Lonnie Mack Playlist

A Playlist to accompany the chapter on Lonnie in “Looking To Get Lost.”


I would defy anyone not to be caught up in the unbridled passion and energy of these sides. They come from three different phases of Lonnie’s career. The Fraternity sides, which though they were triggered by a huge instrumental hit, exhibit some of the most soulful intensity this side of Archie Brownlee or Wilson Pickett (two early influences); the early Elektra sides, just as soulful, if not more so; and a later, more thoughtful Elektra phase in which he returns to some of the songs that inspired him (“Uncle Pen”) and meditates on the place that he came from (“The Hills of Indiana”). Obviously the selection could have been nothing but  gospel-based blues and soul – but to my mind this gives a better sense of the breadth and dimensionality of this unreconstructed original