lonnie McIntosh (July 18, 1941 – April 21, 2016), better known by his stage name Lonnie Mack, was an American rock, blues and country singer-guitarist. He performed professionally from the mid-1950s into the early 2000s. His recording career spanned the period 1958 to 1989.

Despite rave reviews and several brushes with stardom, Mack flew under the radar for most of his career. However, in the early 1960s, he was a "ground-breaker" in virtuoso rock guitar soloing whose recordings were pivotal to the emergence of the electric guitar as a lead voice in rock music.

In his 1963 hit single instrumentals, "Memphis" and "Wham!", he "attacked the strings with fast, aggressive single-string phrasing and a seamless rhythm style", to produce a previously-unheard sound that was "savagely wild [but] perfectly controlled". These and other Mack recordings formed the leading edge of the blues-rock lead guitar movement of the 1960s and suggested a "prototype" for the southern rock genre of the 1970s. Prominent twentieth-century electric guitarists who have recognized Mack as a major influence include soloists Stevie Ray Vaughan (blues-rock), Jeff Beck (jazz-rock), Dickey Betts (southern rock), Ray Benson (western swing), Bootsy Collins (funk), and Ted Nugent (hard rock).

He was also highly regarded as a blue-eyed soul singer. Crediting Mack's vocals and guitar solos alike, music critic Jimmy Guterman ranked Mack's first album, "The Wham of that Memphis Man" (1964), No. 16 in his book The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time.

Career Summary

Mack began performing professionally the mid-1950s, while still in his early teens. Between 1963 and 1990, he released thirteen original albums. His early recordings represented a fresh approach to the blending of black and white roots-music genres, including blues, country, bluegrass, rockabilly, 1950s R&B, 1960s soul, and gospel. Writing for Rolling Stone, Alec Dubro said: "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."

He enjoyed his initial success as a rock artist in the 1960s. In 1963, he recorded the seminal blues-rock guitar singles, "Memphis" and "Wham!" for a small Cincinnati label, Fraternity Records. In early 1964, he released his debut album, "The Wham of that Memphis Man", also for Fraternity. In the mid-'60s he recorded additional singles for Fraternity and did R&B session work with James Brown, Freddie King, Joe Simon (musician) and others. His recognition as an emerging artist ramped up in late 1968, when the newly founded Rolling Stone Magazine published a retrospective review of his five-year-old Fraternity recordings, extolling his talents as a gospel singer and rock guitar virtuoso. He soon moved to Los Angeles to execute a three-album contract with Elektra Records. While contracted to Elektra, he performed in larger venues, including the Fillmore East and Fillmore West. In 1970, Elektra also reissued a "Collectors" edition of his 1964 debut album.

However, Mack's country-boy image was unsuited to hippie-era rock stardom and his rustic temperament was unsuited to city life and the big business side of pop music. Disillusioned and disaffected, Mack moved to Nashville to record his final Elektra album, then retreated to rural Indiana, where, for the next twelve years, he assumed the low-profile roles of unheralded country recording artist, multi-genre roadhouse performer, sideman, session musician and rural music park proprietor.

Mack relocated to Texas in 1983, at the behest of his friend and blues-rock disciple, Texan Stevie Ray Vaughan. In 1985, with Vaughan's help and encouragement, he re-emerged as a rock artist with his indie comeback album, "Strike Like Lightning", a promotional tour featuring guest appearances by Vaughan, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Ry Cooder, and a Carnegie Hall concert with Albert Collins and Roy Buchanan. Over the next four years, he released three more albums, including his recording career epilog, "Lonnie Mack Live – Attack of the Killer V!" (1990). He continued to perform in small venues in the US and abroad until 2004 and appeared at a few special events thereafter.

Beyond his solo career, he recorded with The Doors, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ronnie Hawkins, Albert Collins, Roy Buchanan, Dobie Gray, and the sons of the blues legend Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup.

Over the years, Mack was assisted by managers Harry Carlson (founder of Fraternity Records), John Hovekamp and James Webber.

Childhood and musical influences

Early in 1941, Mack's family moved from the coalfields of Owsley County, Kentucky to the cornfields of Dearborn County, in southeastern Indiana. One of five children, he was born to parents Robert and Sarah Sizemore McIntosh on July 18, 1941, in West Harrison, Indiana. He was raised nearby on sharecropping farms along the Ohio River.

Although his childhood homes had no electricity, the family used a primitive radio powered by a truck battery to listen to "The Grand Ole Opry" country music radio show. Young Mack continued to listen after the rest of the family had retired for the night, and became a fan of R&B and traditional black gospel music.

He began playing at the age of seven, after he'd traded a bicycle for an acoustic guitar. His mother, Sarah, was his earliest guitar and country-singing influence. Mack 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.

— Lonnie Mack, 2005

An uncle showed him how to merge a fast-picking Merle Travis country sound with traditional blues-picking styles. Ralph Trotto, a local gospel singer, became a mentor to the youngster. As his skills progressed, he began performing for tips at a rail yard hobo encampment and on the sidewalk at the Nieman Hotel in nearby Aurora, Indiana.

As a teenager, his playing was influenced by pop/jazz guitarist Les Paul and electric blues guitarist T-Bone Walker while his singing style was influenced by R&B artists Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and Hank Ballard, country singer George Jones and gospel singer Archie Brownlee of The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. As an adult, he recorded tunes associated with each of these artists.

1950s: Early career

Mack dropped out of school in 1954, at the age of thirteen, after a fight with a teacher. Using a fake ID, he soon began performing in roadhouses in the Cincinnati area. In his mid-teens, performing as "Lonnie McIntosh", he was in a band called "The Classics", with recurring engagements at the Hideaway Lounge in Hamilton, Ohio. "He was too young to drive, so Don Garland, the keyboard player, used to pick him up to play."

By the age of seventeen, in 1958, he was using the stage-name "Lonnie Mack". He and his band, "The Twilighters" were performing regularly in the "Tri-State Area" around Cincinnati, playing both rockabilly and R&B-tinged rock and roll.

He played guitar on three low-circulation singles in the late 1950s. In 1958, Mack (backed by The Twilighters) recorded a cover of Al Dexter's 1944 western swing hit, "Pistol Packin' Mama". In 1959, he played guitar on two singles of "The Logan Valley Boys", a bluegrass band featuring his older cousins, Aubrey Holt and Harley Gabbard. One was a bluegrass tune by The Stanley Brothers entitled "Too Late to Cry"; the other, "Hey, Baby", was an original Holt-Gabbard rockabilly tune with close-harmony bluegrass vocals.

"Pistol-Packin' Mama" and "Too Late to Cry" have been unavailable for decades. However, "Hey, Baby" was reissued by Bear Family Records in 2010. On it, Mack can be heard providing a Travis-picking guitar accompaniment, punctuated by a brief rockabilly solo.

1963: "Memphis", "Wham!", and the advent of virtuoso rock-guitar soloing

In the early 1960s, Mack and his band (the name "Twilighters" had gone by the wayside) often worked as session players for Fraternity, a small record label in Cincinnati that rented the studios of King Records for its recording sessions. There, he played guitar on a number of singles by local R&B artists, including Max Falcon, Beau Dollar and the Coins, Denzil "Dumpy" Rice (who became the keyboardist in Mack's band), and Cincinnati's leading female R&B trio, The Charmaines.

On March 12, 1963, 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. Not expecting the tune to be released, Mack recorded a rockabilly/blues guitar instrumental grounded in the melody of Chuck Berry's 1959 UK vocal hit, "Memphis, Tennessee". He had improvised the guitar solo in a live performance a few years earlier, when his keyboardist, Dumpy Rice, who usually sang the tune, missed a club date. Mack's take on the Berry tune was so well-received that he adopted it as part of his live act. He 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". Interviewed in 2011, the recording engineer on "Memphis", Chuck Seitz, recalled that it took ten minutes to "set up" and less than ten minutes to record the tune twice.

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". By late June, "Memphis" had risen to No. 4 on Billboard's R&B chart and No. 5 on Billboard's pop chart. The popularity of "Memphis" quickly led to bookings at larger venues, tours in the UK and performances with Chuck Berry.

According to musicologist Richard T. Pinnell, Ph.D., Mack's fast-paced interpretation of electric blues-guitar in "Memphis" was unprecedented 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". The track sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.

Still in 1963, Mack released "Wham!", a gospel-inspired guitar instrumental that reached No. 24 on Billboard's Pop chart in September. He soon recorded several more rock-guitar solos in the same unique style, including his own frenzied showpiece, "Chicken Pickin'", and an instrumental version of Dale Hawkins's "Suzie Q".

Although the term "blues-rock" had not come into common usage by 1963, "Memphis" and "Wham!" became widely regarded as the earliest genuine hit recordings of the virtuoso blues-rock guitar genre.

Mack's guitar and gear

In the mid-1950s, Mack experimented with the Fender Telecaster and Fender Stratocaster, before settling on the Gibson Les Paul guitar. In 1958, at age seventeen, he bought the seventh (serial number "007") Gibson Flying V guitar from that model's low-volume first-year production run. Dubbing his guitar "Number 7", he used it almost exclusively for the rest of his career. The instrument appealed to him because it sounded like his Les Paul, while its distinct, arrow-like shape symbolized pride in his Native American ancestry. He equipped Number 7 with a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece mounted on a steel bracket spanning the wings of the Flying V's body. He always used the heaviest guitar strings available, usually Gibson E340s.

On most of his early guitar solos, he employed the distortion technique of R&B guitarist Robert Ward, using a 1950s-era, tube-fired Magnatone 460 amplifier to produce a distinctive, "watery" vibrato tone from his guitar. Later, he used a Magnatone 440, running it through a Fender Twin, and, later still, for larger venues, he plugged Number 7 into an electric organ amplifier to enhance his vibrato with a "rotating, fluttery sound".

Mack became closely identified with the Flying V model. Gibson produced a limited-edition Lonnie Mack Signature Edition Flying V in 1993. In 2010, Number 7 was featured in Star Guitars – 101 Guitars that Rocked the World. 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 history's 150 most "elite" and "exceptional" guitars. In 2012, it was included in Rolling Stone's list of "20 Iconic Guitars".

Mack's guitar style and technique

While Mack's rock-guitar style was firmly rooted in the blues and R&B, he routinely drew from "fingerstyle", "chicken picking" and other fast-paced elements of traditional country and bluegrass guitar. This combination of seemingly disparate styles and techniques (all set to a rock beat) imparted a very fluid sound to his instrumentals, leading an early reviewer of his first album to remark on the "peculiar 'running' quality" of his bluesy solos. It was a feature which instantly distinguished his recordings from those of more traditional blues guitarists.

Uniquely in early '60s rock, he played blistering leads and complex rhythm guitar simultaneously, prompting the observation that, to the modern listener, 1963's "Wham!" conjures images of "Stevie Ray Vaughan playing lead guitar for the early E Street Band". Mack's pioneering use of lightning-fast runs prefigured the virtuoso blues-rock lead guitar style that dominated rock by the late 1960s.

He used his Bigsby vibrato tailpiece on "Wham!" (and many other recordings) to achieve sound effects so distinctive for the time that guitarists began calling it the "whammy bar", a term by which the Bigbsy and other vibrato bars are still known. He was singularly proficient with it. Guitarists typically manipulate the device with the picking hand immediately after picking out a run. Mack, however, customarily cradled it with the fourth finger of his picking hand, tugging on it while picking and occasionally fanning it rapidly (again, while still picking) to produce a marked "shuddering" sound.

"Blue-eyed soul" ballads

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. 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". According to another music 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.

— 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. He was invited to give a live radio interview with a prominent R&B disc jockey in racially polarized Birmingham, Alabama. Mack said that 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.

He recalled that this incident marked a precipitous drop in the airplay time devoted to his vocal recordings on R&B radio stations. Fraternity reacted by delaying release of his deep soul ballad, "Why?" (recorded in 1963), as a single, until 1968, and then only as the "B" side of a re-release of "Memphis". "Why?" received scant notice and never charted, but was eventually recognized as a "lost masterpiece of rock 'n' roll". 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".

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), particularly in the Midwest, Fraternity's traditional distribution market.

In the 1970s, he recorded mostly country and rockabilly vocals, but resumed his prior emphasis on blues-based material in the 1980s. His mature singing style has been described as a "country-esque blues voice" and the "impassioned vocal style of a white Hoosier with a touch of Memphis soul". Examples from the 1980s include a rendition of T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday", Mack's own deep soul ballad, "Stop", and a live, gospel-drenched version of Wilson Pickett's "I Found a Love".

1964: The Wham of that Memphis Man!

Still in 1963, two or three months after the release of "Memphis", Mack returned to the studio to cut additional recordings, including instrumentals, vocals, and ensemble tunes. In early 1964, Fraternity packaged several of these along with "Memphis", "Wham!", "Where There's a Will" and "Why?" into an album entitled The Wham of that Memphis Man!

Mack's guitar instrumentals were blues-based, but unusually rapid, seamless, and precise. 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. In The 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.

Chuck Seitz, the album's recording engineer, said it was recorded in eight hours, entirely without overdubbing.

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 a challenge encountered by many, but Mack faced yet another: 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". He drifted back into relative obscurity until the late 1960s.

The Wham of that Memphis Man! has been reissued at least ten times. It became a blues-rock trendsetter and is widely considered Mack's most significant album.

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. 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.

Chronological significance of Mack's early guitar solos

Mack's extended guitar solos displayed unprecedented levels of speed, dexterity and improvisational skill in the world of early-'60s rock guitar. Seventeen years after "Memphis" was recorded, the editors of Guitar World magazine ranked it the premier "landmark" rock guitar recording to date, immediately ahead of four full albums featuring renowned late-'60s blues-rock guitar soloists Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton.

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

Mack considered himself a transitional figure: "I was a bridge-over between the standard country licks in early rock 'n' roll and the screamin' kinda stuff that came later."

Mack's impact on other guitarists

Mack has been called a "guitar hero's guitar hero" who "pushed a new generation of white kid guitarists in the unaccustomed direction of soul music". His early solos were not just stylistically novel; they represented a quantum leap in musicianship that served as a challenge to other rock guitarists. 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'".

Prominent guitarists from a variety of popular music genres have acknowledged Mack's influence:

Blues-rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan considered Mack a "very big influence". He honed his early guitar skills by playing along with "Wham!" ("the first record I ever owned") incessantly until his father finally destroyed the record. Young Vaughan simply bought another copy and resumed his practice. Regarding his own style, Vaughn said that Mack had "invented a lot of this stuff" and that "I got a lot of the fast things I do from Lonnie". Three years before his death, he listed Mack first among the guitarists he had listened to, both as a youngster and as an adult.

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. 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".

Jazz-rock guitarist Jeff Beck considers Mack a "major influence". His 1966 Yardbirds-era showcase, "Jeff's Boogie", has been called "a deliberate nod to Mack". As recently as 2015, he included Mack's "Lonnie on the Move" in his standard live-tour set list.

Western swing guitarist Ray Benson, frontman for eight-time Grammy-winner Asleep at the Wheel, declared Mack "my guitar hero".

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".

Hard rock lead guitarist Ted Nugent considers Mack one of the "eleven greatest guitarists of all time". When Nugent hosted a BBC music broadcast, the first two tunes he played were Mack instrumentals.

Mack's influence on young electric guitar virtuosos continues. When Mack died, multi-genre teen-aged guitar prodigy and 2016 Guitar Gods Festival contestant Tyler Morris stated: "He is one of my favorite guitar players. His playing was real unique and his song-writing ability was incredible. Rest in peace, Lonnie. Your music continues to influence me".

Mid-1960s: Transition period

In the mid-1960s, the American public's musical tastes shifted radically due to the initial, "pop" phase of the "British Invasion". However, at the same time, 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 rock guitarists emerged, including Mike Bloomfield, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, all of whom were, or soon became, frontmen for blues-based rock bands. The late 1960s witnessed the appearance of many such bands, which typically 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, early-'60s blues-rock guitar solos, "Memphis", "Wham!", "Chicken-Pickin'" and "Susie Q".

Still in the mid-1960s, before Mack's rediscovery, Fraternity released a handful of the many Mack tunes it had recorded earlier. None charted. Fraternity struggled to survive during this period and it was ultimately sold to a new owner for $25,000. 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. The uncredited guitar solo which was Brown's 1967 instrumental hit, "Stone Fox", has been attributed to both Mack and Troy Seals.

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. He also played lead guitar on several Fraternity recordings of Cincinnati blues singer Albert Washington. 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 and all were later reissued in the UK.

Late 1960s: Rediscovery

In 1968, with the blues-rock and guitar-soloing movements approaching full force, Mack was re-discovered by Elektra Records. He relocated to Los Angeles 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 later recordings.

1968-1971: Elektra years

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 marked 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". While Mack's Fraternity recordings had been known for seamlessly blending distinct genres within individual tunes, his 1969 Elektra albums presented individual tunes from distinct genres in a contrasting way. On "Whatever's Right", Mack sang Willie Dixon's "My Babe" in a soul style. Within seconds of the closing measure, he shifted stylistic gears and began his vocal on "Things Have Gone to Pieces", a country tune previously recorded by George Jones. He repeated the pattern of contrasts in Glad by performing a soul tune, "Too Much Trouble", and a country tune, "Old House", back-to-back.

Despite the shifts in style, emphasis and general approach, Mack's recording output from this period was well received by music critics. A contemporary assessment of Glad opined:

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.

In addition to his solo dates during this period, he toured with Elektra label-mates The Doors and, on November 5, 1969, he served as a recording-session bassist on their album Morrison Hotel. The Doors' John Densmore recalled:

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; he was bad. 'I'll sing the lyrics for you', Jim Morrison offered meekly. Jim 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, 1990

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.

Upon completing his 1969 albums, Mack assumed a "Chet Atkins-Eric Clapton role at Elektra, doing studio dates, producing and A&R." In that role, he helped to recruit a number of country and blues artists from Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Elektra considered the launch of a specialty label to record them. Mack tried to sign Carole King, but Elektra rejected her on the grounds that they already had Judy Collins. 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, allowing a competing label to seize the initiative and release Aretha Franklin's own gospel version first. "That bummed me out", Mack said. According to a close associate, Mack "had no tolerance for the internal politics of the music business". He resigned from his corporate job.

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". According to Elektra producer Russ Miller, Mack disappeared six days before the tour was to begin. Miller found him 2000 miles from Los Angeles, ensconced at a rustic farm in 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".

1970s: Withdrawal to the country

Mack's final Elektra album, The Hills of Indiana, was released in 1971. Foreshadowing the next phase of his career, it completed Mack's shift of focus away from high-octane R&B and blues-rock, towards the pastoral, country end of the musical spectrum. "Asphalt Outlaw Hero", a southern rock tune with a blistering guitar solo, came closest to the style of Mack's classic recordings from the early 1960s; otherwise, Hills was a collection of relatively laid-back, country-flavored tunes with an overlay of compatible stylistic elements drawn from the overall sound of The Band and the contemporary singer-songwriter movement. While recording the album in Nashville, Mack and his family lived in a converted school bus that he parked in the studio's parking lot. He cut a hole in the roof to vent a wood-burning stove. "He was a mountain man", said the studio's owner. "He was just a really funky guy. He didn’t have any airs about him, just plain old funky."

The Hills of Indiana attracted little attention. His contract with Elektra fulfilled, Mack began a lengthy period in which he adopted the roles of low-profile country recording artist, multi-genre roadhouse performer, sideman, session musician and rural music park proprietor. His recordings during this period display only rare glimpses of his celebrated guitar virtuosity. Over the next decade-and-a-half, he slipped back into a state of relative anonymity.

Mack addressed his withdrawal from the rock spotlight in a 1977 interview:

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.

— Lonnie Mack, 1977

The lyrics of his songs provided further insight. In one song, he equated the pursuit of "fortune and fame" with selling one's soul to Satan, allowing the "body to live while the soul is left to rot". In other songs, he expressed love for country living and distaste for city living.

Like country living, country music was both a passion and a refuge for Mack. In his late-1960s heyday as a rock performer, he had been fond of organizing after-hours country jam sessions with other rock performers. He recalled 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.

Between 1973 and 1978, Mack recorded several country-flavored albums that went largely unnoticed at the time, although some garnered favorable reviews many years later.

In 1975, Mack was shot during an altercation with an off-duty police officer. He memorialized the incident in one of his better-known late-career tunes, "Cincinnati Jail". According to the lyrics, 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 with his "leg still full of lead". Later, in an interview, Mack contended that the officer was drunk, but admitted that he, Mack, was wielding a machete at the time, and might have slashed the officer's car with it. He said that despite the song's reference to being shot in the leg, he was actually shot "in the ass", that the bullet had passed all the way through him and that "another inch and a half and I would have been singing soprano". Mack recovered, but for the next several years he kept a low profile, performing locally at his "Friendship Music Park" in rural southern Indiana (a venue he provided for bluegrass and traditional country artists) and at a 1977 "Save the Whales" benefit concert in Japan.

In 1979, Mack began working on an independent country album entitled "South" with a friend, producer-songwriter Ed Labunski. However, Labunski was killed in an auto accident mid-project, and demos from the project were shelved for twenty years. Labunski's death also derailed Mack's and Labunski's plans to produce then-unknown Texas blues-guitar prodigy Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was destined to play a key role in Mack's blues-rock comeback a few years later.

1980s: Rock comeback

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, a Kentucky roadhouse performance recorded in 1983. Originally a bootleg recording, it wasn't released commercially until 1998. 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 that 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 Spicewood, Texas, near Austin, and began playing regularly at at Texas venues. 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, when Mack, acting on a tip from Vaughan's older brother, Jimmie Vaughan, 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, 1985

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". Mack regarded Vaughan as his "little brother" and Vaughan considered Mack "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 Mack's house.

Vaughan called Mack "the baddest guitar player I know" and credited Mack with "[teaching] me to play guitar from the heart". Vaughan's musical legacy includes four versions of "Wham!", i.e., two solo versions and two dueling-guitar versions with Mack. He also recorded Mack's "If You Have to Know" and "Scuttle-Buttin"", an instrumental homage to Mack's frenzied 1964 guitar showcase, "Chicken-Pickin".

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 rock comeback album, Strike Like Lightning. It became one of the top-selling independent recordings of 1985. 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" and they sang a duet on Mack's "If You Have to Know".

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 on YouTube 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.

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 multi-genre guitar virtuoso Roy Buchanan. The concert was marketed on home video.

In 1986, Mack recorded another Alligator album, Second Sight, featuring 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 rockabilly album, Roadhouses and Dance Halls, including the autobiographical single, "Too Rock For Country". In 1989, Mack performed on Saturday Night Live, as the guest of the SNL house band's guitarist.

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

Live! – Attack of the Killer V
album cover

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!" Attack was his final album as a featured artist.

1990-2016: Late career and death

After "Attack of the Killer V", Mack moved to middle Tennessee, started a website and founded a record company to distribute his music.

During the 1990s, he continued to tour America and Europe in small venues and music festivals. In 2000, he appeared as a guest artist on the album Franktown Blues, by the sons of blues legend Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. He contributed guitar solos on two cuts, "She's Got The Key" and "Malibu Jammin' For James". That same year, he appeared as songwriter and guitarist on the country-rock album of a friend, Jack Holland, entitled "The Pressure's All Mine".

He continued to perform on the roadhouse circuit until 2004. Thereafter, he appeared sporadically at benefit concerts and special events. Looking back on his career, he said:

I don’t miss the road part of it so much, because I’m sorta burnt out on all the traveling, but I miss the stage. I miss the performing and making people happy. I ain’t got no regrets, but at the same time, it ain’t something that I would recommend to a young kid right now like I used to, because you have no control of anything anymore. The only way you can make any money is to do what everybody’s tellin’ me I need to do: Go back out and tour and get the money at the door. That’s the only sure money there is. I mean, you’d better love it, I mean, dag-gone! Why I got into it in the first place wasn’t about the money. I got into it because I loved it.”

— Lonnie Mack, 2007

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 a 93rd birthday tribute to electric-guitar pioneer Les Paul. A year later, he spontaneously took the stage at a backwoods Tennessee roadhouse and, according to one witness, "proceeded to officially tear the roof off the place", playing "Cincinnati Jail" on a borrowed guitar. Mack was scheduled to close out the Clearwater (FL) Blues Festival on February 21, 2010, but had to cancel due to inability to assemble a band in time, and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers took his place. On June 5–6, 2010, he played at an invitation-only reunion concert with the surviving members of his original band. It was his final public performance.

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

In 2012, guitarist Travis Wammack asked Mack to join him on a tour to be billed as the "Double Mack Attack". Mack declined, stating that he "wasn't in good shape", adding that he was no longer able to stand while playing and that the angular shape of Number 7 precluded him from playing it while sitting.

Lonnie Mack died of natural causes on April 21, 2016, at a country hospital near his log-cabin home, seventy miles east of Nashville, Tennessee. He had often told friends of a lifelong recurring dream, set near his childhood home, in which "his body [flew] effortlessly across the Ohio River". He was buried on a hillside overlooking the river, near the scenes of his youth, in Aurora, Indiana.

Discography

Further information: Lonnie Mack discography

• 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

Career recognition and awards

Year	Award or recognition
1993	Gibson Guitar Corporation issued a limited-run "Lonnie Mack Signature Edition" of "Number 7", Lonnie Mack's iconic 1958 "Flying V" guitar
1998	Lifetime Achievement "Cammy" ("Cammy" is the nickname for the Cincinnati Enquirer Pop Music Award, which is presented annually to musicians identified with the tri-State area of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana)
2001	Inducted into the Southeastern Indiana Musician's Association Hall of Fame
2001	Inducted into the International Guitar Hall of Fame
2002	Second "Lifetime Achievement" Cammy
2005	Inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame
2006	Inducted into The Southern Legends Entertainment & Performing Arts Hall of Fame
2011	Mack's "Number 7" was judged among the world's 150 "most elite guitars"

See also

• Cincinnati Blues Festival
• Long Beach Blues Festival
• Blues-rock
• Gibson Flying V

External links

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