
Allman Brothers
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Allman Brothers Biography
The story of the Allman Brothers Band is one of triumph,
tragedy, redemption, dissolution, and a new redemption. Over nearly 30
years, they've gone from being America's single most influential band
to a has-been group trading on past glories, to reach the 21st century
as one of the most respected rock acts of their era.
For the first half of the 1970s, the Allman Brothers Band was the most
influential rock group in America, redefining rock music and its
boundaries. The band's mix of blues, country, jazz, and even classical
influences, and their powerful, extended on-stage jamming altered the
standards of concert performance -- other groups were known for their
on-stage jamming, but when the Allman Brothers stretched a song out for
30 or 40 minutes, at their best they were exciting, never
self-indulgent. They gave it all a distinctly Southern voice and, in
the process, opened the way for a wave of '70s rock acts from south of
the Mason-Dixon Line, including the Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd
Skynyrd, and Blackfoot, whose music, at least initially, celebrated
their roots. And for a time, almost single-handedly, they also made
Capricorn Records into a major independent label.
The group was founded in 1969 by Duane Allman (b. Nov. 20, 1946-d. Oct.
29, 1971) on guitar; Gregg Allman (b. Dec. 8, 1947) on vocals and
organ; Forrest Richard ( Dickey ) Betts (b. Dec. 12, 1943) on guitar;
Berry Oakley (b. Apr. 4, 1948-d. Nov. 12, 1972) on bass; and Claude
Hudson ( Butch ) Trucks (b. May 11, 1947) and Jaimoe (Johnny Lee
Johnson) Johanson (b. July 8, 1944) 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, and then the Hour Glass, a more
soul-oriented outfit. 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 group 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, AL, 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 then 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 band didn't record their first album until after they'd worked
their sound out on the road, playing heavily around Florida and
Georgia. The self-titled debut album was a solid blues-rock album and
one of the better showcases for guitar pyrotechnics in a year with more
than its share, amid 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 1960s, 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 at Capricorn's studios in Macon, GA, 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 band'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 of 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 of 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 as a gold record on October 15,
1971.
Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident 14 days later. The
band had been midway through work on its next album, Eat a Peach, which
they completed as a five-piece, with Dickey Betts playing all of the
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 group was intact in name
only. Rather than try to replace Duane Allman as a guitarist, they
contrived to add a second solo instrument in the form of a piano,
played by Chuck Leavell. The group had already begun work on a
long-delayed follow-up to Eat a Peach, when Oakley was killed in a
motorcycle accident only a few blocks from Allman's accident site.
Lamar Williams (b. Jan. 15, 1949-d. Jan. 25, 1983) was recruited on
bass, and the new lineup continued the group's concert activities, as
well as eventually finishing the band's next album, Brothers and
Sisters. which was 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 and 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 group'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 their 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 band had done
paved the way for the album. The fact that it kept getting pushed back
only heightened the fans' interest.
Ironically, Brothers and Sisters was a less challenging record than the
group'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,
the group was 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 and Blackfoot, 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 -- drugs and alcohol had
always been a significant part of the lives of each of the members,
except perhaps for Jaimoe, but as the strain and exhaustion of touring
continued, coupled with the need to produce new music, these
indulgences began to get out of control, and Betts' leadership of the
group created a further strain for him.
The band's difficulties were showcased by 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 double-LP live collection called Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil,
Dollar Gas, showcasing the Brothers and 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.
They were all back together by 1978, however, and over the next four
years the group issued a somewhat uneven series of albums. Enlightened
Rogues (1979) somewhat redeemed their reputations -- 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 Dickey Betts' solo band), who was brought in when Chuck Leavell
(along with Lamar Williams) refused to return to the Allmans. By that
time, however, the Allmans were fighting against time and musical
trends. Disco, punk, and power pop had pretty much stolen a march on
the arena acts epitomized by the Allmans; whatever interest they
attracted was a matter of nostalgia for their earlier releases. The
group was in danger of becoming arena rock's third big oldies act
(after the Moody Blues and Paul McCartney's Wings).
Additionally, their business affairs were in a 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 the group 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 1980s, the group
was on hiatus, while the individual members sorted out their personal
and professional situations. During those years, only Dickey Betts
seemed to be in a position to do much with his music, and most of that
wasn't selling.
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 band's greatness, and introduced the group to
millions of people too young to have been around for Watkins Glen, much
less the Fillmore shows.
They reunited and also restored the band's original double-lead-guitar
configuration, adding Warren Haynes on lead guitar alongside Dickey
Betts, 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. Their subsequent studio albums failed to attract
as much enthusiasm, and their two live albums, An Evening With the
Allman Brothers Band and 2nd Set, released in 1992 and 1995,
respectively, were steady but not massive sellers. Much of this isn't
the fault of the material so much as a natural result of the passage of
time, which has left the Allmans competing with two decades' worth of
successors and rivals.
The group has stayed together since 1989, overcoming continuing health
and drug problems, which have occasionally battered their efforts at
new music. They remain a top concert attraction 25-plus years after
their last historically important album, easily drawing more than
20,000 fans at a time to outdoor venues, or booking 2,000-seat theaters
for three weeks at a time. Their back catalog, especially the first
five albums, remain consistent sellers on compact disc and recently
returned to the reconstituted Capricorn label (still a home for
Southern rockers, including the latter-day Lynyrd Skynyrd, as well as
reissues of Elmore James and other classic bluesmen), under a 1997
licensing agreement that has resulted in their third round of digital
remastering.
Apart from their Arista releases, the Allman Brothers Band has remained
remarkably consistent, altering their music only gradually over 30
years. They sound more country than they did in their early days, and
they're a bit more varied in the vocal department, but they have still
been soaring at their concerts and on most of their records over the
last ten-plus years. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
Written by Bruce Eder