In them, Mack, using "top-quality technique" and "pristine" phrasing,[2] added "edgy, aggressive, loud, and fast" melodies and runs to the predominant chords-and-riffs pattern of early rock guitar.

He was soon performing in major venues, but his multi-genre Elektra albums downplayed his lead guitar and blues rock appeal and record sales were modest.

He left Elektra in 1971, and for the next fourteen years he functioned as a low-profile multi-genre recording artist, roadhouse performer, sideman, and music-venue proprietor.

In 1985, Mack resurfaced[9] with a successful blues rock LP, Strike Like Lightning, a promotional tour featuring celebrity guitarist sit-ins,[10] and a Carnegie Hall concert with Roy Buchanan and Albert Collins.

Continuing to listen after the rest of the family had retired for the night, Mack became a fan of rhythm and blues and traditional black gospel music.

Mack's career-long pattern of switching and mixing within the entire range of white and black Southern roots music genres[25] made him "as difficult to market as he was to describe.

Large and mature-looking for his age, he obtained a counterfeit ID and began performing professionally in bars around Cincinnati with a band led by drummer Hoot Smith.

[39] Three decades later, Ace Records (UK) packaged the entirety of Mack's Fraternity output (previously released, unreleased, alternate takes, and demos) in a series of compilations.

[40] In the mid-1960s, however, Mack's commercial prospects were stymied by Fraternity's thin financial resources[41] and, even more, by the arrival of the overwhelmingly popular British Invasion only two months after release of The Wham of that Memphis Man.

[45] In November 1968, the newly founded Rolling Stone magazine published a rave review of Mack's discontinued 1963 debut album, persuading Elektra to re-issue it.

He opened for the Doors[47] and Crosby, Stills & Nash and shared the stage with Johnny Winter, Elvin Bishop and other popular rock and blues artists of the time.

John Morthland wrote: "[All] the superior chops in the world couldn't hide the fact that chubby, country Mack probably had more in common with Kentucky truck drivers than he did with the new rock audience.

"[49] In addition, after two multi-genre Elektra albums (both recorded in 1969) that downplayed his blues-rock strengths, including his guitar, Mack himself was dissatisfied: "My music wasn't working that good then.

Mack had begun missing the fun of small-town performance venues early in his time with Elektra[53] and soon soured on the fantasy of rock celebrity status.

"[56] In 1971, with his Elektra contract completed, Mack went home to southern Indiana, where, for more than a decade, he was a roadhouse performer, sideman, and low-profile country/bluegrass recording artist.

[57][deprecated source] During this period, he also owned and operated a nightclub in Covington, Kentucky, and an outdoor country music venue in Friendship, Indiana.

The experience inspired Mack's tune, "Cincinnati Jail", a rowdy, guitar-and-vocal rock number that he favored in live performances later in his career.

[73] Mack didn't know the tune's lyrics, but when the audience called for it, he improvised a highly embellished electric guitar instrumental grounded in Berry's melody.

[85] Music critic Bill Millar: "The term ‘influential’ is applied to almost anyone these days but there's still a case for saying that the massively popular blues-rock guitar genre can be traced way back to the strength, power and emotional passion of Lonnie Mack.

[87] By his late teens, Mack had expanded his six-string repertoire to include blues, rockabilly,[88] and the percussive chordal riffing of early rock's Chuck Berry.

[89] In the early 1960s, using a bluegrass-style flatpicking technique, he innovated rock guitar solos with a then-perceived "peculiar running quality"[90] at "a million notes per minute".

", Mack's ability to rapidly "exploit the entire range"[92] of the guitar with "top-quality technique" and "pristine" phrasing[93] was considerably above the rock music standard.

", "Chicken Pickin", "Suzie-Q", and other early-1960s instrumentals, he augmented rock guitar's then-prevailing chords-and-riffs accompaniment style with brisk leads combining melodies, runs, and "mature blues chops".

[84] His pattern of alternating between agile melodic leads and rhythmic chordal riffs was soon emulated by Jeff Beck[94] and later by Stevie Ray Vaughan,[95] among others.

In his early recordings, he used a 1950s-era Magnatone amplifier to produce a constant, electronically generated, watery-sounding vibrato,[96] in the style of R&B guitarist Robert Ward.

Another player of that era observed: "Lonnie Mack made the other guitar-slingers of the day – Duane Eddy, Dick Dale, the Ventures – sound tame by comparison.

He also made the crucial bridge between the black blues and white hillbilly music via his lead work...In all, it is not an exaggeration to say that Lonnie Mack was well ahead of his time in 1963.

His bluesy solos predated the pioneering blues-rock guitar work of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Mike Bloomfield by nearly two years.

Southern rock (Allman Brothers) lead guitarist Warren Haynes expressed a similar assessment:[106] Guitar players, true musicians, and real music fans realize that Lonnie was the Jimi Hendrix of his time.

[133] On April 4, 2009, at age 67, he spontaneously took the stage at a rural Tennessee roadhouse, performing "Cincinnati Jail" with an electric guitar borrowed from the house band's lead player, who wrote:[134] He made a couple of adjustments and then proceeded to begin OFFICIALLY TEARING THE ROOF OFF THE PLACE.