11 Facts About Mack McCormick

Robert Burton "Mack" McCormick was an American musicologist and folklorist.

Mack McCormick was brought up by his mother, in Alabama, Colorado, West Virginia and Texas, as she traveled to find work as a hospital technician.

Mack McCormick dropped out of high school to work at a ballroom in Cedar Point, Ohio, running errands for the musicians performing there.

Mack McCormick later worked as an electrician, cook, carnival worker and taxi driver.

Mack McCormick developed an interest in blues and began traveling and researching the lives and origins of undocumented blues musicians around the country and learning about folk traditions and customs.

Mack McCormick wrote numerous magazine articles and album liner notes and assembled an extensive private archive of Texas musical history.

Mack McCormick researched the lives of dead blues musicians, such as Robert Johnson and Henry Thomas.

Mack McCormick began research on Johnson in 1968, while working for the Smithsonian Institution, and interviewed people who had known the musician.

Mack McCormick originally intended to publish his research as a book, Biography of a Phantom, but he never completed it, and he later said that he had lost interest in it.

Mack McCormick died on November 18,2015, from esophageal cancer, at the age of 85.

In 2022, it was announced that Mack McCormick's archive, including 590 reels of sound recordings, unpublished manuscripts, photographs, playbills, booking contracts, and miscellaneous materials and ephemera concerning blues musicians would be housed at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.