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| Daddy Mack Orr |
Around 25 years ago, I was visiting a record store in search of some inspiring new blues. The store that I visited was one that usually included a few surprises on the blues aisle....the manager was a blues fan himself and we had many conversations while I was in the store. On this particular visit, I ran across a CD from The Daddy Mack Blues Band called Fix It When I Can.
It was great, a whole album's worth of gritty, gutbucket blues with a healthy dose of Memphis grease in the terrific rhythm section work. Daddy Mack was a strong vocalist and guitarist and he wrote eight of the ten tracks. It was familiar and fresh at the same time. I listened to it all the time for a long time and I still listen to it frequently, several of the tunes remain among my favorite blues tracks.
As I usually do when I hear a new (to me) artist, I dig into his background. I discovered that Daddy Mack was Mack Orr, born in Como, Mississippi in 1945. He spent his early years working in the cotton fields until he was 18. He grew up listening to many of the blues greats at the time like B.B. King, Albert King, and Little Milton. He hung out around the local juke joints around Como listening to whoever happened to be playing.
Eventually, Orr moved north to Memphis, got married and worked as a heavy machine operator until he opened his own business, Mack's Auto Repair, where he settled in as a mechanic and helped raise his four kids.
In his mid 40's, he heard Albert King's "I'll Play The Blues For You" on the radio and decided to start playing music himself. He went to a pawn shop after work one day and bought a guitar and amplifier on layaway and, determined to practice and make a name for himself, he was able to listen to the styles of his favorites and develop his own unique style that combined his favorites' sound with his own.
Several of those favorites played in Memphis' premier blues band at the time - the Fieldstones. Though there are only a couple of recordings by the Fieldstones, they are regarded as one of the best, if not the best, blues bands in Memphis......many of the city's best blues musicians played in the band at one time or another.
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| The Fieldstones at Green's Lounge (Eric Lindahl) |
The Fieldstones played regularly at the South Memphis nightclub Green's Lounge and it was there, in the early 90's, that Fieldstones guitarist Earl "The Pearl" Banks invited Orr to play with the band. He soon became part of the Fieldstones family, and a few years later, he was invited to take over residency at Green's. At that time, Orr formed the Daddy Mack Blues Band with two Fieldstones vets - Harold Bonner on bass and James Bonner on guitar, with Wilroy "Wolf" Sanders Jr. on drums.
In 1999, the band released Fix It When I Can. By that time, William Faulkner had replaced Sanders as drummer. Later that year, the band played a party for the Rolling Stones at the Rendezvous, during the Stones tour stop in Memphis and Keith Richards and Ron Wood joined them onstage. The Daddy Mack Blues Band was drawing attention almost immediately from the right people.
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| Daddy Mack with a couple of rock n' rollers from Britain. |
Before he started playing the blues, Orr had only visited four places - Wisconsin, Chicago, Kansas City, and Jackson, MS. The blues enabled him to travel all over the world. Despite the extensive travel, he still spent a lot of time in Memphis, playing locally on Beale Street and at the Center of Southern Folklore, plus he still worked on cars in his spare time.
The Daddy Mack Blues Band released seven other albums over the years. There was about a six year gap between his first and second releases, but the band released two albums in 2006, the first being Slow Ride, an interesting concept in which the group covered a number of blues rock classics from Foghat, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Santana, the Rolling Stones, and others (I remember reading, maybe in the liner notes, that Orr wasn't even familiar with most of the songs prior to recording them).
Other major contributors on the music end and the songwriting end included Matt Isbell, Wally Ford, and Inside Sounds chief Eddie Dattel. Ford and Dattel had spent a lot of time with Orr and their songwriting captured the essence of the man as well as if Orr had written the songs himself. Of course, Orr and the Bonners continued to contribute songs as well. I bought each of these albums upon release and it amazed me that the quality of each subsequent release topped its predecessors. There are usually a few misfires on most blues artists’ albums from time to time, trying to do something new or different, but that was not the case with the Daddy Mack Blues Band. They knew what they did well and they did it
After his 2015 release, I assumed that Daddy Mack was not going to record any more albums, really just basing it on the A Bluesman Looks At Seventy title more than anything. However, I heard via the internet that the Daddy Mack Blues Band had returned for a recording in late 2024, called Doctor's Orders.
Sadly, this will be the last Daddy Mack Blues Band release. A couple of months ago, Orr was in the hospital with some issues for a few days, was discharged but had to return for some medication adjustments. He suffered a heart attack unexpectedly while in the hospital on June 16. He was 80 years old.
Despite the fact that he didn't pick up guitar until he was 45 years old, Daddy Mack Orr ended up being a Memphis mainstay for the next 35 years, as well as one of the best of the current blues scene worldwide. If you're not familiar with his music and you are a blues fan, I highly recommend any of his recordings. They are all excellent, downhome blues.
