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Profile
Lonnie Mack
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1999 KBA Award Winner
Achievement for Blues on the Internet
Presented by the Blues Foundation
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Every self-respecting guitar lover knows Lonnie Mack as a Founding Father of modern blues-rock,
the man who blazed the trail that Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaughan and thousands more have followed. He has been called a blues-rock legend -- modern rock's first true guitar hero. His early music bridged the gap between '50s rockabilly and black roots music, and the psychedelic blues-rock of the following decade. Rock, blues, soul and country -- Lonnie brings them all together for a sound that has been all his own for nearly 40 years. Lonnie was born in 1941 in Harrison, Indiana (just 20 miles west of Cincinnati). From family sing-alongs he developed a love of country music, while he absorbed rhythm and blues from the late-night black radio stations and gospel from his local church. Starting off with a few chords that he learned from his mother, Lonnie gradually blended all the sounds he heard around him into his own individual style. He began playing professionally in his early teens working clubs and roadhouses around the tri-state border area of Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. In 1958, he bought the guitar he still plays today -- Gibson Flying V serial number 7. In addition to his live gigs, Lonnie began playing sessions for the King and Fraternity labels in Cincinnati where he recorded with blues and R&B greats like Hank Ballard, Freddie King and James Brown. It was also during this time that he was influenced by the reverb-rich Magnatone Amp sound of Robert Ward. His big break came in 1963, when he cut an instrumental version of Chuck Berry's ''Memphis'' which toped the national charts. Lonnie went from being a talented regional roadhouse player to a national star virtually overnight and spent the next 5 years crisscrossing the country playing live shows and doing more recording. At the end of the 60s he signed with Elektra Records and cut three albums. After becoming disillusioned with the record business bureaucracy he headed back to rural Indiana, playing clubs in Cincinnati and back-country bars in the surrounding area, going fishing and laying low. He spent the next dozen years on various recording and live projects and began his re-emergence on the national scene in 1983. At Stevie Ray Vaughan's urging, he relocated from southern Indiana to Austin, Texas and began jamming with Stevie Ray in local clubs. When Alligator Records approached him to do an album, Lonnie immediately called on Vaughan to help him out. The result was Strike Like Lightning, co-produced by Lonnie and Stevie Ray and featuring Stevie's guitar on several tracks. "We went for Lonnie's original sound here," Vaughan said. The joint effort was one of 1985's best selling records and topped many critics' "Best Of" list for that year. Two more Alligator albums followed, Second Sight (1886) and Live! Attack Of The Killer V (1990). Revered by a new generation of rock performers, Lonnie Mack has won the hearts of fans worldwide with a career that traces the history of rock and roll, drawing on influences as diverse as R&B, country, gospel and rockabilly.
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