On this day · 85 years ago · 1941
85 Years Ago Today: Lonnie Mack Is Born, the Guitarist Who Started Modern Rock Soloing
Lonnie Mack was born in West Harrison, Indiana, on July 18, 1941. Two 1963 instrumentals cut on a borrowed twenty minutes of studio time made him, by most historians' account, rock's first guitar hero.
By Lucille, Blues desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Lonnie Mack, born Lonnie McIntosh in West Harrison, Indiana, on July 18, 1941, recorded the instrumentals Memphis and Wham! in 1963 on his 1958 Gibson Flying V, nicknamed Number 7. Rolling Stone and guitar historians credit those tracks with making the electric guitar rock's lead solo instrument, ahead of Clapton, Beck, and Bloomfield. Mack's fast, vibrato-bar-driven style directly influenced Stevie Ray Vaughan, Duane Allman, and Keith Richards. He died April 21, 2016, the same day as Prince.
Twenty minutes that changed rock guitar
Lonnie McIntosh was born on July 18, 1941, in West Harrison, Indiana, one of five kids in a sharecropping family that listened to the Grand Ole Opry on a truck-battery radio. He traded his bicycle for an acoustic guitar at seven, was playing bars around Cincinnati on a fake ID by 13, and by 17 had bought a brand-new 1958 Gibson Flying V, the seventh one off the line, which he nicknamed Number 7 and played almost exclusively for the rest of his life.
On March 12, 1963, Mack finished a session backing a doo-wop group called the Charmaines and was offered the last twenty minutes of paid studio time. He used it to cut an instrumental he'd been improvising live for years, a souped-up version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee." Mack didn't know the words, so he just played, fast, melodic, and loud. "Memphis" climbed to number 5 on Billboard's pop chart that summer. A second instrumental from the same sessions, "Wham!," reached number 24. Together they anchored his debut album, The Wham of that Memphis Man.
The first guitar hero record
Critic Jimmy Guterman later ranked that album 16th on his list of the 100 best rock and roll records ever made, calling it "the first of the guitar hero records." That's not hyperbole from a fan site. Before Mack, rock guitar mostly meant chords and riffs, Chuck Berry style, with saxophone handling the flashy solos. Former Elektra A&R man James Webber summed up what changed: "Lonnie took rock guitar playing to a whole different level. You had to really play now. Before Lonnie, the sax guys did all of the lead work. He made the guitar the preeminent lead instrument."
Mack built his sound around a Bigsby vibrato bar he'd bolted to his Flying V, cradled in his picking hand's fourth finger so he could toggle it mid-run. He fanned it so hard and so fast that a generation of guitarists started calling that kind of arm simply a "whammy bar," a nickname that traces directly back to "Wham!." Neil Young later said flatly: "Did I do that first? No. You've got to look at guys like Lonnie Mack. He showed everybody how to use a vibrato arm."
The British Invasion buried Mack's momentum within a year of his debut's release, but the influence never stopped compounding. Stevie Ray Vaughan, an outspoken acolyte of Mack's playing, personally talked him into a 1980s comeback, producing 1985's Strike Like Lightning and bringing Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, and Ry Cooder out for the tour. Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Bootsy Collins have all named him as a formative influence. Southern rock guitarist Warren Haynes didn't hedge: "Lonnie was the Jimi Hendrix of his time." Mack died of natural causes on April 21, 2016, at 74, the same day as Prince, a coincidence that pushed his death out of most front pages.
Chasing that heavy, wound-third tone
Mack's own gauge was unusual even by 1963 standards: .010, .012, an .018 wound third instead of a plain one, .028, .038, and a heavy .052 low E. He said he only bent the top two strings and that the wound third was central to his tone. No catalog set on the market reproduces a wound third string today, most modern players moved to a plain third decades ago, but if you want the same heavy-bottomed, .010-to-.052 spread on a Flying V or any electric of your own, this is the closest modern shortcut.
Skinny Top Heavy Bottom Slinky Cobalt (.010-.052)
Why this one: Not a claim about Mack's own 1963 gauge, which had a wound third string no catalog set reproduces today, but the same .010 top and heavy .052 low end his Flying V carried, on a modern Cobalt wrap.
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