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.