The Wham of That Memphis Man | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 1963 | |||
Recorded | 1963, Cincinnati, Ohio | |||
Length | 32:16 | |||
Label | Fraternity | |||
Producer | Harry Carlson | |||
Lonnie Mack chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [1] |
Rolling Stone | (positive) [2] |
The Wham of That Memphis Man is the first album by Lonnie Mack. It was recorded in several sessions beginning in March 1963 and was released by the small Cincinnati label Fraternity Records in October 1963. It reached just #103 on the charts, [3] but music critic Jimmy Guterman ranked it No. 16 in his book The 100 Best Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time. [4]
Mack is considered a pioneer of virtuoso rock guitar soloing [5] and a key stylistic forerunner of the blues rock [6] and Southern rock [7] guitar genres, for his fast-paced instrumental solos, including his 1963 hit singles, "Memphis" and "Wham!", both of which are on this album.
The album also included several Mack vocals, done primarily in the country-esque blues/gospel style for which he became well-known. Regarding the vocals on this album, music critic Bill Millar said: "For consistency and depth of feeling – the best blue-eyed soul is defined by Lonnie Mack's ballads and virtually everything the Righteous Brothers recorded...Lonnie Mack wailed a soul ballad as gutsily as any black gospel singer. The anguished inflections which stamped his best songs had a directness which would have been wholly embarrassing in the hands of almost any other white vocalist." [8]
The album has been re-released at least ten times, most recently on the Ace label in 2016.
The track listing shows the eleven tracks in the order in which they appeared on the original release. [9] An expanded version of the album, incorporating the original cover art, was released in 1969 by Elektra Records under the title "For Collectors Only". It adds two 1964 tracks ("Farther on Down the Road" and "Chicken Pickin'") to those on the original release. It begins with "Wham!" as track 1, as on the original, but thereafter the track order differs completely from that of the original 1963 album.
All of the album's songs appear on the 1999 Ace CD Memphis Wham!, though not in the same order, and with some different mixes (this CD has 24 tracks in total). [10]
Southern rock is a subgenre of rock music and a genre of Americana. It developed in the Southern United States from rock and roll, country music, and blues and is focused generally on electric guitars and vocals. Author Scott B. Bomar speculates the term "southern rock" may have been coined in 1972 by Mo Slotin, writing for Atlanta's underground paper, The Great Speckled Bird, in a review of an Allman Brothers Band concert.
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was an American blues musician, composer, songwriter and bandleader, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues, West Coast blues, and electric blues sounds. In 2018 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 67 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Electric blues is blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.
Blues rock is a fusion genre and form of rock music that relies on the chords/scales and instrumental improvisation of blues. It is mostly an electric ensemble-style music with instrumentation similar to electric blues and rock. From its beginnings in the early to mid-1960s, blues rock has gone through several stylistic shifts and along the way it inspired and influenced hard rock, Southern rock, and early heavy metal.
A guitar solo is a melodic passage, instrumental section, or entire piece of music, pre-written to be played on a classical, electric, or acoustic guitar. In 20th and 21st century traditional music and popular music such as blues, swing, jazz, jazz fusion, rock and heavy metal, guitar solos often contain virtuoso techniques and varying degrees of improvisation. Guitar solos on classical guitar, which are typically written in musical notation, are also used in classical music forms such as chamber music and concertos.
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Lonnie McIntosh, known as Lonnie Mack, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was influential in the development of blues rock music and rock guitar soloing.
The Sky Is Crying is the fifth and final studio album by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, compiling songs recorded throughout most of their career. Released 14 months after Vaughan's death in 1990, the album features ten previously unreleased tracks recorded between 1984 and 1989. Only one title, "Empty Arms", appeared on any of the group's previous albums. The tracks were compiled by Vaughan's brother, Jimmie Vaughan, and was Vaughan's highest charting album at number 10.
"Turn On Your Love Light" is a rhythm and blues song recorded by Bobby Bland in 1961. It was both an important R&B and pop chart hit for Bland and has become one of his most identifiable songs. A variety of artists have recorded it, including the Grateful Dead, who made it part of their concert repertoire.
Dave Gonzalez is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter from Southern California and, with Thomas Yearsley, founding member of the roots rock/rockabilly band The Paladins in the early 1980s, and then co-founder with Chris Gaffney of the Hacienda Brothers.
Glad I'm in the Band is a 1969 album by the American guitarist Lonnie Mack. It is his second studio album, succeeding his debut, The Wham of that Memphis Man, from 1963. The album included two re-recorded tracks from Wham. “Why”, and the instrumental cover of Chuck Berry's "Memphis."
The Charmaines were an American female vocal trio of the 1960s, described by the NME as being as sassy as The Supremes and The Marvelettes.
Samantha Fish is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter from Kansas City, Missouri. While often cited as a blues artist, Fish's work features and draws from multiple genres, including rock, country, funk, bluegrass, and ballads.
Sean Chambers is an American blues rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He has released seven albums since 1998, with the most recent, Trouble & Whiskey (2017) and Welcome to My Blues (2018), appearing in the US Billboard Blues Albums Chart.
Strike Like Lightning is an album by the American musician Lonnie Mack, released in 1985. The working title was Return of the Flying V, after Mack's 1958 Gibson Flying V. Regarded as a comeback album, Strike Like Lightning was a commercial success.