Two lead guitars, two drummers: the Allman Brothers built Southern rock around jamming
Duane Allman wanted a different kind of band, with two lead guitarists and two drummers. In 1969 he gathered them in Jacksonville, Florida, pushed his brother Gregg to sing his guts out, and moved everyone to Macon, Georgia. Their 1971 live album At Fillmore East finally made them stars.
The brothers grew up in Daytona Beach after leaving Nashville in 1959, soaking up rhythm and blues in local clubs with their friend Floyd Miles. An early band, the Hour Glass, flopped in Los Angeles. Duane then became the go-to session guitarist at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, playing with Aretha Franklin and talking Wilson Pickett into covering Hey Jude. When FAME's owner tired of his new group's methods, Phil Walden and Atlantic's Jerry Wexler bought the contract for 10,000 dollars to anchor Walden's new label, Capricorn.
Jam sessions in Jacksonville produced the line-up: Dickey Betts on second lead guitar, Berry Oakley on bass, and Butch Trucks and Jaimoe on drums. In Macon they lived communally, wrote songs among the graves of Rose Hill Cemetery, and ran up a tab at Mama Louise Hudson's soul food restaurant, looking radical in a barely integrated town. Their debut sold under 35,000 copies at first. Rather than relocate to New York or Los Angeles as executives urged, they stayed south, renting a 165-dollar-a-month lakeside farmhouse whose bustle reminded them of Idlewild Airport, hence the title of their second album, Idlewild South.
Relentless touring, more than 300 dates in 1970, built word of mouth, and At Fillmore East captured their long improvisations on Whipping Post and In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. Then Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971, and Oakley died the same way the following year. The band pushed on with Eat a Peach and Brothers and Sisters, whose Ramblin' Man and Jessica became classic rock radio staples.
Turmoil broke them up in 1976 and again in 1982, but a 1989 reunion lasted, later anchored by Derek Trucks, Butch's nephew, and Warren Haynes, with spring residencies at New York's Beacon Theatre. They retired in October 2014, nearly two decades after their 1995 Hall of Fame induction.
Source: The Allman Brothers Band
