Stevie Ray Vaughan fans got a nice little bonus in 1985, when Alligator Records[1] released Lonnie Mack's[2] masterful Strike Like Lightning...
Stevie Ray Vaughan fans got a nice little bonus in 1985, when Alligator Records[1] released Lonnie Mack's[2] masterful Strike Like Lightning[3] album.
The album, which was co-produced by Vaughan and Mack, features Vaughan on several tracks, playing electric and acoustic guitar, something that very rarely happened.
Vaughan even sings a duet with Mack on one of the songs, "If You Have to Know," making it the closest thing to a straight-ahead SRV tune.
In August 1986, about a year and a half after the album's release, Mack joined Vaughan on stage at the Orpheum Theater in Memphis, Tennessee,[4] to perform a few tracks from the album, including "Oreo Cookie Blues," a comical acoustic-blues number, and "Wham!," one of Mack's best-known instrumental songs.
Although Mack originally released "Wham!" in 1963, he and Vaughan covered it on Strike Like Lightning as "Double Whammy." Vaughan's official studio recording of "Wham!" is available on 1991's posthumously released The Sky Is Crying.
Below, you can check out both songs from that night in August of '86.
Although we don't hear his name often enough these days, Mack—along with Jimi Hendrix and Albert King—was one of Vaughan's biggest guitar influences. "I got a lot of the fast things I do from Lonnie," Vaughan once said. (Let's just say that SRV's "Scuttle Buttin'" was very much inspired by Mack.[5]) In 1987, Vaughan listed Mack first among the guitarists he listened to, both as a youngster, and as an adult.
For more information about Vaughan's studio guest appearances, check out Stevie Ray Vaughan's Top Five Studio Guest Appearances.[6] It was written by that Damian Fanelli guy.