Lonnie Mack
He was a roadhouse blues-rock legend – modern rock’s first true guitar hero. His playing has influenced the course of rock and roll and had an impact on many of modern rock’s current guitar heroes, including Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and especially Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Growing up in rural Indiana not far from Cincinnati, Lonnie McIntosh was exposed to a heady combination of R&B and hillbilly. In 1958, he bought the seventh Gibson Flying V guitar ever manufactured and played the roadhouse circuit around Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. Mack has steadfastly cited another local legend, guitarist Robert Ward, as the man whose watery-sounding Magnatone amplifier inspired his own use of the same brand.
Mack’s 1990 album, Live! Attack of the Killer V, was captured on tape at a suburban Chicago venue called FitzGerald’s and once again showed why Lonnie Mack was venerated by anyone even remotely into savage guitar playing. Lonnie Mack died in Nashville in April 2016 at the age of 74. (Read more… billboard.com)
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