The Allman Brothers Band - Chronicles / 3 Classic Albums (2005)

The story of the Allman Brothers Band is one of triumph, tragedy, redemption, dissolution, and more redemption. During the early '70s, they were arguably the most influential rock group in America, thanks in no small part to At Fillmore East (a high-water mark for concert albums), that redefined the scope of rock's musical boundaries. Duane Allman and Dickey Betts pioneered the twin-lead guitar sound so prevalent during the decade that continued well into the 21st century. The group placed an emphasis on musicianship, seamlessly melding rock, blues, jazz, and R&B with extended improvisation. The band also included two very complementary drummers in Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson (aka Jaimoe), a virtuoso bassist in Berry Oakley, and the grainy, soulful vocals (and organ playing) of Gregg Allman, who sounded like a decades-older bluesman. They turned epic-length jam tracks such as "Whipping Post" and "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" into FM radio staples. They directly influenced virtually all '70s rock acts south of the Mason-Dixon Line, including the Marshall Tucker Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the jam band movement of the '90s. 1973's Brothers & Sisters showcased a different aspect of their character with accessible, radio-ready hit singles such as "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica." Even in their final incarnation with guitarists Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes, ABB churned out charting live albums such as 2003's Hittin' the Note.
The group was founded in March 1969 by Duane Allman on guitar; Gregg Allman on vocals and organ; Dickey Betts on guitar; Berry Oakley on bass; and Butch Trucks and Jaimoe (aka Jai Johanny Johanson) on drums. Duane and Gregg Allman loved soul and R&B, although they listened to their share of rock & roll, especially as it sounded coming out of England in the mid-'60s. Their first group was a local Daytona Beach garage band called the Escorts, who sounded a lot like the early Beatles and Rolling Stones. They later became the Allman Joys and plunged into Cream-style British blues, then they became the Hour Glass, which drew from and extended their soul influences. The group landed a contract with Liberty Records with help from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but the company wasted the opportunity on a pair of over-produced albums that failed to capture the Hour Glass' sound. The band split up after Liberty rejected a proposed third LP steeped in blues and R&B.
Duane Allman began working as a session guitarist at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and it was there, appearing on records by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, John Hammond, and King Curtis, among others, that he made his reputation. In 1969, at the coaxing of ex-Otis Redding manager Phil Walden, Allman gave up session work and began putting together a new band -- Jaimoe came aboard, and Allman's longtime friend Butch Trucks, and another Allman friend, Berry Oakley, joined, along with Dickey Betts, with whom Oakley was playing in a group called Second Coming. A marathon jam session ensued, at the end of which Allman had his band, except for a singer -- that came later, when his brother Gregg agreed to join. They were duly signed to Walden's new Capricorn label.
The Allman Brothers Band didn't record their first album until after they'd worked their sound out on the road, playing heavily around Florida and Georgia. Their self-titled debut was a solid blues-rock album and one of the better showcases for guitar pyrotechnics in a year with more than its share of albums by Cream, Blind Faith, the Jeff Beck Group, and Led Zeppelin. It didn't sell 50,000 copies on its initial release, but The Allman Brothers Band impressed everyone who heard it and nearly everyone who reviewed it. Coming out at the end of the '60s, it could have passed for a follow-up to the kind of blues-rock coming out of England from acts like Cream, except that it had a sharper edge -- the Allmans were American and Southern, and their understanding of blues (not to mention elements of jazz, mostly courtesy of Jaimoe) was as natural as breathing. The album also introduced one of the band's most popular concert numbers, "Whipping Post."
Their debut album attracted good reviews and a cult following with its mix of assured dual lead guitars by Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, soulful singing by Gregg Allman, and a rhythm section that was nearly as busy as the lead instruments between Oakley's rock-hard bass and the dual drumming of Trucks and Johanson. Their second album, 1970's Idlewild South, recorded predominately at Criteria Studios in North Miami, Florida, was produced by Tom Dowd, who had previously recorded Cream. This was a magical combination: Dowd was completely attuned to the group's sound and goals, and Idlewild South broadened that sound, adding a softer acoustic texture to their music and introducing Betts as a composer (including the original studio version of "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," an instrumental tribute to Miles Davis that would become a highlight of their shows, in many different forms, for the next 30 years). It also had a Gregg Allman number, "Midnight Rider," which became one of the band's more widely covered originals and the composer's signature tune.
By this time, the group's concerts were becoming legendary for the extraordinarily complex yet coherent interplay between the two guitarists and Gregg Allman's keyboards, sometimes in jams of 40 minutes or more to a single song without wasting a note. And unlike the art rock bands of the era, they weren't interested in impressing anyone with how they played scales, how many different tunings they knew, or which classical riffs they could quote. Rather, the Allmans incorporated the techniques and structures of jazz and classical into their playing. In March 1971, the band played a series of shows at the Fillmore East that were recorded for posterity and subsequently transformed into their third album, At Fillmore East. This double-LP, issued in July 1971, became an instant classic, rivaling the previous blues-rock touchstone cut at the Fillmore, Cream's Wheels of Fire. Duane Allman and his band were suddenly the new heroes to millions of mostly older teenage fans. Although it never cracked the Top Ten, At Fillmore East was certified gold on October 15, 1971.
Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident 14 days later. The group had been midway through work on their next album, Eat a Peach, which they completed as a five-piece, with Dickey Betts playing all of the remaining lead and slide guitar parts. Their second double album in a row became another instant classic, and their first album to reach the Top Ten, peaking at number five. Despite having completed Eat a Peach, the band was intact in name only. Rather than try to replace Duane as a guitarist, they decided to add a second soloist in the form of piano player Chuck Leavell. The group had already begun work on a long-delayed follow-up to Eat a Peach when Oakley was killed in November 1972 in a motorcycle accident only a few blocks from Allman's accident site.
Lamar Williams was recruited on bass, and the new lineup continued the band's concert activities, as well as eventually finishing the group's next album, Brothers and Sisters, released on August 1, 1973. During the extended gap in releases following Eat a Peach, Atco reissued The Allman Brothers Band and Idlewild South together as the double-LP Beginnings, which charted higher than either individual release. Brothers & Sisters marked the beginning of a new era. The album had a more easygoing and freewheeling sound, less bluesy and more country-ish. This was partly a result of Capricorn losing the services of Tom Dowd, who had produced their three previous albums. Additionally, Dickey Betts' full emergence as a songwriter and singer as well as the band's only guitarist, playing all of the lead and slide parts, altered the balance of the group's sound, pushing forth his distinct interest in country-rock. Betts also became the reluctant de facto leader of the band during this period, not from a desire for control as much as because he was the only one with the comparative stability and creative input to take on the responsibility.
The record occupied the number one spot for six weeks, spurred by the number two single "Ramblin' Man," and became the Allman Brothers Band's most well-known album. It was an odd reversal of the usual order of success for a rock band -- usually, it was the release of an album that drew the crowds to concerts, but in this case, the months of touring the group had done paved the way for the album. The fact that it kept getting pushed back only heightened fans' interest. Ironically, Brothers and Sisters was a less-challenging record than the band's earlier releases, with a relatively laid-back sound, relaxed compared to the groundbreaking work on the group's previous four albums. But all of this hardly mattered; based on the reputation they'd established with their first four albums, and the crowd-pleasing nature of "Ramblin' Man" and the Dickey Betts-composed instrumental "Jessica," they were playing larger halls and bigger crowds than ever.
An entire range of Southern rock acts had started to make serious inroads into the charts in the wake of the Allman Brothers. Labels such as MCA and even Island Records began looking for this same audience, signing acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special, and the Outlaws, respectively, among others. For the first time since the mid-'50s, the heyday of the rockabilly era, a major part of the country was listening to rock & roll with a distinctly Southern twang.
The band began showing cracks in 1974, as Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts both began solo careers, recording albums separately from the group. Allman married Cher (twice), an event that set him up in a Hollywood-based lifestyle that created a schism with the rest of the band. They might have survived all of this, but for the increasing strain of the members' other personal habits. While drugs and alcohol had always been a significant part of the lives of many in the group, as the strain and exhaustion of touring continued, coupled with the need to produce new music, these indulgences became out of control. In addition, Betts' leadership of the band created a further strain for him.
The group's difficulties were showcased on their next album, the highly uneven Win, Lose or Draw, which lacked the intensity and sharpness of their prior work. The whole band wasn't present for some of the album, and Gregg Allman's involvement with Cher, coupled with his serious drug problems, prevented him from participating with the rest of the group -- his vocals were added separately, on the other side of the country.
The band finally came apart in 1976 when Allman found himself in the midst of a federal drug case against a supplier and agreed to testify against a friend and band employee. Leavell, Johanson, and Williams split to form Sea Level, which became a moderately successful band, cutting four albums for Capricorn over the next four years, while Betts pursued a solo career. All of them vowed never to work with Gregg Allman again.
Amid this split, Capricorn Records, reaching ever deeper into its vaults for anything that could generate income, issued two collections, a live double-LP collection called Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas, showcasing the Brothers & Sisters-era band at various concerts, and a double-LP best-of package And the Road Goes on Forever. Wipe the Windows was a modest seller, appearing as it did when the group's sales had already fallen off, and it was compared unfavorably with the legendary work on At Fillmore East. The studio compilation passed with barely a ripple, however, because most fans already had the stuff on the original albums.
The members were all back together by 1978, however, and over the next four years, they issued a somewhat uneven series of albums. Enlightened Rogues (1979) redeemed their reputation a little; produced by Tom Dowd, who had always managed to get the very best work out of the group, it had more energy than any record they'd issued in at least six years. It also restored the two-guitar lineup, courtesy of Dan Toler (from Great Southern, Dickey Betts' solo band), who was brought in when Chuck Leavell (along with Lamar Williams) chose to remain in Sea Level. By that time, however, the Allmans were fighting against time and musical trends. Disco, punk, and power pop had pretty much stolen the thunder from the arena acts epitomized by the Allmans; whatever interest they attracted was a matter of nostalgia for their earlier releases. The group were in danger of becoming arena rock's third big oldies act (after the Moody Blues and Paul McCartney's Wings).
The band did take a shot at their past glories with Enlightened Rogues, which garnered the most favorable fan and critical response since Brothers & Sisters, but the group's business affairs were in shambles owing to the bankruptcy of Capricorn Records in late 1979. When the fallout from the Capricorn collapse settled, PolyGram Records, the company's biggest creditor, took over the label's library, and the Allman Brothers were cut loose from their contract.
Their signing to Arista enabled them to resume recording. What they released, however, was safe, unambitious, routinely commercial pop/rock, closer in spirit to the Doobie Brothers than their own classic work, and a shadow of that work, without any of the invention and daring upon which they'd built their reputations. The group's fortunes hit a further downturn when Jaimoe was fired, breaking up one of the best rhythm sections in rock. For most of the '80s, the Allman Brothers were on hiatus, while the individual members sorted out their personal and professional situations. During those years, Gregg released two solo albums and achieved some chart success with "I'm No Angel," while Dickey released the critically acclaimed but somewhat overlooked Pattern Disruptive.
In 1989, the band was reactivated again, partly owing to PolyGram's decision to issue the four-CD box set retrospective Dreams. That set, coupled with the reissue of their entire Capricorn catalog on compact disc in the years leading up to the box's release, reminded millions of older listeners of the group's greatness, and introduced the Allmans to millions of people too young to have been around for Watkins Glen, much less the Fillmore shows. They reunited and also added Warren Haynes from Dickey Betts' solo band on lead guitar as a replacement for Toler, with Allen Woody playing bass; Chuck Leavell was gone, however, having agreed to join the Rolling Stones on tour as their resident keyboard player, and Lamar Williams had succumbed to cancer in 1983.
The new lineup reinvigorated the band, which signed with Epic Records and surprised everyone with their first release, Seven Turns. Issued in 1990, it got some of the best reviews and healthiest sales they'd had in more than a decade. The next year, they filled out their rhythm section with the addition of percussionist Marc Quiñones and released Shades of Two Worlds, viewed by some fans as their strongest studio outing since Brothers and Sisters, although it rose no higher than 85 on the charts. Their next studio album, 1994's Where It All Begins, was a solid record that achieved gold status, but two live albums from the same period, An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band and 2nd Set (which won a Grammy for its performance of "Jessica") were steady although not massive sellers. The decline in sales wasn't the fault of the material so much as a natural result of the passage of time, which left the Allmans competing with two decades' worth of successors and rivals.
In 1997, Warren Haynes and Allen Woody left the Allman Brothers Band to form the power trio Gov’t Mule; stepping in were bassist Oteil Burbridge and, for a time, Nashville guitarist Jack Pearson. In 1999, Pearson was replaced by young guitar phenom Derek Trucks, Butch's nephew.
In 2000 -- the year that bassist Allen Woody died -- the band took what many older fans might view as an unthinkable step, parting ways with original guitarist Dickey Betts and thereby setting up a new round of recriminations among the group's original founders. However, far from signaling the demise of the Allman Brothers Band, the group ultimately re-emerged reinvigorated in the opinion of many listeners, with the establishment of one of its strongest lineups in years, featuring the dual guitars of Warren Haynes (who returned in 2001) and Derek Trucks, the powerful yet fluid and jazzy bass of Oteil Burbridge, some of Gregg Allman's most committed vocal and organ work in years, and the ever-reliable drum tandem of Butch Trucks and Jaimoe, supplemented by new percussionist Quiñones.
They remained a top concert attraction decades after their last historically important album, easily drawing more than 20,000 fans at a time to outdoor venues or booking 3,000-seat theaters for three weeks at a time. Their back catalog, especially the first five albums, remained consistent sellers on compact disc and downloads. Apart from their Arista releases, the Allman Brothers Band remained remarkably consistent, altering their music only gradually over 40 years. They continued soaring at their concerts and on most of their records after 2001. Released in 2003, Hittin' the Note was hailed as their best album in decades, while the Live at the Beacon Theater DVD showed why they'd sold out 220 consecutive shows at that New York venue (the standing record). They played at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival twice and, starting in 2005, presented their own WaneeFest in Live Oak, Florida. In 2012, the group was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys, a fitting addition to their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame status (which was conferred in 1995, the band's first year of eligibility).
In the early days of 2014, Haynes and Derek Trucks released a joint press announcement stating that they were both leaving the band at the end of the year. The group played their final live show at the Beacon Theater on October 28, 2014. Butch Trucks, one of the four remaining living founders of the Allman Brothers Band and one of the three who were still members of the ensemble in its last incarnation, died January 24, 2017, at the age of 69. Four months later, Gregg Allman died on May 27 at his home in Savannah, Georgia, also at age 69.
In September 2019, the ABB issued Fillmore West '71, a four-disc set culled from the original reel-to-reel soundboard tapes of three shows at the famed San Francisco venue as the middle act playing between headliners Hot Tuna and opener Trinidad Tripoli Steelband. They were recorded two months before the famed At Fillmore East concerts, and included not only other versions of signature tunes such as "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" and "Whipping Post" but also set standards that didn't make the Fillmore East set, including "Midnight Rider," "Don't Keep Me Wondering," "Dreams," and a cover of Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man."
In October 2020, the Allman Brothers Band issued two previously unheard archival recordings. The Final Note featured seven tracks from an October 17, 1971, gig just 12 days before Duane Allman's death. The source tape was a cassette recording made without forethought by an interviewer wanting to try out a new machine while waiting for a post-show appointment with Gregg Allman. After rediscovering it in his personal archive, radio journalist Sam Idas turned it over to the ABB organization. They painstakingly restored the source material in the best possible fidelity, and released it in a package with rare photographs and a liner essay by band archivist John Lynskey. The Allman Brothers also released Warner Theatre, Erie, PA 7-19-05, a complete performance of a sold-out date. Though left off the band's official registry of shows, it has long been considered by ABB members as one of their best. Haynes picked the original set list for the evening with input from his bandmates. In addition to ABB standards, the double-disc set includes performances of the Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice It's Alright," the latter with guest Susan Tedeschi on lead vocals. Dickey Betts died on April 18, 2024, at the age of 80 after being treated for cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Betts' passing left Jaimoe as the last surviving original member of the ABB.