Remembering Lonnie Mack and his visits to Pike

To the Editor:
By the strangest of coincidences, on the same day that Prince died last week, former Pike County resident Lonnie Mack also passed away. We in the community feel the loss, for Lonnie lived among us for almost three years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Lonnie had been brought to Milford and environs by Ed Labunski, ad genius of Budweiser's "This Bud's For You" campaign, for which Ed won a Clio award. Labunski had built a state-of-the art, 24-track recording studio on Raymondskill Road. There, world-famous musicians collaborated on at least one excellent album, called simply "South." About a mile from that studio was the country tavern-restaurant-hotel my family was at that time operating.
Over the few years Lonnie and company were here in Pike County, he and some of his colleagues became close friends of my family. When my father in 1996 was coming to his end, Lonnie and his wife, Carol, drove up from Nashville to see him. They spent an evening in my home with my family and even sang for us gathered there a duet to a song Lonnie had written.
Three years ago, Lonnie came by to pick up one of my late father's paintings, coin of an ancient deal. I wasn't at home, but he left a note. I called, we talked and caught up, and I later mailed the painting to him. He wasn't at that time playing, he said. My only further contact with him was through email.
One is tempted to go into Lonnie's biographical and professional details — his beginnings in Aurora, Indiana, for example, or his touring the world in the early 1960s. But those who knew Lonnie are well acquainted with his influence on rock, with his invitation to play at Woodstock in 1969, and with his tours in England in the years before the English Invasion had fully formed. Those who have no idea of his musical prodigality will care little that Mick Jagger, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan were in the room the night Richards and Wood came out to jam with him and were proud to stand with him for a photo. I was, by these strangest of coincidences, lucky enough to be there.
Anthony Splendora
Milford
Editor's note: The Washington Post writes that Lonnie Mack was a "guitarist and singer whose early 1960s instrumental hits 'Memphis' and 'Wham!' influenced a generation of guitarists and whose singular mix of blues, country and gospel inspired performers such as Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Allman Brothers Band and Danny Gatton....'Lonnie Mack was one of the first white guys to really make a mark playing blues-infused guitar,' said record producer and blues historian Dick Shurman. 'I think of him as a prototype of what later could be called Southern rock. His music was a blend — it wasn’t a conscious blend — he brought black and white styles together seamlessly.'"