Lonnie Mack
| Lonnie Mack | |
|---|---|
Mack performing at Rising Sun, Indiana, in 2003.
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Lonnie McIntosh |
| Born |
July 18, 1941 West Harrison, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | April 21, 2016 (aged 74) Smithville, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Genres | Blues rock, blues, country, southern rock, rockabilly, blue-eyed soul, bluegrass, gospel |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, singer-songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar |
| Years active | 1954–2004 |
| Labels | Alligator, Elektra, Fraternity, Capitol, Flying V Records, Jewel, King, Ace, Epic, Sage Records, Dobbs Records |
| Website | lonniemack |
| Notable instruments | |
| "Number 7", 1958 Gibson Flying V guitar | |
Lonnie McIntosh (July 18, 1941 – April 21, 2016), better known by his stage name Lonnie Mack, was an American rock, blues and country singer-guitarist. He performed professionally from the mid-1950s into the early 2000s. His recording career spanned the period 1958 to 1989.
Despite rave reviews and several brushes with stardom, Mack flew under the radar of commercial rock music fans for most of his career. However, in the early 1960s, he was a "pioneer" and "ground-breaker" in virtuoso rock guitar soloing, whose recordings were pivotal to the ascendency of the lead guitar in rock music. Mack's debut album, recorded in 1963, has been called "the first of the guitar hero records" and Mack himself has been called "the father of Modern Guitar".
In his 1963 hit single instrumentals, "Memphis" and "Wham!", he "attacked the strings with fast, aggressive single-string phrasing and a seamless rhythm style", to produce a previously unheard sound that was "savagely wild [but] perfectly controlled". Through these and other contemporaneous recordings, Mack is said to have initiated the virtuoso blues-rock lead guitar movement of the 1960s and, through an intuitive blend of black and white styles, to have fashioned a "prototype" for the southern rock genre of the 1970s.
According to Guitar World magazine, his innovative guitar style left its mark on most of the great rock guitar soloists from the 1960s through the 1980s. According to the artists themselves, Mack inspired Stevie Ray Vaughan (blues-rock), Jeff Beck (jazz-rock), Dickey Betts, Warren Haynes and Dan Toler (southern rock), Ray Benson (western swing), Bootsy Collins (funk), Adrian Belew (progressive rock) and Ted Nugent (hard rock), among others.
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