Lonnie Mack

American singer-guitarist Lonnie McIntosh (July 18, 1941 – April 21, 2016), known as Lonnie Mack, was a pioneer of blues-rock music and rock guitar melodic soloing.

Mack emerged in 1963 with the LP, The Wham of that Memphis Man. The album earned him lasting renown both as a blue-eyed soul singer and as a rock guitar style innovator.

In the album's instrumental tracks, Mack introduced "edgy, aggressive, loud, and fast" blues melodies and runs to the chords-and-riffs format of early rock guitar. These tracks elevated the standard for rock guitar proficiency and led early in the electric guitar's rise to the top of melodic soloing instruments in rock. As the 1960s progressed, these tracks formed a stylistic "model" for lead guitarists of two new genres, blues-rock and Southern rock.

Shortly after the album's release, however, the massively popular "British Invasion" hit American shores, and Mack's career "withered on the vine". He marked time until 1968, when Rolling Stone magazine rediscovered him and Elektra Records signed him to a three-album contract. He was soon performing in major venues, but his multi-genre Elektra albums underplayed his blues-rock appeal and record sales were tepid. Mack left Elektra in 1971. He spent the next fourteen years as a low-profile country music recording artist, roadhouse performer, sideman, and music-venue proprietor.

In 1985, Mack resurfaced with a successful blues-rock LP, Strike Like Lightning, a promotional tour featuring celebrity guitarist sit-ins, and a concert at Carnegie Hall. In 1990, he released another well-received blues-rock album, Lonnie Mack Live! Attack of the Killer V, then retired from recording. He continued to perform, mostly in smaller venues, until 2004.

Shortly before Mack's birth, his family moved from Appalachian eastern Kentucky to Dearborn County, Indiana, on the banks of the Ohio River. One of five children, he was born to parents Robert and Sarah Sizemore McIntosh on July 18, 1941, in West Harrison, Indiana, near Cincinnati, Ohio. He was raised on a series of nearby sharecropping farms.

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. Mack recalled that when he was "seven or eight years old" an uncle from Texas first introduced him to blues guitar and that when he 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. During this period, he was 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.

Mack experienced flashes of significant commercial success as a rock artist during the 1960s and 1980s. However, his career-long 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" and lasting commercial stardom eluded him. He was mostly absent from the rock spotlight for two long stretches of his career (1971-1985 and 1990-2004), during which he continued to perform, mostly in small venues, as a roots-rock "cult figure".

At age 13, Mack dropped out of school after a fight with a teacher. Large and mature-looking for his age, he obtained a counterfeit ID and began performing professionally in bars around Cincinnati with a band led by drummer Hoot Smith. As a 14-year-old professional electric guitarist in 1955, he "was earning $300. per week---more than most workers in the area's casket and whiskey factories." 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 became a perennial critics' favorite and is widely considered the centerpiece of his career:

• 1968: Guitar: "...in a class by himself."...Vocals: "...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 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." - Jimmy Guterman, ranking the album No. 16 in The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time
• 2007: "...a spectacular feast of down-home blues, gospel, R&B, and country chicken-pickin'...a unique vision of American roots music [that was] five years ahead of the British blues-rockers." - Dave Rubin, Inside the Blues, 1942-1982
• 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 recording 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 [recording] career withered on the vine." Many 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.

Although his recording career had stalled out, Mack stayed busy as a performer, criss-crossing the country with one-night stands. "The '60s, man, we was full of piss and vinegar, nothing bothered us. We had bennies, like the truckers had [and] we just stayed on the road all the time." During that time, he "performed with just about everybody, [including] Jimi Hendrix, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, and Dick and Dee Dee." He also took on session work with James Brown, Freddie King, Joe Simon, Albert Washington, and other R&B/soul artists.

In 1968, at the height of the blues-rock era, Elektra Records bought out Mack's dormant Fraternity recording 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, with one album left to complete his contract with Elektra, Mack moved to Nashville. There, he recorded The Hills of Indiana, a mostly-country LP with a vocal emphasis. It included only one track showcasing his guitar virtuosity, Asphalt Outlaw Hero. Hills attracted little attention.

While under contract to Elektra, Mack tasted enough of rock celebrity status to conclude that he didn't like it. "[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." On another occasion, 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." Upon Mack's death in 2016, 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 1971, with his Elektra contract completed, Mack went home to southern Indiana, where, for more than a decade, he functioned as a low-profile 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 an 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.

In 1983, 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, but Mack's return was postponed by a lengthy illness. In 1985, Mack staged a "full-fledged comeback" with the blues-rock album, Strike Like Lightning (co-produced by Vaughan and Mack), a tour featuring guest appearances by Vaughan, Ry Cooder, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood, and a concert at Carnegie Hall with Albert Collins and Roy Buchanan.

In 1986, Mack joined Buchanan and Dickey Betts for "The Great American Guitar Assault Tour".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 play the roadhouse and festival circuits through 2004.

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. He recorded an energetic instrumental take-off on Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee". He had improvised it a few years earlier, when his keyboardist, Denzil "Dumpy" Rice, who normally sang and played the Berry tune, hadn't shown for a performance. Mack didn't know the song's lyrics, but incorporated the basic melody into a greatly embellished electric guitar instrumental. He kept it as part of his live act, calling it simply "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 significant advance in rock guitar virtuosity, beyond both the prevailing chords-and-riffs standard of Chuck Berry and the "inherently simple" melodic guitar solos of such artists as Link Wray and Duane Eddy.

Mack recalled that, upon recording the tune, "It didn't mean a thing to me. I left to go on the road. We hit every roadhouse between Cincinnati and Miami, but we didn't have time to listen to the radio, so I didn't know what was going on [until] we were backing Chubby Checker one night. [T]he disc jockey came runnin' up to me, saying, 'You got the No. 1 record on our station!'" 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, 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 the bigger hit, many associate the faster-paced Wham! (and the lesser-known, but still faster Chicken-Pickin' from 1964) with the guitar style he pioneered. 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.

Mack's early guitar recordings remain closely identified with the dawn of virtuoso blues-rock guitar. 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.”

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.

In 1963, Mack's ability to rapidly "exploit the entire range of the instrument" was unprecedented in rock music. His six-string proficiency has been linked to his childhood mastery of fleet-fingered bluegrass and country guitar styles. In Memphis, Wham!, Chicken Pickin', Suzie-Q, 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 later adopted by many other rock guitarists, including blues-rock stars 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 mechanical 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 recognition 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 instrumental style of Booker T and the M.G.s, but with rapid guitar solos that "blurred the lines between soul, rock, surf, and rockabilly." 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."

Although notable commercial success was periodic and fleeting, Mack's early-'60s recordings became rock guitar trendsetters. They raised the bar for rock guitar proficiency, helped propel the electric guitar to the top of soloing instruments in rock, and were early style leaders in the genres of blues-rock and Southern rock.

Interviewed for a biography of Southern Rock guitar legend Duane Allman, guitarist and early Allman associate Mike Johnstone recalled the impact of Mack's unprecedented six-string proficiency:

Now, [in 1963], 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" blues guitar sound 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.

Mack's early-'60s guitar tracks are said to have set the stage for "blues-rock" guitar and "Southern rock" guitar, styles that first enjoyed broad popularity a few years after Memphis and Wham!. From Legends of Rock Guitar (1997):

[Mack] 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 [lead guitar] 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's 1963 debut album has been called "the first of the guitar hero records" and, as such, is said to have founded rock guitar's "modern" era. In 1980, "Memphis" led Guitar World magazine's list of rock guitar's top-five "landmark" recordings, ahead of entire albums by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Elvin Bishop, and Mike Bloomfield, whose own blues-infused solos exemplified the rock guitar "revolution" of the late 1960s.

According to The New York Times, Mack's guitar style was "a seminal influence on a long list of British and American" rock guitar soloists. Guitarists who have credited Mack as a major or significant influence include Stevie Ray Vaughan (blues rock), Jeff Beck (blues rock, jazz-rock), Ted Nugent (hard rock), Dickey Betts (Southern rock), Warren Haynes (Southern rock), Ray Benson (Western swing), Bootsy Collins (funk), Adrian Belew (progressive rock), and Tyler Morris (multi-genre). Others said to have been similarly influenced include Joe Bonamassa (blues-rock), Eric Clapton (blues-rock), Duane Allman (Southern rock), Gary Rossington (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), and Danny Gatton (blues rock; jazz rock).

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 was closely identified with the distinctive-looking 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".Mack, who was part Native American, had spent his youth with bow-and-arrow, and was viscerally attracted to the arrow-like shape of the guitar.

He became one of the Flying V's earliest players, and played it almost 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 world's "150 most elite guitars". In 2012, Rolling Stone magazine named it one of "20 iconic guitars".

Throughout his career, Mack's singing style blended white and black Southern roots influences. One commentator described his vocal delivery as "country-esque blues". He is best-known for his gospel-inspired "blue-eyed soul" ballads. Most of these failed to chart, but, in the half-century since their release, they have consistently drawn praise from critics and popular music historians:

• 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
• 2002: "For me, his vocal records became a metaphor for soul music; when I heard them, I finally understood what the term meant." - Randy McNutt, Guitar Towns
• 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)
• Baby, What's Wrong? ("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)

Mack released of his final album, Lonnie Mack Live: Attack of the Killer V, in 1990, but continued to perform, mostly in smaller venues, into the early 2000s. His last commercial performances were in 2004. Although he soon found that he "miss[ed] the stage, performing, and making people happy", he remained retired except for a handful of isolated special appearances over the next few years:

On February 17, 2007, he performed at an organ-transplant 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 participated in a blues jam with a lineup of prominent rock guitarists.

On April 4, 2009, at age 67, he spontaneously took the stage at a rural Tennessee roadhouse, performing "Cincinnati Jail" with an electric guitar borrowed from the house band's lead player, who wrote:

He made a couple of adjustments and then proceeded to begin OFFICIALLY TEARING THE ROOF OFF THE PLACE. 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 and had everybody doing exactly what he wanted them to do. 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, (which) was pretty funny, as (my other lead player) is a big Eddie Van Halen-style flash player. 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 guitar, he performed "Memphis" at the final reunion of his Memphis-era band. There is no account of Mack performing thereafter.

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 asked Mack to join him on a proposed 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) at a hospital near his log-cabin home in rural Tennessee. Burial was in Aurora, Indiana, a few miles from his birthplace. He was survived by a large family of siblings, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

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
• 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)