Gregg
and Duane Allman were raised by a single mom (their father had been murdered)
in the Jim Crow South in the 1950s. At
an early age—middle school, perhaps grade school—Duane became obsessed with the
power of blues and R and B music, and initiated his brother into the whys and
hows of these styles. Duane played
guitar and Gregg played keys and guitar and sang, and school and everything
else besides music— music rooted in the Blues— quickly became irrelevant to the
Allman boys. Having heard Muddy Waters
and others blues pickers, one day Duane picked up a medicine bottle and began
experimenting with it as a slide—whaaahoow, whhhaaaaaow, wwheeooooww, wang,
nnneeenoooww, neenoww, neeeent whaaaoow—and the rest, as they say, is
history. Gregg still has the coricidin
bottle sitting in a place of pride on his mantle. By the time the Allman boys were 18, they
were settled on a career in music.
Cycling through a number of band configurations, relocating briefly to
California, returning to their native Georgia with Duane now an accomplished
and sought after session guitarist playing on dozens of soul and R and B
records at the famed Muscle Shoals studio, the boys eventually formed their own
band in Macon.
This
was the late 1960s. The newly formed
Allman Brothers Band featured 2 guitarists (Duane focusing on slide and Dicky
Betts picking and singing), Berry Oakley on bass, Gregg on keys and vocals, and
2 drummers—Butch Trucks and Jaimoe.
Tooling around Macon—a southern town reeling from divisions made sharp
by the Civil Rights Movement—with long hair and an integrated lineup, the ABB
did a pretty good job of pissing of the locals, but they didn’t give a shit
‘cuz they had a sound in their heads that no one had ever heard before: built
on top of the thick, rich, pulsating grooves laid down by Trucks’s and Jaimoe’s
double drum foundation, with roots running deep into traditional blues as
traced by Gregg’s singing and Duane’s slide, and pushed to the harmonic and
melodic edges of everything from esoteric jazz to gospel to redneck country by
Betts, Duane, and the entire ensemble, capable of firing off a 3-4 minute rock
and roll hit (“Ramblin Man”) or a 30 minute open-ended all-encompassing free
for all (“Mountain Jam”) or anyplace in between at the drop of a hat, writing
their own radio friendly anthems (“Midnight Rider”) or covering blues standards
(“Trouble No More,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” and “You Don’t Love Me” to name just
a few), the Allmans were virtuosos who connected every tributary of the
American Musical River and plugged the resultant flood into a dam generating
wattage hitherto undreamt of in rock and roll—American or otherwise.
While
their first couple of studio albums limned the possibilities that were nascent
in the band, with flashes of instrumental brilliance infusing blues
traditionalism and raw original songwriting, it was the live one— Fillmore
East— that really demonstrated the limitless possibilities of the ABB. Unlike so many records from the late ‘60s and
early 70s which sound like period pieces or time capsule artifacts (sorry
folks, but most Hendrix records fall into this bin), Fillmore East
sounds current, arresting, and relevant as it swaggers its way out of speakers
today, almost 50 years later. The blues
riff and the slide work at the beginning of “Statesboro Blues” grab you at the
base of the neck, the rage of “Whipping Post,” led by Oakley’s pummeling bass,
continues the barrage, and Gregg’s rich, desperate vocal and the band’s fiery blues
explorations of the 12 bar blues on “Done Somebody Wrong” still leave one
gasping for breath—the whole damn thing still sounds fresh and alive and
engaging and current. The performances, while intricate and virtuosic, are
presented in elegant straightforward sonic fashion— the rock and roll band and
their instruments with no cheezy stereo panning back and forth, no silly
flutes, no dated electronics pulling focus from the musicianship at hand. Betts’s
“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” pulls together complex harmonic, rhythmic, and
improvisational elements often found in jazz but rarely in rock and roll while
still harnessing the rock and roll’s rawness and power and strong connection to
the blues. While the Rolling Stones
(working in ways less focused on improvisation and virtuosity, and less able to
incorporate elements of jazz) had a similarly groundbreaking conversation with
the Blues that remains relevant and powerful today, no American band has ever
demonstrated the ability to take so many American roots strains to these kinds
of sonic edges in the way the Allmans have.
The
band was devastated almost immediately upon hitting its stride by the deaths,
in short succession, of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley—both in motorcycle
accidents only blocks from each other in Macon.
While soldiering on for awhile following these tragedies, setting off
the Southern Rock movement (Lynyrd Skynyrd, inspired by the Allmans, might be
the second greatest American rock and roll band of all time, after, of course,
the ABB), and even wading into political waters by rubbing elbows with Jimmy
Carter, the Allmans inevitably fell on hard times. Drug addiction, disco,
squabbling, and other musical, personal, and cultural afflictions and conflicts
eventually put the Allmans out of commission.
By the mid-1980s they had ceased to exist as a working entity.
People
hafta pay their damn bills, though, hafta find some way to earn a living. And so: the early 1990s saw Gregg mending
fences, reassembling his troops, adding some new recruits, and drawing from the
bottomless well of the blues to raise the ABB from the dead. Hired to fill the shoes of Duane Allman (no
small task!), then-young-gun Warren Haynes proved to have some mighty big
feet. With staggering slide chops, an
encyclopedic knowledge of roots-descended music ranging from John Coltrane to
Willie Dixon to Black Sabbath and beyond, and a gritty voice well-matched to
Gregg’s, Haynes’s presence, along with new bass player Allen Woody, lit a new
fire under the band. The playing—as
evidenced on live shows documented on both the 1st and 2nd
sets of “An Evening with…” as well as “Play All Night: Live at the Beacon
Theatre”—shows the band tight, engaged, creative, and absolutely electrified to
be playing together again. As had always
been the case, the Allmans were a phenomenon best experienced live. Studio albums also featured fresh new songs
(“End of the Line,” “Sailing Across the Devil’s Sea”), too, but the band’s
ability to breathe life into old-fashioned blues, especially performing live, remains,
as ever, their defining characteristic.
Their role in "Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: The Allman Brothers Band"
Dating
back to their earliest work (covering, for example, Muddy Waters’ “You Can’t
Lose What You Never Had”), the Allmans have always been able to hold rich,
gorgeous conversations with the blues.
Their first reading of Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Stormy Monday” on Fillmore
East— with Gregg’s rich kneading of the melody and its rhythms and it’s
movement back and forth between heavy 3/4 and 4/4 grooves—remains stunning.
Their own blues compositions such as “Get On With your Life” and “Midnight
Blues” demonstrate their own deep-inside grasp of the idiom and their ability
to adapt it to their particular writing, singing, and playing styles. The
more modern ABB incarnation’s Haynes led reading of Willie Dixon’s “The Same
Thing” is visceral and appropriately rump shaking. And all those blues standards they have covered over all these years-- "One Way Out," "Trouble No More," "You Don't Love Me," "Statesboro Blues," "Done Somebody Wrong" "You Can't Lose What You Never Had," and the list goes on and on and on. The blues contain all strains of the American
Musical River which led to rock and roll: gospel, jazz, country, bluegrass—
they’re all there. The blues also encompass
and somehow tie together many major strains of conflict and culture which drive
our country: race, religion, sex, money, vice…
The Allmans have always had a way of approaching the blues which capture
all of these elements.
At the
time of their “retirement” (we’ll see if they stay retired), Betts had exited the
ABB as a result of conflicts with other band members, replaced the last several
years by Derek Trucks— an established young gun guitar virtuoso in his own
right and nephew of original and always ABB drummer Butch Trucks. Derek Trucks don’t need the fuckin’ Allmans:
his work on his own and with his wife—blues belter Susan Tedeschi— has won him
a devoted and rabid following and netted him awards and kudos from guitarists
and musicians from many corners. His
own recordings incorporate not only the blues, jazz, gospel, country, and rock and
roll strains requisite to stand onstage as part of the Alllmans, but also weave
in Indian and Latin American rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and sonic elements in
ways which are musical, rich, and beguiling.
The younger Trucks’s presence reflects the band’s rich and powerful
legacy: a rich celebration of the blues and its ability to tie together so many
musical and cultural forces in the powerful crucible of rock and roll.
The
Allmans changed rock and roll. Their
music harnessed virtuoso musicianship, a reverence for the Blues, and the
entire gamut of musical styles and lineages in the Great American Musical River
to make rich musical and cultural statements which remain powerful to this day,
and which have not been equaled by any American Band before or since. Think I’ll go find a live set to spin again…
Recommended
Recordings:
-At
the Fillmore East-Eat A Peach
-An Evening With the Allman Brothers Band— 1st Set and 2nd Set
-Play All Night: Live at the Beacon Theatre (recorded 1992)
-Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: The Allman Brothers Band
BUT PLEASE SKIP Wipe the Windows, Check The Oil, Dollar Gas, recorded at a nadir shortly prior to the dark hiatus in the 80s
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