Mack Vickery

Mack Vickery refused to allow hardship to derail his drive. Orphaned by his mother’s death when young, he spent ten years traveling from place to place alongside his father between the early 1940s and the early 1950s. During those years he cultivated a passion for country music and, while still in his mid-teens, formed his own honky-tonk band. By concealing his true age he managed to sustain himself performing across Michigan and Ohio. Apart from Hank Williams, his chief inspiration was Ernest Tubb, whose 1948 hit “Have You Ever Been Lonely” entered Vickery’s regular repertoire. At nineteen he reached Memphis for an audition at Sun Records, where he attempted to fuse honky-tonk with rockabilly. Sun turned him down, and over the next decade or more he moved among other labels such as Gone Records and Jamie, yet never achieved success as a recording artist. He did supply vocals and harmonica behind Jerry Lee Lewis during the latter’s Mercury Records period, but his most lasting contribution came through songwriting. Among the compositions he created were “Meat Man,” “I Sure Miss Those Good Old Times,” “Ivory Tears,” “Forever Forgiving,” “That Kind of Fool,” and “Rockin’ My Life Away.” His material also supplied hits for Faron Young, Tanya Tucker, Sammi Smith, and Waylon Jennings. One collaboration, “She Went a Little Bit Farther,” written with Merle Kilgore, was later recorded by his former idol Ernest Tubb and others. In the mid-1980s Charly Records included tracks from Vickery’s unreleased Sun demo tape, Fool Proof, in its Sun Records reissue series. Following a heart attack, Mack Vickery died on December 21, 2004, at the age of 66.