Lonnie Mack

Career summary

Mack began performing professionally in the mid-1950s, while still an Indiana farm-boy in his early teens. Between 1963 and 1990, he released thirteen original albums. His recordings drew from black and white American roots music genres, including blues, country, bluegrass, rockabilly, R&B, soul, country-gospel, and traditional black 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 recording artist in the 1960s. Early in that period, he worked as a session musician with Fraternity Records, a small label in Cincinnati. In 1963, he recorded two hit records for Fraternity, the proto-blues-rock guitar instrumentals "Memphis" and "Wham!" Later that year, he recorded additional tunes to flesh out his debut album, The Wham of that Memphis Man. Mack produced some notable recordings later in his career, but his early recordings for Fraternity ultimately formed the centerpiece of his musical legacy.

Seeking to capitalize on his initial momentum, he recorded several additional batches of tunes for Fraternity in 1964 and 1965. However, their distribution was limited by Fraternity's precarious-and-fading financial condition and their sales potential was further undermined by the sudden, game-changing popularity of The Beatles-led British Invasion that had begun in late 1963, only to intensify by leaps and bounds thereafter. In the mid-1960s, with his career in a slump, Mack turned to R&B session work for other labels, playing guitar on recordings by James Brown, Freddie King, Joe Simon (musician) and others. During the same period, he was the proprietor of a nightclub in Covington, Kentucky.

His career caught fire again 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 major rock venues, including the Fillmore East, the Fillmore West and the Cow Palace, where he opened for The Doors and Crosby, Stills & Nash and shared the stage with Johnny Winter, Elvin Bishop and other popular rock and blues artists of the time.

However, it was the "hippie" era, and Mack's "Kentucky truck-driver" persona was an uncomfortable fit with rock's target demographic. Likewise, his rustic sensibilities were unsuited to urban living, stardom, LA's psychedelic music scene, and major-label corporate politics. Unhappy and disillusioned after three years in the commercial rock spotlight, Mack relocated to Nashville in 1971 to record his final (and mostly country) Elektra album, then returned to his birthplace in rural southeast Indiana. There, for the next twelve years, he assumed several low-profile roles: unheralded country recording artist, multi-genre roadhouse performer, sideman, session musician and rural music park proprietor.

In 1983, Mack relocated to Austin, Texas, home of his friend and blues-rock guitar disciple 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!" (Alligator, 1990). Thereafter, Mack retired from recording but continued to intermittently tour the one-night-stand roadhouse and music festival circuits at home and abroad. In 2004, he retired from performing, except for a handful of one-off events over the next six years.

Mack also recorded with the Doors, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ronnie Hawkins, Albert Collins, Roy Buchanan, Dobie Gray, and the sons of blues legend Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup.

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

1941-1953: Childhood and early musical influences

In early 1941, when the coal mines closed, Mack's family (Mack's mother was pregnant with him at the time) left Owsley County, Kentucky for brighter prospects as tenant farmers in Dearborn County, 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 show. Continuing to listen after the rest of the family had retired for the night, young Mack became a fan of R&B and traditional black gospel music.

He began playing guitar at the age of seven, after trading his bicycle for a "Lone Ranger" model acoustic guitar. His mother, Sarah, was his earliest guitar and country-singing influence. An uncle showed him how to merge a fast-picking Merle Travis country sound with traditional blues-picking styles. Mack's earliest performances were a family affair:

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.

While still a pre-teen, he performed for tips at a railroad switch-yard and as a sidewalk busker outside the Nieman Hotel in Aurora, Indiana. Ralph Trotto, a local country-gospel singer, became a mentor to the youngster.

As a teenager, his playing was further influenced by pioneering pop/jazz electric guitarist Les Paul and electric blues guitarist T-Bone Walker. At the same time, he was absorbing the vocal influences of R&B artists Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and Hank Ballard, country singer George Jones, country-gospel singer Martha Carson and traditional black gospel singer Archie Brownlee. As an adult, he recorded tunes associated with each of these artists.

1954-1962: Early career

Mack dropped out of school in 1954, at the age of thirteen, after a fight with a teacher. Large and mature-looking for his age, he obtained a fake ID and began performing in roadhouses in the musically diverse Cincinnati area, sometimes with his older brother, Alvin. Still using his family surname, McIntosh, he became the guitarist in a band called "The Classics". They had 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."

He had his own band before he turned fifteen. They performed regularly in the Tri-State Area around Cincinnati, playing rockabilly and R&B-tinged rock and roll. When he was sixteen, Mack and his sidemen became the house band at The Twilight Inn in McGonigal, Ohio. The venue's business-savvy owner named them "The Twilighters" and suggested that young McIntosh take the shortened stage-name, "Lonnie Mack".

He played guitar on three low-circulation singles in the late 1950s. In 1958, Mack and The Twilighters recorded a cover of Al Dexter's 1944 western swing hit, "Pistol Packin' Mama". In 1959, he was a session guitarist 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, seventeen-year-old Mack can be heard providing a Travis-picking guitar accompaniment, punctuated by a brief rockabilly solo.

In the early 1960s, Mack and his band ("Twilighters" had been dropped at some point) 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 often played keyboards in Mack's band), and Cincinnati's leading female R&B trio, The Charmaines.

1963: "Memphis" and "Wham!"

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 jaunty rockabilly/blues guitar take-off on Chuck Berry's 1959 UK vocal hit, "Memphis, Tennessee". He had improvised the guitar solo in a live performance a few years earlier, when the band-member who always sang the tune missed a club date. Mack's instrumental homage to the Berry tune was so well-received that he adopted it as part of his live act. He shortened the title to "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, augmented by an aggressive rock drum-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 was touring with Troy Seals. "I cut 'Memphis' and left the next week. While we was on the road, 'Memphis' became a hit. We were playing the Peppermint Lounge in Miami, and some people came down from Hamilton (Ohio) and said, 'That's all we been hearing (on the car radio) all the way down here.'" "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. According to The Book of Golden Discs, the track sold over one million copies. The popularity of "Memphis" quickly led to bookings at larger venues, tours in the UK and performances with Chuck Berry. Still in 1963, Mack released "Wham!", a gospel-inspired guitar rave-up 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".

According to musicologist Richard T. Pinnell, Ph.D., Mack's upbeat, fast-paced take on 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". Today, Mack is widely considered rock's first genuine "guitar hero" and many consider "Memphis" and "Wham!" to be 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 for a number of reasons. "Mack marveled at the arrow-like shape—a figure that literally aimed toward the future—and admired the pair of humbuckers on the V’s face." In addition, it sounded like his Les Paul, while its distinct, arrow-like shape also served as a symbol of 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. 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. As there had been many variations and production-runs of the Flying V over the preceding thirty-five years, Gibson examined the unmodified details of Number 7 carefully to assure authenticity of the Mack Signature Edition. To Gibson's surprise, "the pickups were found to have extra windings, which adds tonal beef." 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. Mack's particular mix of these disparate styles and techniques (all set to a jaunty rock beat), combined with the aforementioned "watery", Magnatone-driven vibrato, imparted a uniquely fluid sound to his early instrumentals, moving a reviewer of his first album to remark upon the "peculiar 'running' quality" of his fast-but-bluesy solos. These features of Mack's recordings distinguished him from more traditional, genre-bound blues guitarists, as well as many of the blues-rock soloists who rose to prominence in the mid-to-late 1960s.

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 produce 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 toggle the pitch-bending device with the picking hand immediately after picking out a run, while sustaining the last note or chord. Mack, however, customarily cradled it in the fourth finger of his picking hand, toggling it while continuing to pick and occasionally fanning it rapidly to the tempo of his simultaneous tremolo picking, to produce a machine-gunned, single-note, "shuddering" sound.

Mack as a singer

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. 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.

His singing style was variously described as "country-esque blues" and the "impassioned vocal style of a white Hoosier with a touch of Memphis soul". Mack's own composition,"Why?" (1963), is an early example. Later examples include a rendition of T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday" (1983), Mack's own deep soul ballad, "Stop" (1985), and a live, gospel-drenched version of Wilson Pickett's "I Found a Love" (1990).

When his first vocal recordings were released in 1963, Mack's gospel-inspired version of the soul ballad "Where There's a Will" was played on R&B radio stations throughout the Deep South. Soon, 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".

Mack took a break from blues-based material during the 1970s, recording mostly country, bluegrass and rockabilly vocals. However, he resumed his prior emphasis on blues-based material in the 1980s, and continued it through the balance of his career.

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 traditional 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/gospel 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 was 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 many 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.

Historical context and significance of Mack's solos

Before Mack, rock guitarists were typically accompanists, providing intros, fills, riffs, bridges and chord progressions in an overall structure supportive of the vocal. In addition, there had been some iconic pre-Mack rock guitar solos from The Ventures, Dick Dale, James Burton, Duane Eddy, The Virtues, Link Wray and others. However, what they mostly lacked---and what Mack's solos introduced---were some key attributes of virtuosity, i.e., single-string speed, melodic complexity, improvisational skill and advanced technique. Such virtuosity soon became the essence of the guitar "revolution" of the 1960s. By the end of that decade, the extended lead guitar solo had become a cornerstone of the typical rock tune, equal in importance to the lead vocal. Recognizing Mack's leading role in this process seventeen years after "Memphis", the editors of Guitar World magazine ranked it the premier "landmark" rock guitar recording to date, immediately ahead of four full albums featuring renowned 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.

[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.

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.

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 influence on the evolution of rock guitar

Mack has been called a "guitar hero's guitar hero". Stylistically novel and technically advanced, Mack's early solos 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 on 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.'"

According to much commentary, Mack's ground-breaking solos inspired a virtual "Who's Who" of superstar rock guitarists who rose to prominence beginning in mid-late 1960s and over the several decades following. Guitarists who have specifically called out Mack as a major influence include: Stevie Ray Vaughan (blues, blues-rock), Jeff Beck (blues-rock, jazz-rock), Dickey Betts, Warren Haynes and Dan Toler (southern rock), Ray Benson (western swing), Bootsy Collins (funk, soul), Adrian Belew (progressive rock), Ted Nugent (hard rock), and Tyler Morris (multi-genre).

Mack was proud of his influence on the development of rock guitar. "It's a great honor to be able to [inspire other artists]. What you do in this business, your whole thing is givin' stuff away. But that makes you feel good, makes you feel like you've really done something."

1964-1968: 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 highly proficient rock guitar soloists 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 Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones as well as 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 proto-blues-rock guitar solos, "Memphis", "Wham!", "Chicken-Pickin'" and "Susie Q". Meanwhile, however, Mack was left to deal with a pair of setbacks that combined to sideline his solo career for five years. Fraternity, which had never been more than a small regional label, struggled to survive during thie mid-'60s. It was ultimately sold to a new owner for $25,000, but never recovered. In addition, the appeal of Mack's music suffered considerably due the sudden and radical change in popular music tastes wrought by The Beatles-led British Invasion. Fraternity released a handful of the many Mack tunes it had recorded earlier, but none received significant air-play.

His newly acquired fan base having abruptly abandoned him, and stuck with a record label that lacked the resources to promote him, 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 four recordings by blues singer-guitarist Freddie King, and lead guitar on some recordings by "The Godfather of Soul", James Brown. The uncredited guitar solo on 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.

Mack operated a nightclub in Covington, Kentucky during this period. He played there regularly, but also served as the club's bouncer, once ending a fight between partrons by hitting them both with his guitar.

1968-1971: California years

In 1968, with the blues-rock and guitar-soloing movements approaching full force, Mack was re-discovered and signed by Elektra Records. He relocated to Los Angeles to record new material for them. Shortly before the release of his first Elektra album, a retrospective review of Mack's old Fraternity recordings 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. 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.

Mack recorded three new albums for Elektra, Glad I'm in the Band (1969), Whatever's Right (1969) and The Hills of Indiana (1971). In the aggregate, they represented a marked departure from the strengths and stylistic formula of Mack's Fraternity recordings. Essentially, they were eclectic collections of country and soul ballads, blues tunes, and updated versions of earlier recordings. 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 emphasized the distinctness of the genres. On Whatever's Right, Mack sang Willie Dixon's "My Babe" in a contemporary 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.

During this period, he regularly played major rock venues, including the Fillmore East and Fillmore West. However, he stuck with his old roadhouse-sized sound equipment, with surprising results. Elektra producer/recording engineer Bruce Botnick recalled:

We saw him on a bill at Winterland with Johnny Winter, and Fender had populated the stage with Fender Twins and a wall of amplifiers for Winter. It was beyond loud. Then, out comes Lonnie Mack with his one-foot square amp and [his band-mates all plugged-in to] midget amps. Everyone crowded up to the stage. The Mack sound was pure and better-integrated - it was fantastic. Johnny Winter just scratched his head in awe.

In addition to his solo dates during this period, he toured with Elektra label-mates The Doors and played bass guitar 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.

While in the studio for Morrison Hotel, The Doors recorded an instrumental entitled "Blues for Lonnie". It 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 was instrumental in signing Mickey Newbury, but couldn't generate much interest in some other prospects, including Roberta Flack. He then tried to sign Carole King, but Elektra rejected her on the grounds that they already had Judy Collins.

Frustrated, he finally 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 A&R 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 warning him to "flee from Mount Zion". Miller, a former evangelist preacher, knew Mack's mind. He returned to California alone, stating later: "[Lonnie's] a real country boy. [T]hat was it for Lonnie".

1971-1984: Withdrawal to the country

With California in his rear-view mirror, Mack moved to Nashville to record his final Elektra album, The Hills of Indiana (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.

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 your soul is left to rot". In other songs, he expressed love for country living and distaste for city living. Mack also felt out-of-phase with LA's psychedelic music scene. Interviewed in 1998, Mack said: "They was mostly into just really out-there kinda music, ripped-out-of-their-tree music".

Like country living, country music was both a passion and a refuge for Mack. In his late-1960s heyday as a rock performer, he was 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 off-duty officer was drunk, but allowed that he, Mack, was wielding a machete at the time, and might have slashed the officer's passing car with it to protest the officer's reckless driving. 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 mostly at his "Friendship Music Park" in rural southern Indiana (a venue he provided for bluegrass and traditional country artists) except for 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, author of the "This Bud's For You" beer-advertising campaign. 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 rock comeback a few years later.

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. However, he had not been forgotten entirely, as demonstrated by an article entitled "Won't You Come Back, Lonnie Mack?" in the May, 1981 issue of Guitar World magazine.

1983 produced the album Live at Coco's, from a Kentucky roadhouse performance. 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").

1984-1989: Rock comeback

Mack relocated to Spicewood, Texas about 1983 and began playing regularly at Texas roadhouses. 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.

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".

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. It featured Mack's vocals and driving guitar equally. Mack himself composed most of the tunes. 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 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. 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.

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, retirement and death

After Attack of the Killer V, Mack took up residence in a log cabin in rural Tennessee, started a website and founded a record company to distribute his music.

During the 1990s, he continued to tour the US and Europe, performing in small venues and at music festivals and recorded acoustic blues and southern rock instructional videos for Arlen Roth's Hot Licks video label. In 2000, he appeared as a guest artist on the album Franktown Blues, by the sons of blues legend Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, contributing guitar solos on two songs. 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.

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 salute to the concert's honoree, electric-guitar pioneer Les Paul.

In April, 2009, 46 years after "Memphis" and "Wham!", he spontaneously took the stage at a backwoods Tennessee roadhouse, and "proceeded to officially tear the roof off the place", playing "Cincinnati Jail" on the house band lead guitarist's instrument.

He peeled the paint off the walls with my rig. His (my?) guitar was smoking. Sounded like the breathing of a very large, wild animal. His band leading skills were also awesome. Lots of pointing at people to change dynamics and cue solos. He owned the stage...Crowd went nuts, people were taking pics with their camera phones. People were screaming, everybody started dancing, it was great. He cut my other lead player's head clean off. Bottom line - His playing is still awesome. Tone is very much in the fingers. He made my rig absolutely come alive in ways I've never heard. I'm a VHS player and he's a freakin' blu-ray.

Mack was scheduled to close out the Clearwater (Florida) Blues Festival on February 21, 2010, but had to cancel because he was unable 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 the award-winning country and blues tunesmith Bobby Boyd. Also in 2011, he released several kitchen-table recordings on his website, including "The Times Ain't Right" and "You Need a Little Help".

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.

Mack died at age 74 on April 21, 2016, at a country hospital in middle Tennessee. Officially, his death was attributed to "natural causes". However, Bruce Iglauer, the founder of Alligator Records, suggested that decades of hard living had finally taken their toll:

Lonnie lived the early rock and roll life, driving a Cadillac pulling a trailer for thousands of miles from gig to gig, staying up all night on amphetamines and cutting the buzz with lots of alcohol. It was a hard life, and his body paid for it as the years went by.

Mack had often told friends of a lifelong recurring dream, set near his childhood homes, in which his body "flew effortlessly across the Ohio River." He was laid to rest on a hillside overlooking the river, near the scenes of his youth, in Aurora, Indiana.

Discography