Lonnie Mack
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Lonnie Mack (born Lonnie McIntosh on July 18, 1941 in Harrison, Indiana) is an influential rock and blues guitarist.
Mack's career started in the early 1950s when he left school to become a professional musician. According to Mack, his earliest recording (no longer available), while still a teenager, was as a bluegrass guitarist. Mack fell in love with rhythm & blues and by the late 1950s was perfoming in this genre professionally in the Cincinnati area. In 1962, he and his band played backup in the recording studio for the female trio, the Charmaines, and at the end of the session, with time left on the studio rental, they recorded an instrumental version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis", a tune which they had been playing professionally for years. "Memphis" was released in the summer of 1963, and in July went to Number 5 on the charts. Mack's lightning-like guitar style was even more evident in his follow-on hits "Wham" and "Chicken-Pickin'". His use of the tremelo arm was so distinctive, and ahead of its time, that the arm itself became known as the "whammy bar" in recognition of Mack's uniquely aggressive use of it the hit single, "Wham".
His 1964 album The Wham of that Memphis Man revealed fine vocal abilities as well, characterized by a strong gospel influence.
Although the original 1964 album was not widely released, in 1968 Rolling Stone" Magazine called for its re-issuance and, in response, it was widely distrubted on the Electra label in 1969. It is still available on CD. Today Mack is regarded as one of the early masters of electric rock guitar, and the original founding father of what was to become the virtuoso "blues-rock" guitar style. He influenced Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Doors, Frank Zappa, and the rock groups of the San Francisco Sound. In addition to backing up blues guitar legend Freddie King, Mack also played bass on The Doors' album Morrison Hotel, specifically "Roadhouse Blues". Mack also recalls that he was called upon to play guitar on James Brown's recording of "Kansas City".
Mack recorded several albums with his road band beginning in the late 1960s, through the mid-1970s, and even did a stint as an A&R man with Elektra, but became disillusioned with the music business and withdrew from it for many years, until he was re-discovered by the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vaughan, who had idolized Mack since childhood, produced Mack's widely-acclaimed and commercially successful come-back album "Strike Like Lightning" in 1984.
Mack continued to record until 1990, and continued touring until the mid 1990's. He is known for playing a rare, first-generation exemplar of the uniquely-shaped Gibson Flying V guitar, which he acquired new in 1958. Mack says he played this guitar exclusively on all of his electric guitar recordings beginning with "Memphis". Mack became so widely identified with the guitar that Gibson eventually issued a special Lonnie Mack "signature" edition of the "Flying V".
Mack lives in a log cabin in rural Tennessee and (as of early 2007) can still occasionally be found performing in venues in and around Nashville.
