Lonnie Mack

Le prime notizie di Lonnie Mack (n. 1941m USA), originario dell'Indiana, si hanno nel 1963 quando in un intervallo del suo lavoro di chitarrista sessionman, incide una versione strumentale del classico di Chuck Berry, Menphis Tennesee. Il brano viene pubblicato dalla Fraternity e, nel giugno, raggiunge i primi posti delle classifiche USA. La straordinaria vena strumentale procura a Mack una breve stagione di notorietà, confermata da un secondo singolo (Wham!) e dall'album The Wham Of That Memphis Man (FRATERNITY, 1963 USA). Dopo di ciò Mack scompare praticamente dalla circolazione ma le sue poche interpretazioni sono sufficienti a farne un mito, il cui stile alla chitarra riecheggia soprattutto fra le nuove leve di musicisti inglesi. Tranne qualche partecipazione minore come sessionman verso la metà dei '60 (James Brown, Freddie King ecc.) di lui si risente parlare nel 1969 quando appare Glad I'm In The Band (ELETRA, 1969 USA). Seguono poi ben 3 album oltre a For Collectors Only (ELEKTRA, 1970 USA), ristampa dell'introvabile album Fraternity. La musica e il canto di Mack presentano ora delle forti connotazioni blues, R&B e soul che si innestano sulla originaria struttura rockabilly, con risultati del tutto particolari . Di questo periodo è anche una partecipazione del chitarrista al famoso MORRISON HOTEL dei Doors. Gli anni '70 vedono una nuova pausa, tranne alcuni 45 giri per diverse etichette; poi due album, Home At Last (Capitol, 1977 USA) e Lonnie Mack With Pismo (Capitol, 1977 USA). Nello stesso anno Mack partecipa anche alle registrazioni di FROM A RADIO ENGINE TO A PHOTON WING,di Michael Nesmith. Bisognerà poi attendere ben otto anni per trovare un nuovo album, Strike Like Lightning (ALLIGATOR, 1985 USA), nel quale il vecchio maestro in forma come non mai, si trova a lavorare con Steve Ray Vaughan, uno dei migliori chitarristi bianchi di blues degli '80.

Lonnie McIntosh (July 18, 1941 – April 21, 2016), known by his stage name Lonnie Mack, was an influential American pioneer of blues-rock music and rock guitar soloing.
He made his mark in 1963, with the release of his debut album, The Wham of that Memphis Man, and its hit-single instrumentals, Memphis and Wham!. His instrumentals added "edgy, aggressive, loud, and fast" blues solos to the chords-and-riffs standard of early rock guitar. They raised the bar for rock guitar proficiency, helped push the electric guitar to the top of soloing instruments in rock, and became a "model" for the emerging lead guitarists of blues rock and, soon thereafter, Southern rock. The album's vocals established Mack's reputation as one of the all-time greats of blue-eyed soul.
Mack's first time in the spotlight was brief. In early 1964, the "British Invasion" displaced many American artists, including Mack, from the pop music charts. He marked time until 1968, the height of the blues-rock era, when Rolling Stone magazine rediscovered his trail-blazing blues-rock recordings. He soon landed a three-album contract with Los Angeles' Elektra Records and began performing in major venues, but his multi-genre Elektra recordings were only modestly successful. From 1971 until 1985, he was a low-profile country recording artist, roadhouse performer, sideman, and music-venue proprietor.
He enjoyed a "full-fledged comeback in 1985, with the blues-rock album Strike Like Lightning and a tour featuring celebrity guitarist sit-ins and a concert at Carnegie Hall. He released his final LP, Lonnie Mack Live! - Attack of the Killer V, in 1990. He continued to perform, mostly in smaller venues, into the early 2000s.

Early life and musical influences

Shortly before Mack's birth, his family moved from Owsley County, Kentucky in the coal-mining region of central Appalachia to 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.
Using a floor-model radio powered by a truck battery, his family routinely listened to the Grand Ole Opry country music show. Continuing to listen after the rest of the family had retired for the night, Mack became a fan of rhythm and blues 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 taught him basic chords, and he was soon playing bluegrass guitar in the family band. When Mack was about ten years of age, an "old black man" named Wayne Clark introduced him to "Robert Johnson style guitar"; he soon taught himself to merge finger-picking country guitar with acoustic blues-picking, to produce a hybrid style resembling, but prefiguring, rockabilly guitar. About this time, he was also mentored by a local country gospel singer-guitarist, Ralph Trotto.
His musical influences remained diverse as he refined his playing and singing styles. He considered country picker Merle Travis, pop/jazz guitarist Les Paul, and electric blues guitarist T-Bone Walker the most significant influences on his mature guitar style. Significant vocal influences included R&B singers 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.

Career chronology

Mack had some commercial success for a few years during the 1960s and 1980s; otherwise, his pattern of switching and mixing within the entire range of white and black Southern roots music genres made him "as difficult to market as he was to describe." In addition, he disappeared from the spotlight several times, seemingly content to spend long stretches of his career as a highly regarded but low-profile "cult figure".
Mack dropped out of school in the sixth grade, after a fight with a teacher. In 1954, at age thirteen, he obtained a counterfeit ID and began performing professionally in bars around Cincinnati. He played guitar on several low-circulation recordings in the late 1950s.
In the early 1960s he became a session guitarist with Fraternity Records, a small Cincinnati label. In 1963, he recorded two hit singles for Fraternity, the proto-blues-rock guitar instrumentals "Memphis" and "Wham!" He soon recorded additional tunes to flesh out his debut album, The Wham of that Memphis Man (1963). Mack made some notable recordings later, particularly in the 1980s, but his 1963 debut album is widely considered the centerpiece of his career:

1968: "...in a class by himself...sincerity and intensity that's hard to find anywhere." - Rolling Stone, calling for re-issuance of Mack's discontinued 1963 debut album.
1987: "With so many trying to copy this same style, this album sounds surprisingly modern. Not many have done it this well, though. - Gregory Himes, The Washington Post
1992: "The first of the guitar-hero [albums] is also one of the best, and for perhaps the last time, the singing on such a disc is worthy of the guitar histrionics." - Jimmy Guterman, ranking the album No. 16 in The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time
2016: "Of all the Mack material available this is the one [album] I'd regard as absolutely essential." - Dave Stephens, Toppermost

He recorded many additional sides for Fraternity between 1963 and 1967, but only a few were released and none charted. Their commercial prospects (and Mack's career, generally) were stymied during this period by Fraternity's persistent financial problems and, even more, by the arrival of the overwhelmingly popular British Invasion only two months after release of The Wham of that Memphis Man. "It looked like the guitar wizard was ready to bust out when the music world was turned on its ear. [In] February 1964, The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and Mack's career withered on the vine." Most of Mack's recordings from the mid-'60s weren't released until Ace Records (UK) packaged the entirety of Mack's Fraternity output (previously released, unreleased, alternate takes, and demos) in a series of compilations beginning in 1992. Meanwhile, in the mid-'60s, with his own recording career stalled out, he took on session work with James Brown, Freddie King, Joe Simon, and other R&B/soul artists.
In 1968, at the height of the blues-rock era, Elektra Records bought out Mack's dormant Fraternity contract and moved him to Los Angeles to record three albums. The newly founded Rolling Stone magazine helped with a rave review of his discontinued debut album, calling on Elektra to re-issue it. He was soon performing in major rock venues, including the Fillmore East, the Fillmore West, and the Cow Palace. 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.
It was the hippie era, however, and Mack's rustic, blue-collar persona was an awkward fit with commercial rock's target demographic. John Morthland wrote: "[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." In addition, after two multi-genre Elektra albums (both recorded in 1969) that downplayed his blues-rock strengths, including his guitar, Mack himself was dissatisfied: "My music wasn't working that good then. I ain’t really happy with a lot of the stuff I did there." He temporarily set aside his own career to help recruit and develop other artists for Elektra.
In 1971, Mack moved to Nashville to record his final Elektra album, The Hills of Indiana. It began with Asphalt Outlaw Hero, a Don Nix-penned Southern rock number, played at a blistering pace. It was the only tune on the album showcasing Mack's rock guitar virtuosity. The rest of the album was "country through and through", with a vocal emphasis. Hills attracted little attention. Mack then went home to southern Indiana, where, for more than a decade, he was a mostly unnoticed country/bluegrass recording artist, roadhouse performer, and sideman. During this period, he also owned and operated a nightclub in Covington, Kentucky and an outdoor country music venue in Friendship, Indiana. In 1977, Mack was shot during an altercation with a drunken off-duty police officer. The experience inspired Mack's tune, Cincinnati Jail, a rowdy, guitar-and-vocal rock number that he favored in live performances later in his career.
Years after he left Los Angeles, Mack was asked why he had chosen country anonymity over a shot at rock celebrity at the age of twenty-nine. Mack said: "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." Later still, Mack said: "[It had] a lot to do with how much value you put on money as opposed to what makes you happy. I wasn't happy. So one of the best-feeling moments I ever had was when that L.A. sign was in my rear-view mirror and I was free again." Music historian Dick Shurman observed that Mack's country-boy temperament "wasn't suited to stardom. I think he'd rather have been hunting and fishing. He didn't like cities or the (music) business."
In 1983, after a twelve-year absence from the rock scene, Mack relocated to Austin, Texas for a collaboration with his blues-rock disciple, Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vaughan convinced Mack to return to the studio, with Vaughan in production and backup roles. However, Mack's return was postponed by a lengthy illness requiring several hospitalizations. In 1985, upon recovering his health, Mack staged a "full-fledged comeback" with the blues-rock album, Strike Like Lightning, a tour featuring guest appearances by Vaughan, Ry Cooder, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood, and a concert at Carnegie Hall.
He released three more albums over the next four years, including his last, in 1990, Lonnie Mack Live! – Attack of the Killer V!. Then, worn from the constant touring required to sell records, he ended his recording career. However, he continued to tour the roadhouse and festival circuits at a more relaxed pace through 2004.

"Memphis" and "Wham!"

On March 12, 1963, at the end of a recording session backing up The Charmaines, Mack was offered the remaining twenty minutes of studio-rental time. Not expecting it to be released, he recorded an energetic instrumental take-off on Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee". He had improvised it a few years earlier, when the audience called for Berry's tune, but the band-member who normally performed it during Mack's rest-break hadn't shown. He didn't know the song's lyrics, but, recalling the basic melody, he transformed it into a greatly embellished electric guitar instrumental. The audience liked it, so he kept it as part of his live act. He shortened the title to Memphis.
As recorded in 1963, Memphis featured a brisk melodic blues solo within a rockabilly framework, augmented by a rock drum-beat. It represented a quantum leap in rock guitar virtuosity, beyond both the chords-and-riffs standard of the 1950s (epitomized by Chuck Berry) and the "inherently simple" melodic solos of the early 1960s (epitomized by Duane Eddy).
Memphis was first broadcast in the spring of 1963. By late June, it 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, it sold over one million copies. The popularity of "Memphis" led to bookings at larger venues, at least one tour in the UK, and performances with Chuck Berry.
Still in 1963, Mack released Wham!, another guitar instrumental. It reached No. 24 on Billboard's Pop chart in September. Although Memphis was Mack's biggest hit, many associate the faster-paced Wham! (and the lesser-known, but lightning-fast Chicken-Pickin' from 1964) with his stylistic leadership. From Legends of Rock Guitar:

[In Wham!, Mack] can be heard using the chordal licks of early rock guitar greats, but he infuses his breaks with string bends, pentatonic runs, and mature blues chops, all of which eventually became trademarks of Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield and Stevie Ray Vaughan...A tight chordal riff laid over a fast boogie-woogie rhythm sets the tone for the cut, which contains guitar breaks, vibrato arm highlights, echoey single-note lines, and the repetitive string-pushing licks that eventually became so prevalent in Jeff Beck's guitar style.

Many consider Memphis and Wham! the first genuine hit recordings of the virtuoso blues-rock guitar genre. British music critic Bill Millar: “The term ‘influential’ is applied to almost anyone these days but there's still a case for saying that the massively popular blues-rock guitar genre can be traced way back to the strength, power and emotional passion of Lonnie Mack.”

Early guitar style and technique

By his late teens, Mack was well-versed in country and bluegrass guitar, blues guitar, rockabilly guitar, and the percussive chordal riffing of early rock's most influential guitarist, Chuck Berry.
Mack's skill as a rock guitar soloist has been linked to his childhood mastery of fleet-fingered bluegrass and country guitar styles. As a rock guitarist, his ability to rapidly "exploit the entire range of the instrument" was unmatched in 1963. In Memphis, Wham!, Chicken Pickin' and other early-1960s instrumentals, he augmented rock guitar's then-prevailing chords-and-riffs accompaniment style with bluesy solos marked by unusually brisk melodies and runs, performance elements sometimes found in early rock saxophone and keyboard solos, but essentially unheard in rock guitar before Mack. He repeatedly switched back-and-forth between agile melodic leads and rhythmic chordal riffs, a pattern soon adopted by other blues-rock guitarists, including Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Mack enhanced his guitar sound with overlapping vibrato effects. He used a '50s-era Magnatone amplifier to produce a constant, electronically generated, "watery"-sounding vibrato, a technique pioneered by his friend, R&B guitarist Robert Ward (blues musician) of the Ohio Untouchables (later known as the Ohio Players). In addition, he bent the pitch selectively with a vibrato arm. Guitarists typically toggle the device with the picking hand while sustaining the last note or chord of a passage. Mack, however, customarily cradled it in the fourth finger of his picking hand, toggling it while continuing to pick. He often fanned it rapidly to the tempo of his simultaneous tremolo picking, to produce a machine-gunned, single-note, "shuddering" sound. Guitarists nicknamed the device “whammy bar” in honor of Mack's early demonstration of skill with it in Wham!.
Usually accompanied by horns, drums, keyboards and bass guitar, Mack's early instrumentals broadly resembled the contemporary Memphis Soul style of Booker T and the M.G.s, but with rapid guitar solos that "blurred the lines between soul, rock, surf, and rockabilly." British music critic Dave Stephens rated Mack's overall guitar sound as "highly distinctive, dare I say, unique; in the early rock era only Link Wray and Duane Eddy could match him for instant recognition."

Mack's role in the evolution of rock guitar

Although Mack never became a major commercial star in his own right, he made a significant impact on the evolution of rock guitar through the influence of his stylistic leadership. His recordings of the early 1960s raised the bar for rock guitar proficiency, helped propel the electric guitar to the top of soloing instruments in rock, and are credited with a pioneering role in the genres of blues-rock and Southern rock:
Interviewed for the book, Skydog: The Duane Allman Story, guitarist Mike Johnstone recalled the impact of Mack's proficiency on other rock guitarists:

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.'

Mack's "edgy, aggressive, loud, and fast" style is also credited with a key role in the electric guitar's rise to the top of soloing instruments in rock. Blues critic Shawn Hagood wrote:

His playing was faster, louder, more aggressive than anything people were used to hearing. He essentially paved the way for the electric guitar to become a soloing instrument in rock music. A true blues-rock pioneer, the genre would not have been the same – indeed, much of rock music might not have been the same – without his innovative way of treating the electric guitar as a lead soloing instrument in rock – edgy, aggressive, loud and fast.

Former Elektra A&R executive James Webber agrees:

Lonnie took rock guitar playing to a whole different level. You had to really play now. [B]efore Lonnie, the sax guys did all of the lead work. He made the guitar the preeminent lead instrument.

Many consider Mack the father, or grandfather, of blues-rock guitar. Legends of Rock Guitar author Pete Brown explained:

For all his obscurity, [Mack] is one of the most important and influential rock guitarists of the pre-Yardbirds 1960s. This is because he is essentially the missing guitar link between the twangy, multi-string riffing of rockabilly and the bluesy, string-pushing players of the mid-sixties. He also made the crucial bridge between the black blues and white hillbilly music via his lead work...In all, it is not an exaggeration to say that Lonnie Mack was well ahead of his time in 1963. His bluesy solos predated the pioneering blues-rock guitar work of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Mike Bloomfield by nearly two years. [Since] they are considered "before their time", the chronological significance of Lonnie Mack for the world of rock guitar is that much more remarkable.

Southern rock (Allman Brothers) lead guitarist Warren Haynes expressed a similar assessment:

Guitar players, true musicians, and real music fans realize that Lonnie was the Jimi Hendrix of his time. Between the era of Chuck Berry and the era of Hendrix there were a handful of guitar players like Lonnie Mack who were making ground-breaking music that paved the way for the Revolution. People like Dickey Betts and Stevie Ray Vaughan would tell you that without Lonnie they wouldn’t be who they were. That goes for all of us.

Mack has been called the founder of rock's "modern" guitar era for the stylistic impact of his early-1960s solos. In 1980, Memphis topped Guitar World magazine's list of rock guitar's "landmark" recordings, ahead of entire albums by popular guitar heroes Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Elvin Bishop, and Mike Bloomfield, whose own blues-infused solos exemplified the rock guitar "revolution" of the late 1960s.
The guitar style Mack pioneered in the early 1960s is said to have been "a seminal influence on a long list of British and American" rock guitarists from the mid-1960s and beyond, including: Joe Bonamassa (blues-rock), Eric Clapton (blues-rock), Stevie Ray Vaughan (blues-rock), Jeff Beck (blues-rock; jazz-rock), Duane Allman (Southern rock), Steve Gaines (Southern rock), Mike Bloomfield (blues-rock), Jerry Garcia (psychedelic rock), Jimi Hendrix (psychedelic blues-rock), Keith Richards (blues-rock), Jimmy Page (blues-rock), Ted Nugent (hard rock), and Danny Gatton (blues rock; jazz rock). Vaughan, Beck, and Nugent have spoken of Mack's influence, as have guitarists Dickey Betts (Southern rock), Warren Haynes (Southern rock), Ray Benson (Western swing), Bootsy Collins (funk), Adrian Belew (progressive rock), and Tyler Morris (multi-genre).
Mack was proud of his role in the evolution 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."

Mack's 1958 Gibson Flying V Guitar, "Number 7"

Mack was closely identified with the distinctive, arrow-shaped Gibson Flying V guitar that first appeared in 1958. When he was seventeen, he bought the seventh Flying V off the first-year production line, naming it "Number 7". He became one of the Flying V's earliest players, and played it exclusively throughout his career. Mack's final album, Attack of the Killer V, was named for it. Early in Mack's career, he added a Bigsby vibrato bar to the guitar. It required mounting a steel crossbeam approximately six inches below the apex of the "V", giving the guitar a unique appearance.
In 1993, Gibson Guitar Corporation issued a limited-run "Lonnie Mack Signature Edition" of Number 7. In 2010, it was featured in Star Guitars: 101 Guitars That Rocked The World. In 2011, Walter Carter, author of The Guitar Collection, named Number 7 one of the worlds "150 most elite guitars". In 2012, Rolling Stone magazine named it one of "20 iconic guitars".

"Blue-eyed soul" vocals

Mack was a convincing country vocalist and often sang in a style that seamlessly blended country and blues influences. He is remembered mostly, however, for the singular intensity of his gospel-inspired "blue-eyed soul" vocals. Most of these appeared only on albums, and none were chart-toppers, but they consistently drew high praise:

1968: "It is truly the voice of Lonnie Mack that sets him apart...primarily a gospel singer...sincerity and intensity that's hard to find anywhere." - Alec Dubro, Rolling Stone
1983: "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 had a directness which would have been wholly embarrassing in the hands of almost any other white vocalist." - Bill Millar, History of Rock
1992: "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." - Jimmy Guterman, The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records Of All Time
2001: ""Why?", Mack wails, transforming it into a word of three syllables. "Why-y-y?" It's sweaty slow-dance stuff, with an organ intro, a stinging guitar solo, and, after the last emotional chorus, four simple notes on the guitar as a coda. There's no sadder, dustier, beerier song in all of Rock". - James Curtis, Fortune
2009: "[Mack's "Why?" (1963) is] the greatest deep soul record ever made ... you can feel the ground shaking under [Mack's] feet ... a cry of anguish so extreme you have to close your eyes in shame over witnessing it ... Mack's scream at the end has never been matched. God help us if anyone ever tops it. - Greil Marcus, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
2016: "Up to April the 21st 2016, the day he died, Lonnie Mack was the best living white soul singer in the world, so good that he could even be mentioned in the same sentence as some of the all-time great black stars of what is essentially a black genre, and yes, I'm talking about the likes of Bobby Bland, Wilson Pickett and others." - Dave Stephens, Toppermost

Representative blue-eyed-soul vocals from his catalog include:

Why ("The Wham of that Memphis Man", 1963)
Where There's A Will ("The Wham of that Memphis Man", 1963)
She Don't Come Here Anymore ("Glad I'm in the Band", 1969)
My Babe ("Whatever's Right", 1969)
Gotta Be An Answer ("Whatever's Right", 1969)
Stormy Monday (live, "Live at Coco's", rec. 1983, rel. 1999)
Why (live, "Live at Coco's", rec. 1983, rel. 1999)
The Things I Used To Do (live, "Live at Coco's", rec. 1983, rel. 1999)
Stop ("Strike Like Lightning", 1985)
I Found A Love (live, "Attack of the Killer V", 1990)
Stop (live, "Attack of the Killer V", 1990)

Final years

Mack's last commercial performances were in the 2003–2004 touring season. Although he soon found that he "miss[ed] the stage, performing, and making people happy", he remained retired except for a handful of unpaid special appearances over the next few years:
On February 17, 2007, he performed at a benefit concert for Pure Prairie League singer-bassist Michael Reilly.
Mack's last major public performance was on November 15, 2008, at the State Theater (Cleveland, Ohio). There, he performed Wham! at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 93rd birthday salute to one of his own guitar heroes, Les Paul. After his own, Les Paul's, and others' performances, he engaged in an extended blues jam with a lineup of prominent rock guitarists from the 1950s onward.
On April 4, 2009, at age 67, he spontaneously performed Cincinnati Jail at a rural Tennessee roadhouse, using an electric guitar borrowed from the house band's lead player, who wrote:

[He] officially tore the roof off the place. 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 and had everybody doing exactly what he wanted. 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 when they were swapping licks. 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.

In 2010, again with a borrowed a guitar, he performed Memphis for a small gathering of friends and family at the final reunion of his Memphis-era band.
There is no account of any Mack performance after 2010.
In 2011, he released a handful of kitchen-table acoustic recordings via the internet. About that time, he was also reportedly working on a memoir and engaged in a songwriting collaboration with award-winning country and blues tunesmith Bobby Boyd.
In 2012, guitarist Travis Wammack invited Mack to join him for a tour to be billed as "Double Mack Attack". Mack declined, saying that he “...wasn't in good shape. He said he can't play standing up any more [and] it's hard to hold a Flying V sitting down.”
Mack died from "natural causes" on April 21, 2016 (age 74) near the Tennessee log-cabin home he had occupied for over twenty years. Burial was in Aurora, Indiana, a few miles from his birthplace. Married and divorced three times, he was survived by five children, two sisters, a brother, eight grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Discography

Original Studio albums

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
1985: Strike Like Lightning
1986: Second Sight
1988: Roadhouses and Dance Halls
1999: South (rec. 1978)

Live albums

1990: Lonnie Mack Live: Attack of the Killer V (recorded December, 1989)
1998: Live At Coco's (recorded 1983)

Re-issues and compilations

1970: "For Collectors Only" (Re-issue of "The Wham of that Memphis Man" with two additional tunes from 1964)

Session work (guitar)

Year	Artist	Album
1965	Freddie King	Freddie King Sings Again
1967	James Brown	James Brown Sings Raw Soul
1970	The Doors	Morrison Hotel
1974	Dobie Gray	Hey, Dixie
1981	Ronnie Hawkins	Legend In His Spare Time
1986	Tim Krekel/The Sluggers	Over The Fence
1996	Wayne Perkins	Mendo Hotel
1998	Jack Holland	The Pressure's All Mine
1999	Albert Washington	Albert Washington with Lonnie Mack (rec. 1967)
2000	The Crudup Brothers	Franktown Blues
2006	The Charmaines	Gigi & The Charmaines (rec. 1962–1963)
2007	Stevie Ray Vaughan	Solos, Sessions & Encores (live version of "Double Whammy" rec. 1985)

Career recognition and awards

Year	Award or recognition
1992	Jimmy Guterman ranked Mack's 1963 debut album No. 16 in his book, The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time.
1993	Gibson Guitar Corporation issued a limited-run "Lonnie Mack Signature Edition" of "Number 7".
1998	The Cincinnati Enquirer gave Mack its Pop Music Award ("Cammy") for "Lifetime Achievement".
2001	Southeastern Indiana Musician's Association Hall of Fame induction.
2001	International Guitar Hall of Fame induction.
2002	Mack's second "Lifetime Achievement" Cammy.
2005	Rockabilly Hall of Fame induction.
2006	The Southern Legends Entertainment & Performing Arts Hall of Fame induction.
2010	Dave Hunter featured "Number 7" in his book, Star Guitars: 101 Guitars That Rocked The World
2011	Walter Carter featured "Number 7" in his book, The Guitar Collection, calling it one of the world's 150 "most elite guitars".
2012	Rolling Stone featured "Number 7" in an article entitled 20 Iconic Guitars.