Rick Derringer, long revered as one of rock’s greatest guitarists, passed away at age 77 on May 26 at his home in Ormond Beach, Florida. Derringer first came to national prominence via the 1965 hit Hang On Sloopy, which he recorded with his band, the McCoys. It was released just as he was turning 17.

Thus began a long and storied career that found him working as a multi-instrumentalist on guitar, pedal steel and bass, and as a successful producer. The long list of artists he recorded with or produced includes Johnny and Edgar Winter, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Kiss, Cyndi Lauper, Barbara Streisand, Alice Cooper and Air Supply.

He also produced, arranged and performed on six “Weird Al” Yankovic albums, including 1984’s “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D, home of the Grammy-winning Eat It.

Derringer – born Richard Dean Zehringer on August 5, 1947, in Celina, Ohio – was raised in Fort Recovery, Ohio. As a child, Derringer was steeped in the music of his parents’ vast record collection and was initially inspired to play guitar by his uncle, Jim Thornburg, a successful local singer and guitarist. Derringer got his first electric guitar for his ninth birthday and quickly began playing music with his younger brother, Randy.

After the eighth grade, the Zehringers moved to Union City, Indiana, where Rick and Randy formed their first band, the McCoys, briefly known as the Rick Z Combo and then Rick and the Raiders before reverting to the McCoys. As Derringer told me in 1994, “The first song I learned to play was The McCoy by the Ventures, and we took our name from that song.” By the time he went to high school, the family had moved to a town just outside of Dayton, Ohio.

In 1965, the McCoys opened for the Strangeloves, a fictional group that consisted of three New York City songwriters. The Strangeloves’ I Want Candy became a hit in mid ’65, and they were considering releasing My Girl Sloopy – which had been a 1964 hit for R&B vocal group the Vibrations – as a followup. However, their touring partners, the Dave Clark Five, told them that they planned on releasing Sloopy as a single when they got back to England.

The Strangeloves couldn’t beat them to the punch because I Want Candy was still so fresh, so they enlisted the McCoys – the band that had been opening for them and backing them – to record the song. “The Strangeloves were looking for a young band that looked like the Beatles, and we fit the bill,” Derringer said.

The McCoys flew to New York and sang on the Strangeloves’ already-recorded instrumental track; Derringer – who suggested the name change to Hang On Sloopy – also recorded the song’s guitar parts and amped-up solo. In an interview at the time, Jimi Hendrix said, “Have you heard the guitar player on Hang On Sloopy? He’s great.”

“That was the first time I recorded in a real studio,” Derringer said. “When we finished, everyone in the control room was jumping up and down, going nuts, yelling, ‘Number 1!’ Hang On Sloopy went to Number 1, and we thought, ‘This business is easy!’ I soon found out it wasn’t quite so easy.”

I asked Derringer if they got rich for having a hit single. He laughed and said, “Not at all; we got rich in life experience. We were kids with no experience, and our parents had no experience, and, contractually, we’d sold ourselves down the river. We got cheated about every way you can.”

Following three albums – You Make Me Feel So Good, Infinite McCoys and Human Ball – the band relocated to New York and became the house band at the Scene Club, which was frequented by the rock elite and run by entrepreneur Steve Paul, who managed Johnny Winter.

“I was there that famous night in [March] 1968 when Jim Morrison got up and sang with Hendrix and went completely nuts,” Derringer said. “Jimi would come down every night, and he, my bass player Randy Jo Hobbs and Buddy Miles would back everyone up. I often got up and played with them, as did Larry Coryell. Jimi usually had an open-reel tape recorder there so he could tape the sessions.

“They were up there jamming, and Morrison, who was so wasted he could barely stand, climbed onstage and grabbed the mic in the middle of this jam! This was when Jimi was wearing hats with feathers, and Morrison reaches over and grabs the hat off Jimi’s head. Jimi was a nice guy, but it was like, ‘Now you’re screwing with my hair!’

“He put Jimi’s hat on his own head, and everyone in there went, ‘Ohhh, I can’t believe he did that!’ Steve told the bouncers to get Morrison off the stage, and four guys grabbed one limb each and started dragging him off while Jim was screaming, ‘AAAROOAAROOOO’ into the mic.

“It was incredible! He screamed into the mic until the cable wouldn’t stretch anymore and he had to drop it.” (The tracks from this gig can be heard on the bootleg releases High, Live ’N Dirty and Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead.)

“That’s how we first met and started playing with Johnny Winter, and we all moved upstate to Hyde Park, New York,” Derringer said. “We lived in two houses next to each other and formed the band known as Johnny Winter And. They didn’t want to use ‘…and the McCoys’ because of our bubblegum image, so someone suggested, ‘Just call it “Johnny Winter And!”’

“We began work on material for Johnny Winter And [1970], which I think is a cool record. Everyone always gives credit to Johnny Winter And Live [1971], but I always thought the studio album was overlooked. It was a great example of what the McCoys did and what Johnny did, and we were writing for each other. The album is really important to me from a collaborative point of view.

“I wrote Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo for Johnny. I wanted a song that had some rock and pop kind of parts that Johnny would sing, so it needed a melody and lyrics that weren’t foreign to his style. The title says it all – it’s ‘rock ‘n’ roll,’ but it’s ‘hoochie koo’ too, whatever that means! The rhythm parts are more rock, but the single-note riff is more bluesy.”

Also in 1971, Derringer worked with Alice Cooper on his fourth album, Killer, supplying all the guitars and the blistering solo to Under My Wheels.

For his 1973 solo debut, All American Boy, Derringer recut Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo, which became his first hit as a solo artist. “I felt the version we’d cut with Johnny could’ve been better, so that’s what I tried to do. We sped it up and added the female background vocals. It became more of a rock-sounding record with more energy.”

After the breakup of Johnny Winter And, Rick joined Edgar Winter’s band, White Trash, and thus began a relationship that resulted in Derringer producing that group’s first four albums, White Trash (1971), Roadwork (1972), They Only Come Out at Night (1973) and Shock Treatment (1974). Derringer supplies incredible guitar work on every record; his solo on White Trash’s Keep Playing That Rock and Roll is one of his best.

“I’m proud of that solo,” he said. “This is one of the few that, when we play the song now, I try to emulate the original solo.

“I’m aiming for a certain balance in my solos. Whether I’m playing show-off kind of stuff, or slower and simpler, it really doesn’t matter as long as the whole thing has some form. John Coltrane always played these wild, strange solos, but somehow they always maintained a sense of form, and I’ve always been a student of that.

“For a time I was studying to be a painter, and I felt the things I was good at were form and composition. I think along those lines for guitar solos, too.”

The live White Trash album, Roadwork, is a showcase for Derringer’s virtuosity as a guitarist. He is featured as the singer on incendiary versions of Still Alive and Well and Back in the U.S.A, and his extended solo on the latter is a masterclass in rock guitar brilliance.

Edgar Winter and Derringer scored a massive hit with Frankenstein from They Only Come Out at Night.

“I was working with Bill Szymczyk as my engineer; he’d co-produced All American Boy with me,” Derringer said. “Then I used him on two projects as an engineer, Johnny Winter’s Still Alive and Well [1973] and Edgar’s They Only Come Out at Night. Edgar had always done a song called The Double Drum Solo, which they first did when Johnny brought Edgar into the limelight to tour with him in the late Sixties. This was a song they did every night to show off, as Edgar would move from organ to saxophone to the drums.

“This turned into Frankenstein; all of the parts were already there except for the synthesizer break in the middle. When we went in to do the album, Bill and I were looking forward to doing that song as much as anything else on the record. The rest of the music was more traditional, but this was a big, long instrumental with all of the wild stuff.

“At some point, we got word that the record company was thinking of not including the song on the album because they thought it was too different – too jazzy or something. Bill and I went to whoever the powers that were at that moment, and we said [shouting], ‘What do you mean you’re dropping it? It’s the best one!’

“Of course, we had no idea how successful it would be. It became a Number 1 record and was a big hit for a long time. The real hits are usually the ones that the record companies have fought against.”

How did the song get its signature title?

“The song was too long, even for the album version, and it was cut even more for the single. We didn’t want to call it The Double Drum Solo, and I was thinking it was a real Frankenstein in the way we spliced all the sections together. I may have even suggested it as a title. I didn’t have the power to give it the title, because it was Edgar’s song, and in the end, he chose that as the title.”

Around this time, Derringer began to do a lot of session work, often recording with Steely Dan. Previously, in 1972, Rick had played on a Donald Fagen demo that secured a record deal for the band. Derringer added guitar to the Steely Dan tracks Show Biz Kids from 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy and Chain Lightning from 1975’s Katy Lied.

In 1980, Derringer again worked with Steely Dan on Gaucho, adding guitar to My Rival, and he played on Fagen’s 1982 solo album, The Nightfly. Derringer collaborated with Todd Rundgren on Something/Anything (1972), A Wizard, A True Star (1973), Initiation (1975) and Back to the Bars (1978).

In 1976, Rick formed the band Derringer, which went on to release six albums. Their eponymous debut LP was released by Blue Sky, Johnny Winter’s signature imprint. The album features stellar guitar work from Derringer and co-guitarist Danny Johnson; one of its highlights is Beyond the Universe.

“This is a song that remained in our set for the longest time,” Derringer said. “We needed an uptempo, fast song, and that’s what I came up with. I had been reading a lot of Carlos Castaneda books, and much of the lyrics were copped from those books. It was something I was into; I wasn’t just writing anything down. I think that was the whole idea of the Castaneda books – that you could go anywhere and do anything.”

At the end of the track, he and Johnson trade unaccompanied guitar solos. “In a lot of records nowadays, that’s the stuff I miss. In striving to devise something for the marketplace, oftentimes the guitar playing is forgotten, just lettin’ the guys get out there and play.

“Everything is so charted out, the solo can become something of a musical contrivance – it comes and goes so quickly – and you miss hearing somebody really play. When we cut it, we’d been playing it live for a while, and we recorded it totally spontaneously in the studio. We wanted to show people what we were like as a live band, too.”

In 1982, Derringer began working with comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic, producing his eponymous debut, released in 1983, followed by “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D, which included Eat It, a parody of Michael Jackson’s Beat It.

“Something people wouldn’t expect is that some of the best records I ever produced were with Weird Al,” Derringer said. “I feel bad about it in some ways, because we had to take apart the best-made records of that time. When Quincy Jones produces Michael Jackson, unlimited money can be spent to make those records great. We had to learn to take them apart and recreate them!

“Because Weird Al was thought of as a ‘novelty artist,’ all of a sudden my production career became stagnant, because people considered me to be a ‘novelty producer.’ The only thing novel about it was how hard we worked!

“This took me into some work with the World Wrestling Federation, and I produced two albums for them. The first included a song I wrote that went on to become Hulk Hogan’s theme song, I Am a Real American. I got the WWF gig because they said, ‘This guy’s a novelty producer – we’ve got to get him!’”

Among the scores of studio tracks featuring Derringer’s contributions, two were hit power ballads written and produced by Jim Steinman – Air Supply’s Making Love Out of Nothing at All and Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, both from 1983.

“It may sound silly to some people, but my favorite solo I’ve ever cut is probably the one on Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” Derringer said. It’s relatively simple, but it’s very dramatic and melodic, and I love how it’s harmonized. It fits the song so well.”

Over the course of his career, Derringer released 15 studio albums and three live albums. Between 1993 and 2010, he recorded seven blues albums, plus two with drummer Carmine Appice and another with Appice and bassist Tim Bogert (DBA), 2009’s The Sky Is Falling.

In 1997, Derringer became an Evangelical Christian and, with his wife Jenda and their two children, released four Christian-themed albums. Starting in 2010, he performed on three world tours as a member of Ringo Starr’s All-Star Band.

Derringer has provided inspiration to generations of guitar players, including some of the greatest axe-slingers of all time.

“Duane Allman told me he was inspired to pick up slide guitar because he saw me playing slide with the McCoys,” Derringer said. “That blows my mind! He became one of the greatest slide guitarists ever.”

Derringer’s larger-than-life exuberance as a guitarist, singer and songwriter will continue to inspire musicians for decades to come.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

First-call Nashville studio guitar ace, Justin Ostrander, has had his fair share of anecdotes. He has, after all, featured on over 20 number-one hit country records, with his recording credits including Steven Tyler, Cody Johnson, Luke Bryan, and David Lee Murphy, to name a mere few.

Being a busy session guitarist means keeping an eye out for guitars and accessories that can give you an edge over other players and help you land the gig – and, in Ostrander's case, one of his trump cards is a Coricidin bottle slide...

The story starts with Ostrander's search for an offset, specifically a Jazzmaster, that he could add to his arsenal.

“So Dan, of Danocaster [Guitars in Nashville] fame, is a huge Fender offset nerd, and I bought a Tele from him a few years ago,” he tells Vertex Effects.

“He said, ‘Well, if you find one that you think you want to buy, let me know, and I'll go with you and we'll check it out. I know those guitars inside and out, or I could just build you one.’”

Ostrander explains he scoured the menagerie of guitar stores in Nashville, but he still didn't find anything that tickled his fancy.

“So I said, ‘Okay, let's do a build then,’ and he asked me what color I wanted. And I said, ‘You know, I've always really liked that Burgundy Mist Metallic from the ’60s.” Dan worked his magic, and lo and behold, the guitar was finished – but, as Ostrander puts it, there's another cool part to the story...

“I went to play it at his house and to pick it up. He told me, ‘No pressure. Play it. See if you like it.’ And he actually had this slide sitting on his [Fender] Deluxe Reverb. And so I picked it up, and I started goofing off.”

The slide wasn't just any slide. As Ostrander notes, “I was like, ‘Man, this sounds different than all the glass slides I have,’ and I noticed that it's kind of wavy on the sides, and it's got this little logo on it.

“It was this old Coricidin bottle – one of the ones that people pay way too much money for on eBay. And I was like, ‘You know what you've got here? Like, this is a really great slide.’”

Traditional bottles of the cough and cold medicine Coricidin, from which DIY glass slides were made, were favored by Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, and Gary Rossington, and famously formed a key part of Duane Allman's signature tone.

They have since taken on a life of their own, with vintage bottles fetching insane amounts on the secondary market.

“And he goes, ‘If you take the guitar, you can take the slide.’ And I was like, ‘Are you sure? Because the last time I saw one for sale on eBay, somebody wanted $300 for it.’”

“I mean, it had the original label in it and everything,” Ostrander details. “But that's literally the Duane Allman slide, and it's real glass. It's not like the Pyrex thing that people do now. And so I got a free slide with my sweet Jazzmaster.”

However, as the guitarist explains, there's a downside to playing such a highly sought-after slide...

“I'm terrified to play at most places because I don't want to drop it!” he adds with a laugh. “Especially [if] backstage has a concrete floor.”

In other session legend tales, Dann Huff recently talked about his intimidating experience recording with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones for the first time.

Guitarist and songwriter Mac Gayden – best known for his work on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and co-writing the long-standing pop hit Everlasting Love – has died at the age of 83, at his home in Nashville. According to his cousin, Tommye Maddox Working, the cause of death was complications due to Parkinson's disease.

Gayden played a key role in helping turn Nashville into the cross-genre recording hub it is today. As part of an elite group of session players known as the “Nashville Cats,” Gayden gained a solid reputation for being the first call from that group. Bob Dylan producer Bob Johnston once dubbed him, “The best guitar player I ever heard.”

One of his most notable contributions was his work on Dylan's seventh studio album Blonde on Blonde. His percussive guitar work on Absolutely Sweet Marie showcases his breadth as a player – which makes it all the more unfortunate that it went uncredited for decades.

Non-country artists flocked to Nashville to work with Gayden – which is why he ended up on records by Elvis, Simon & Garfunkel, The Valentines, Linda Ronstadt, Leonard Cohen, Bobby Vinton, and The Pointer Sisters.

“I first met Gregg and Duane [Allman] when they first came to Nashville and played the Briarpatch for a while. Jammed a little with Greg one night and did a session with Duane at RCA studio B one night,” he told Blues GR in 2013, giving a sneak peek into his day-to-day life as one of Nashville's hottest tickets.

“We were both beginning to play slide guitar at the time. So we would swap licks with each other in between songs. Everyone thought that it sounded cool but it didn’t go down on record.”

In fact, it was his slide guitar and wah pedal combination – epitomized on J.J. Cale’s 1971 Top 40 single Crazy Mama – that cemented his signature technique and sound.

“A few years ago, a writer called me ‘father of the wah slide,’” Gayden wrote in his 2013 autobiography, Missing String Theory: A Musician’s Uncommon Spiritual Journey. “It’s humbling to realize I developed a stylistic approach to playing slide.”

As a songwriter, his most enduring success came in the form of Everlasting Love – the evergreen song he co-wrote with Buzz Cason and which eventually found its way onto records by artists as diverse as Town Criers, Gloria Estefan, Sandra Cretu, Love Affair, and even U2.

However, his exploits didn't end there. As the ’60s rolled into the '70s, Gayden and a couple of other alumni of the early ’60s pop combo the Escorts formed two improvisational country-rock outfits: Area Code 615 and later, Barefoot Jerry.

The former – a supergroup of sorts consisting of some of Nashville's most prolific session musicians – was formed in the wake of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album and managed to record two albums, which included their best-known track, Stone Fox Chase, before resuming their session work.

Barefoot Jerry, on the other hand, was an early Southern rock group, which also featured Gayden on vocals and a hodgepodge of Nashville session players. Gayden would depart after just one album to record his first solo album, McGavock Gayden, in 1971.

After a series of other projects and accomplishments – including being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as part of the Nashville Cats, and being featured in the 2015 exhibit Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville – Gayden released his last album, Come Along, in 2020.

Speaking about his intimate relationship with music and its links to spirituality in the Blues GR interview, Gayden concluded, “I knew from an early age that music comes from another dimension, because it grounded me. In other words it relaxed my physiology and allowed me to feel Bliss, something as child that comes naturally.”

“On days when I didn’t have some music or art, I felt something was missing. So as an adult, meditation takes me every day to that subtle place of experiencing the world, and thus feeling that inspiration and bliss once again.”

On December 27, 1969, just a few days before the dawn of the new decade, the music world witnessed an extraordinary changing of the guard as Led Zeppelin II reached Number 1 on the Billboard charts, dethroning the Beatles’ final full-on studio effort, Abbey Road.

After hearing Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant proclaim “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love” on their hit, Whole Lotta Love, the Beatles probably realized their days of singing sweet harmonies in an octopus’s garden were numbered.

And if the cover of Abbey Road is any evidence, the Fab Four apparently saw no other choice but to immediately vacate their recording studio and march, single file, into the streets of London, never to be heard from again.

Zeppelin would go on to dominate the sound and psyche of the ’70s. Their first four albums created templates for almost everything that was to follow in the next decade, including riff rock (Whole Lotta Love), heavy metal (Immigrant Song), prog (Dazed and Confused), power balladry (Stairway to Heaven), arena blooze (The Lemon Song), glam (Black Dog) and country rock (Bron-Yr-Aur-Stomp).

They even paved the way for late-’70s punk and the first Van Halen album. Guitarist Johnny Ramone once confessed that he honed his pioneering punk-rock skills by playing Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown repeatedly. And Edward Van Halen told Guitar World in 2008 that, “I think I got the idea of tapping [while] watching Jimmy Page do his Heartbreaker solo back in 1971.”

But perhaps Led Zeppelin’s most important contribution to the ’70s was their fierce, uncompromising attitude. The band revolutionized the music industry when they negotiated their game-changing record deal with Atlantic Records that allowed guitarist Jimmy Page to produce their albums without any label interference. Additionally, the group retained control of all jacket artwork, press ads, publicity pictures and anything else related to their image.

As Page explained, “I wanted artistic control in a vise grip, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”

And what Zeppelin wanted to do was… everything and anything! They had this crazy notion that musicians should have the artistic freedom to play what they want — and that their fans might enjoy it. As it turned out, people did indeed love their wild experimentalism, and so did the record companies, who discovered they could make a ton of cash by allowing the band to have their own way.

Zeppelin’s example opened the floodgates to an intensely creative era that ushered in dozens of astonishing new genres of music, all played on adventurous FM radio stations.

Just a tiny sampling of the albums released in ’70s is enough to make any guitar nerd choke on their Ernie Balls – The Dark Side of the Moon, Sticky Fingers, Hotel California, Marquee Moon, Night at the Opera, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Van Halen, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols, Machine Head – the mind boggles.

Given the vast scope of music made during the ’70s, trying to sum up guitar playing in the era is like attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded while riding a roller coaster in sequined bell-bottoms. It’s damn difficult! But let’s give it a shot…

The rise of heavy metal

You could argue that heavy metal was forged in the Sixties by bands like Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group and, of course, Led Zeppelin. But you’d be wrong.

Sure, those bands started the ball rolling by chugging power chords through big-ass 100-watt Marshalls, but most of what they were playing was just amplified blues mixed with a bit o’ weird hippie psychedelia.

To make real heavy metal – 100 percent certified heavy metal – they were missing two ingredients: the devil… and Tony Iommi.

Hailing from the sooty factory town of Birmingham, England, Black Sabbath, featuring guitarist Iommi, along with vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, set the world ablaze in 1970 with two groundbreaking albums, Black Sabbath and Paranoid. Their ominous riffs and occult-inspired lyrics on anthems like Iron Man, The Wizard and Electric Funeral would inspire thousands of bands, including Judas Priest, Van Halen, Slayer, Metallica and Ghost.

Given their preoccupation with the supernatural, it’s no surprise that their backstory reads like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales… but a whole lot grimmer. On the day Iommi was quitting his sheet metal factory job to become a full-time musician, catastrophe struck – he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in a gruesome industrial accident.

A machine press came down and caught his fingers, and when he recoiled, the ends were ripped right off! (If there was ever a sentence that deserved an exclamation mark, it’s that one.)

However, Iommi wasn’t going to let a little thing like a couple of severed fingers stop him from playing guitar. Resourcefully, he used his machine-shop skills to custom-make special fingertip pads out of plastic and leather. Then, to make his guitar easier to play, he set his instrument’s action as low as it could go and detuned his strings to lessen the tension even further.

To Iommi’s surprise, when he plugged in his guitar into his Laney amp and cranked up his Dallas Rangemaster overdrive pedal, those elements coalesced into a deep, gut-rattling sound unlike anyone had heard before.

As Iommi later observed, “Some people believe the accident invented heavy metal, and it probably did. It helped me invent a new kind of music – a new sound and different style of playing.” He probably should’ve added, “But kids, don’t try this at home…”

Southern Harmony

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so while Black Sabbath were busy serving up doom and gloom in U.K. in 1970, the Allman Brothers Band were spreading good vibes and magic ’shrooms throughout the southern United States.

Formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969, the Allman Brothers Band migrated to Macon, Georgia, where they began building a reputation for their incredible live shows that combined elements of rock, blues, jazz and country music into memorable songs and explosive improvisations.

Their exciting smorgasbord of influences was unlike anything audiences had ever heard, but what really made the six-piece band unique were the soaring, harmonized twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts.

Traditionally, when you had two guitarists in a rock band, one played rhythm and the other played lead. Betts and Allman threw that playbook out the window, trading leads and orchestrating tight harmony parts similar to the way jazz horn sections worked together.

The concept wasn’t completely new. Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck briefly experimented with the idea when they were both in the Yardbirds in 1966, but Allman and Betts elevated their two-guitar attack into a brilliant artform – one that would influence and shape dozens of Southern bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, the Outlaws, 38 Special and the Marshall Tucker Band throughout the ’70s.

It helped that both Allman and Betts were terrific musicians with distinct sounds and approaches to their instruments. Allman brought a new level of virtuosity and aggression to the electric slide guitar that remains influential today, while Betts added a sophisticated sense of composition and melody to the duo.

Their landmark live album, At Fillmore East, released in July 1971, sent shockwaves through the guitar community. It not only changed the way blues and metal guitarists thought about two-guitar bands and improvisation, but it also influenced the sound of country music in ways that can be felt today.

The Allmans were primarily a U.S. phenomenon, but British blues rock legend Eric Clapton took notice. After seeing the Allmans play in Miami, Clapton was so blown away by Duane’s slide technique, he invited him to play an equal role on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, one of the greatest albums of the ’70s and one of the most exciting blues rock albums of all time.

“The Allman Brothers were unbelievable,” Clapton told journalist Sam Hare. “Duane and Dickey Betts were in such harmony. Their playing was very strong and well thought out. When Duane came to the studio [to play on Layla], I was so taken with him that I started ignoring my own band.

“I just tried to keep thinking of songs we’d both know so we could duet. We’d play blues standards like Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out and Key to the Highway. All these things were just really vehicles so we could play – just excuses to jam with one another.”

Tragically, on October 29, 1971, Duane Allman, then 24, was killed in a motorcycle accident. But despite the loss, the band miraculously carried on, recording their most commercially successful album, Brothers and Sisters.

Without Duane, guitarist Betts flourished, his sunburst Les Paul planting the seeds for modern country artists like Chris Stapleton, Eric Church, Lucinda Williams and the Zac Brown Band, all of whom have covered Allman songs in more recent years.

Just say Yes to prog rock

They say the best comedy is based on the truth, and that certainly goes for the one guitar joke that everybody knows:

Q: How many guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One to screw it in and another dozen to say, “I could do that.”

Guitarists have always been competitive, and that was certainly true in the ’70s. It was no longer enough to write great songs and look good – you also had to have serious chops.

Musicians playing under the banner of “progressive rock” or simply “prog” turned technique into a religion, and the result was some of the strangest and most ambitious music to ever grace the Billboard Top 20 charts. The most interesting prog bands were King Crimson, ELP, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Rush, Kansas, U.K. and Gentle Giant, but it was Yes who were the most commercially successful exponents.

Each member of Yes was an exceptional musician. Singer Jon Anderson – with his sweet tenor – had one of the most distinctive voices in rock; and virtuoso keyboardist Rick Wakeman – who wore sequined capes on stage – was flashy both visually and technically.

But the real star of the group was guitarist Steve Howe. Howe thrilled audiences by playing in a formidable assortment of styles on an astonishing array of electric, acoustic and steel guitars… often during the same song. Some critics accused him of being excessive, but for the most part, he was tasteful and generous, allowing his Yes compatriots to shine and take turns in the spotlight as evidenced by the band’s biggest hit, Roundabout.

During the band’s heyday, which lasted throughout the ’70s, his work on The Yes Album (1971), Fragile (1971), Close to the Edge (1972), Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973) and Relayer (1974) opened huge doors for guitar players looking to expand the techniques and colors they could use within a rock context.

Howe experimented with flamenco, Chet Atkins-style fingerpicking, classical harmonies and exotic chord voicings while shredding some of the speediest, harmonically advanced soloing ever heard on a rock album.

He was an amazing technician, but his lead playing also had an appealingly jagged edge that always kept the music rooted in rock ’n’ roll, no matter how complex it got.

Howe pushed the boundaries of popular music about as hard as any musician in the Seventies, and he did much of this on electric f-hole guitars like the Gibson ES-175, which was more associated with jazz players.

“The decision to buy the ES-175 set me on a course,” Howe said. “I didn’t consider myself to be someone who played solid bodied guitars at the time. It’s helped me to forge an identity as a guitarist with a full sound that isn’t reliant on distortion or tremolo or other gadgets.”

He was so dominant in the ’70s that he won “Best Overall Guitarist” in Guitar Player magazine an unprecedented five years in a row, influencing players as diverse as Alex Lifeson (Rush), John Petrucci (Dream Theater) and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers). But unlike Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen, few people attempted to sound like him, probably because it was so difficult to do.

His lasting impact has been more about his grand concept than his style. He is the guy you can thank for introducing the idea of owning dozens of guitars for different colors and sounds. So, the next time anybody gives you shit for buying yet another Les Paul Junior or Epiphone Casino, just blame it on Steve.

Lighting the fusion

Guitarists like Howe, Frank Zappa, Tommy Bolin and Jeff Beck shaped the sound and style of Seventies rock by incorporating elements of jazz into their arsenal of licks. But just as significant were a new crop of young jazz players who started experimenting with the volume and aggression heard in rock music.

Guitarist Larry Coryell, sometimes called the “godfather of jazz-rock fusion” summed it up when he said, “We loved [jazz trumpeter] Miles Davis – but we also loved the Rolling Stones.”

Starting in the early ’70s, a gang of extraordinarily gifted young jazz shredders like Coryell, Pat Metheny, Al Di Meola and John Scofield scared the bejeezus out of rock’s greatest players with their command of the electric guitar. But the jazz shredder who made the most impact was the fast and furious John McLaughlin, who played a double-neck Gibson EDS-1275 through a 100-watt Marshall amp “in meltdown mode.”

Starting his career as a session musician in England, McLaughlin moved to the U.S. in the late ’60s, where he played with jazz drummer Tony Williams’ group Lifetime.

He then performed with the legendary Miles Davis on several pioneering electric jazz fusion albums, most notably In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. But it was his work in the ferocious Mahavishnu Orchestra that made him a superstar in the rock world.

The five-piece Mahavishnu Orchestra combined elements of metal, jazz, funk and Indian classical music into their compositions, which they performed at lightning tempos. As Guitar World once put it, the band left you feeling as if they “were always on the very edge of exploding into a thousand pieces, so far did they push and extend themselves and each other.”

Guitar legend Jeff Beck was particularly floored. “Things took a funny turn for me in the early ’70s,” Beck recalled. “But it all turned out well after hearing John McLaughlin play on Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson album and with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Every musician I knew was raving about him, and I thought, ‘I’ll have some of that.’ The mastery of his playing was unequaled.”

Soon after hearing McLaughlin, Beck turned down a spot in the Rolling Stones and began experimenting with his own jazz-rock band. He was warned that playing fusion was commercial suicide, but ironically, it resulted in his most commercially successful album, Blow by Blow, released in 1975.

In the early ’70s, the radical Mahavishnu Orchestra recorded two brilliant studio albums, The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire, and performed more than 500 shows, playing unlikely bills with straight-up rockers like Aerosmith, Blue Öyster Cult and the Eagles.

While many rock audiences were confused by their weird, explosive music, others were intrigued, catapulting 1973’s Birds of Fire to Number 15 in the Billboard charts. However, just as it looked as though they were about to achieve the impossible by bringing avant-garde, freak-out jazz to the masses, they imploded.

“It was fantastic that we had popularity, but I think we had too much success too quickly,” McLaughlin said. “The band ended very acrimoniously, and that upsets me to this day. I have great relationships with all the musicians I worked with. Except that bloody band.”

Despite their brief lifespan, Mahavishnu left a lasting mark. Not only did they influence classic rockers like Beck and Carlos Santana, but their albums have also inspired current avant-garde heroes like Guthrie Govan, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (the Mars Volta) and Ben Weinman (Dillinger Escape Plan), proving that musical boundaries are meant to be shattered.

Glam bam, thank you, ma'am

While it was exciting that bands like the Allman Brothers and Yes were stretching the boundaries of popular music with their technical skills, many musicians were less than enthusiastic about prog. It was too damn complicated, and besides, who was going to piss off parents, disrupt social norms and have fun while looking cool? It didn’t take long to find out.

The answer came slinking out of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1971 when the Alice Cooper Band rose to fame with the hit single I’m Eighteen. Featuring a male singer with a woman’s name, the five-piece group were notorious for their theatrical stage shows, androgynous outfits and playing loud, obnoxious rock.

Boring old farts called them “degenerates,” but the press referred to them as “glam rock,” and it wasn’t long before the glitter craze took off, especially in England where David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, T. Rex, Slade and Queen became mega-stars.

Glam was primarily about “the look,” but the bands also shared a common approach to their music. Unlike the progressive movement, glam rockers kept their songs tight, danceable and catchy. Instrumentally, their tunes were often powered by chunky heavy metal guitars and short, memorable guitar solos.

Mick Ronson, the iconic blond guitarist for David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars band, made no bones about being more interested in composing great riffs than diddling around with weird scales or playing 30 different guitars. Ronson believed if you wanted to play like John Coltrane or Mozart, go fuckin’ do it – but leave rock ’n’ roll out of it.

He had a point. It didn’t mean Ronno was a primitive musician. In fact, he was quite sophisticated. In addition to providing killer guitar parts to memorable rockers like Bowie’s Suffragette City, Panic in Detroit and Jean Genie, he was also a deft arranger, composing the dramatic orchestral parts on Bowie’s 1972 glam rock classic, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

One sterling example of his artistry can be heard on the album’s classic, Moonage Daydream. He begins the song with a couple thunderous power chords, then slowly layers parts on his blonde 1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom through a half-cocked wah-wah pedal, until the song reaches a soaring, spiraling conclusion of ascending strings and tape-delay guitar.

While his parts aren’t particularly difficult to play, they are beautifully constructed, executed, and perfect for the song. In other words, totally rock and roll.

Ronson’s smart, economical playing (and glittering stage outfits!) helped create the template, not only for glam rock in the Seventies, but also Eighties hair metal. Ozzy Osbourne guitarists Randy Rhoads worshipped Ronson, meticulously imitating his look and use of a blonde Les Paul.

“Randy was a big fan,” said his brother, Kelle Rhoads. “That’s where his obsession with polka dots came from. He saw Mick Ronson with polka dot knee pads and Randy took it to another level.”

However, it would be wrong to imply that Ronson was the only influential glam guitarist in the ’70s. There were plenty of others including Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, Marc Bolan of T. Rex and Glen Buxton of the Alice Cooper Band. But perhaps the most famous and fairest of them all was Queen’s tall and elegant Brian May.

Queen have become so ubiquitous in our modern music culture that it’s easy to forget that in the ’70s they were originally a huge part of the same glam movement that spawned Bowie and the likes of Roxy Music and Sweet. But it might also be because Queen didn’t really sound like anybody else, and that was primarily due to May’s unique approach to playing and recording.

Far more ambitious than his fashionable contemporaries, his multi-layered guitar orchestrations on songs like Killer Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody ventured perilously close to being “prog.”

But May also knew how to boogie and always balanced his excesses with some good old-fashioned hard rock, as on We Will Rock You, Stone Cold Crazy and Keep Yourself Alive. Yes, Brian May could go over the top, but with Queen, he also knew when to kick royal ass – even while wearing flowing silk blouses and crushed velvet trousers.

Never mind the bollocks here's punk

Given how disheveled the typical punk rock musicians appeared with their ripped-up jeans and spiky hair, it was almost comical how much in they had in common with their glam rock counterparts. The Clash, Dead Boys and the Sex Pistols also believed that rock music should sound gritty, dangerous and close to the streets.

Punk guitarists didn’t just dislike progressive rock – they actively hated it. They were repulsed by what they perceived as the bourgeoisie snobbery of bands like Yes and Genesis. As for the Mahavishnu Orchestra… they couldn’t even pronounce it.

Punk musicians wanted to return rock and roll to its “everyman” fundamentals, so that anyone wanting to master three chords could take the stage and become a star. No one represented this attitude more singularly than the Ramones, a raucous four-piece juggernaut from New York City.

All members of the Ramones looked the same (shaggy hair with bangs), wore the same clothes (jeans, leather jackets and Converse All-Stars) and even shared the same surname.

Their songs all sorta sounded similar and their lyrics were hilariously moronic with titles like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue. From a guitar perspective, it was the same story: every song consisted of an interchangeable series of power chords played with the same jack-hammer downstrokes by Johnny Ramone on his cheap Mosrite guitar.

On paper the Ramones sounded stupid and one-dimensional – and they were – but it’s also what made them great. They say the hardest thing about making great art is deciding on a direction and sticking with it. If that’s true, then the Ramones were the Picassos of punk.

They did one thing, and they did it incredibly well, and in concert, the band was as direct and as powerful as a locomotive. (I was tossed around so much during an out-of-control Ramones show that I lost one of my shoes after the third song and never saw it again.)

When the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, it was said that their first album, Ramones (1976), saved rock from becoming “bloated and narcissistic.” While that’s not completely true – there was certainly plenty of bloat and narcissism to go around – they did provide a compelling alternative.

AOR in the USA

Punk wasn’t for everyone. But neither was metal, Southern rock, glam or any of the junk we’ve been talking about. That was the great thing about the ’70s. A lot of the music was kinda weird or extreme in some way. Even the biggest bands were odd when you really examined them closely.

The Wall by Pink Floyd was psychotic. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was fantastic, but totally wacky. And let’s not even get started on progressive bands like King Crimson and Jethro Tull.

Was there anything that was normal in the ’70s? Well, yes, there was plenty of meat and potatoes to be had. About halfway through the decade, many of the FM stations that were adventurous during the early part of the ’70s discovered they could grab more listeners and sell more advertising if the music they played was a little shorter and a bit more conventional. The stations shifted gears, and so did many rock bands who discovered they could sell more records if they did the same.

Suddenly, bands that appealed to more mainstream tastes started popping up like toadstools in Pennsylvania. Some called it “pop metal,” but most referred to it as Album Oriented Rock or AOR.

Platinum-selling bands like Foreigner, Journey, Boston, Styx, Eagles, REO Speedwagon, Steve Miller Band, Kiss, Toto, Pat Benatar, Kansas, Heart, Triumph, Bad Company and Fleetwood Mac were not particular innovative, but they wrote catchy songs that sounded great in the car.

While that might sound like an insult, it isn’t. Much of the music was very good and featured incredibly skilled guitarists like Neal Schon, Joe Walsh, Rick Nielsen, Ace Frehley, Steve Lukather and Gary Richrath, among others.

Now mix a bit of AOR with some Led Zeppelin, a bit of Pink Floyd and the more accessible “hits” of some of the more adventurous bands we’ve mentioned, and there you have the ’70s in a nutshell.

But wait… wait, wait, wait. What about Van fuckin’ Halen? Weren’t they part of the ’70s?

Well, the truth is – and this is highly classified information – that even though Van Halen’s first two albums came out in 1978 and 1979, they did not belong to the ’70s – they belonged to the ’80s. It was all a big mistake.

Eddie Van Halen insisted on arriving two years early, so he could gently guide guitarists to the next decade, where he would rule like a king for the next 10 years.

But you gotta promise not to tell anyone! If you do, I’ll deny everything. You know, conspiracy theorists, they’re all 5150…

Since brothers Howard and Ron Albert transformed their Criteria Studios in Miami from a one-room recording booth into a premier destination for big artists, they’ve accumulated 40 gold and 30 platinum records.

Or so Howard reckons. Their resume includes Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers, Frank Zappa and more, which means he's probably right.

While their innovative multi-mic recording technique built their reputation, Ron says that’s not the only thing that made Criteria Studios special.

“What made it great was that we had several rooms,” he tells Guitar World. “We had a lot of camaraderie between acts.

“Someone was in one room and they’d come into the next studio, sit in on something, maybe help to do a guitar part. It would happen on so many records. Because of that, I couldn’t begin to tell you who played on what!”

While the Albert Brothers rubbed elbows with Eric Clapton and Joe Walsh, the best of their work probably came via Dickey Betts and Duane Allman, resulting in records like Eat a Peach – which Ron holds dear.

“That was finished after Duane died,” he says. “Though he played on some of the tracks, Dickey went and learned the slide part for Melissa. Everybody thinks, ‘Oh, this is Duane.’ But Duane wasn’t there; it’s Dickey Betts.”

The Albert Brothers sold Criteria Studios in 1983 and retired; but in 1987 they formed Vision Studios and Audio Vision Studios, which today focus on hip-hop artists like Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Lil John and Ludacris – a far cry from the guitar-drenched days of the ‘70s.

“We were sort of cheating the world because there were two of us,” Howard says.

“We had one standing in the control room while the other was moving mics. We could hear the change from location to location. We could get guitar sounds that no one else was getting then because we had two sets of ears.”

How did Criteria Studios form?

Howard: “It was originally started by Mack Emerman. He was recording jazz records at his house in Coconut Grove. His father had a piece of land nearby on which he was going to build a candy store. Mack convinced him to let him have the property, and we built the recording studio.”

Ron: “It was a one-room facility.”

Howard: “It kind of grew from there. When Ron and I started at Criteria, we started in that one room. It grew to a larger room called Studio A, and then there was Studio B, Studio C, Studio D and so on.”

You were innovators in how you recorded sound.

Ron: “As technology improved, we’d work on our skills. We’d come in late – everybody else would go home at six o’clock. We came up with our multi-mic technique for recording drums: we’d go overhead, have one mic on the kick and mics on every cymbal.

“Part of getting a good guitar sound was knowing the instrument. People will still behave like they’re on stage, and put a microphone straight on a guitar – but if you move the mic six inches to the left, or right, or down, suddenly the sound is so much different.”

Early on, you worked with Jimi Hendrix, who’s primarily known for working with Eddie Kramer. What was that like?

Ron: “Eddie was the chief engineer at Electric Lady, and I was the chief engineer at Criteria. We became friends. Eddie would stay at my house in Miami, and I would stay at his house if I was in New York.

“We were the Miami Pop Festival, which came before Woodstock – kind of a dry run. We had all our equipment in the truck, along with our custom console.

“Eddie came with Jimi; Jimi was on stage and Eddie came in the truck with us. Eddie says, ‘You tape it,’ because he didn’t know our setup.

“We recorded him there, and that became part of our resume, due to Eddie. He’s a good friend.”

How did you become involved with Derek and the Dominos?

Howard: “We were doing a lot of Atlantic Records acts, and they were one of the acts that came through. It was amazing to work with them because they were such amazing players and musicians. It was like a big jam session – which was good because we had a lot of good pieces to put together.”

What was it like working with Eric Clapton and Duane Allman?

Ron: “Eric was in England when they started rehearsing, then he decided to come to Miami. When we started the sessions they didn’t have a name, but it was a real band. I remember we set up Eric and Duane in the studio, so they were face-to-face about two feet apart.

“They could literally touch each other’s guitars if they wanted to; and, like Howard said, it was a good jam session. Eric’s playing was unbelievable because he was held up by Duane’s playing, and Duane was held up by Eric. The rest is history.”

Another big piece of your history is your relationship with the Allman Brothers Band.

Ron: “Duane, of course, gets all the credit – but there’s no Allman Brothers without Dickey Betts. Dickey came up with all the harmonies, and Duane played ‘em. Not unlike Eric and Duane, Dickey and Duane were on such a plane together.

“Dickey’s style was so unique in his harmony parts. We’d sit in the studio for hours, rewinding the tape to play it back for him.

“We knew we already had the track, but he’d work for hours getting those harmony parts together. He would show them to Duane, he’d play them, and what came out was Jessica or In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. That stuff doesn’t happen without Dickey.”

Howard: “Dickey had this way of playing; he matched what Duane did on slide, but he’d do it pretty much without a slide. It was pretty amazing what he’d come up with.”

Ron: “Duane died when he was 24 years old; but the thing was that, without people knowing it, Dickey had stepped into the leadership role.”

You also worked with Joe Walsh on The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get.

Howard: “That was an awe-inspiring guitar moment for us. We did that record with Joe in Studio C, and we kind of had him set up in the hallway. We went through the intro; he was playing and he had no idea we were actually recording it.

“As he was getting ready to say, ‘Okay, I’m ready,’ we called him in and said, ‘Now you’re done.’ Rocky Mountain Way was done in one take, so that was pretty good!”

What was it like working with the Rolling Stones on Goat's Head Soup?

Ron: “They were really great. They drove themselves to the studio in rented station wagons – they didn’t come in limousines. When they arrived, they took their guitars out of the cases and tuned up themselves. They were just like regular people.

“Keith Richards is a character, alright! But I think the one thing that stands out was when we came in one day, and they were hopping around like bunnies for the whole session!”

You also worked with Frank Zappa in the ‘70s.

Howard: “All these players come in with their own sound. Our job is to capture that sound. All these guys use Fender or Gibson guitars and whatever brand of amp, but Frank was a player with his own approach.

“I think that’s what gave him the sound, along with the ideas. And our job was to capture that sound; and again, that comes down to knowing where to place a mic. We really needed to listen to what Frank was playing and then figure out how to get it all to tape.”

You’re renowned for your drum sounds, but you greatly impacted the guitar landscape too. What are you most proud of at that end?

Howard: “Well, I’m proud we lived through it! But I don't know… we were in the right place at the right time. We had some talent and knew what we were doing, and that came out in the records. But we had an extremely high caliber of people that we worked with, and that certainly helped make something that lasts.”

Thanks to a distinct melting pot of genres, a scintillating dual guitar act that reinvented the wheel for two-pronged player partnerships and a borderline unrivaled live energy, the Allman Brothers Band became one of the most influential rock groups of their time.

Born into the music world at the turn of the ‘70s and initially masterminded by Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts and a handful of other instrumentalists, ABB helped progress the Southern rock sound, and pushed the boundaries of the jam genre in the process.

Across the band’s lifetime – which bore witness to tragedy, turmoil and triumph in equal measure – Allman and co. commited countless hits to tape. 

Theirs is a history that can be charted through their music, from the timeless live cuts of At Fillmore East in 1971, recorded before the untimely death of Duane Allman, to the comeback singles of the ‘90s, when Betts’ penchant for country music shone through.

Here, we take you through the ABB story by counting down their 25 greatest tracks, starting with a little number lifted from one of rock’s most enduring live records…

25. Stormy Monday

At Fillmore East (1971)

The Allman Brothers Band were essential in bringing classic blues music to a worldwide audience in the late Sixties/early Seventies, and their masterful rendition of the T-Bone Walker classic (Call It) Stormy Monday, from At Fillmore East, introduced the song to a new generation of listeners.

Duane and Gregg had been playing the song for years as it was a staple in their set with the Allman Joys, basing their version on Bobby “Blue” Bland’s cover. Here, Duane and Dickey display their complete mastery of the blues idiom.

“My biggest blues guitar influences would be T-Bone, B.B. King and Albert King,” said Betts. “A big part of Albert’s signature style was his use of extremely wide bends. He would bend notes all over the place while staying on one string at one fret; he could get four or five different notes out of one single position!

“Albert sounds sort of like a trumpet player on licks like these. On the Fillmore versions of both Stormy Monday and Whipping Post, you can hear examples of Albert’s influence on my playing in terms of using wide bends such as these.”

24. Hot ‘Lanta

At Fillmore East (1971)

Made famous as an impeccably recorded live performance at one of the legendary 1971 Fillmore East shows, this cookin’, jazzy instrumental, an ABB compositional collaboration, features a brisk swing groove in 3/4 meter – a “jazz waltz” – that recalls the feel of Whipping Post but is slightly faster and edgier, with Oakley laying down an aggressive and tastefully crafted walking bassline, lots of Duane’s and Dickey’s signature harmonized lead guitar melodies and some of Gregg’s most inspired and ambitious B3 playing ever.

The tune is based on a repeating blues progression in A minor that’s extended from the standard 12 bars to 13 (if counted in 12/8 meter instead of 3/4), via a dramatic and decidedly jazzy twist – a chromatically descending dominant seven sharp-nine chord, starting on the five, E7#9, and traveling down to C#7#9 – before restating the intro organ riff as a one-bar turnaround.

Gregg, Dickey and Duane all take fiery, well-conceived improvised solos, two choruses each, that lead up to an exhilarating duet drum break. Not content, however, to just leave it at that and come back in with a restatement of the “head” (melody), the Brothers inject a clever ensemble interlude riff into the arrangement, built around the drum break, giving both the composition and their performance of it added richness and depth.

23. No One to Run With

An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: 2nd Set (1995)

One of the highlights from the two excellent live albums the released by the ABB in the Nineties. Betts’ ode to the good old days and lost running buddies quickly became a tribute to Duane, Berry, Lamar and every other fallen brother – sadly added to over the next 20 years.

This live number features a signature Allen Woody bassline, great Haynes and Betts guitar parts, a growling Allman vocal and a spotlight on the three-man rhythm section, with Trucks and Jaimoe augmented by Marc Quinones. In other words, the whole Allmans enchilada. No wonder the song remained in heavy rotation until the final show.

22. You Don’t Love Me

At Fillmore East (1971)

“Everything Duane and I play on the extended ending of that track was completely improvised,” said Dickey Betts. “I played a piece of an old gospel song, some train sounds and things like that, and Duane picked up on those things and went off into his own improvisations.”

The success of the Allman Brothers Band exploded with the release of the incendiary masterpiece At Fillmore East, recorded over two nights in New York City, March 12 and 13, 1971. What is largely forgotten is that the band was originally the “special guest” opening act for Johnny Winter, but in short order the Allmans were switched to headliners.

You Don’t Love Me is an old blues tune originally written and recorded by Willie Cobb in 1960. In 1965, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy released a cover version on Junior Wells’ debut release, Hoodoo Man Blues, upon which the Allmans based their version. The band uses this track as a vehicle for a near 20-minute jam, comprising the entire second side of disc one. Duane and Dickey trade intensely burning solos through the first segment of the performance, joined by Thom Doucette’s harmonica.

At the seven-minute point, the band stops and Duane ventures into a two-minute unaccompanied improvisation that is simply stunning, followed by an equally inspired solo turn by Betts.

“What you hear was played in the spur-of-the-moment, which is exactly what the blues is all about,” said Betts. “You have to be fast on your feet, and react instantly to all of the sounds around you, allowing the music to happen in as spontaneous a way as possible.”

21. Seven Turns

Seven Turns (1990)

The Allman Brothers Band had a lot to prove when they regrouped for the second time in 1990 – namely if they could really make a run at the glories of the original golden era with new members Warren Haynes and Allen Woody. The title track of their comeback album answered a lot of questions.

A classic Betts, country-tinged rocker, it tipped its hat to Native American philosophy, offered Blue Sky-like uplift and featured Haynes’ slide and Betts’ leads side by side. The signature call-and-response vocal that closes the song came about naturally. Gregg Allman was shooting pool as Haynes and Betts worked out vocal harmonies and unconsciously answered their lines. Haynes had the good sense to recognize the missing piece to the puzzle.

20. Black Hearted Woman

The Allman Brothers Band (1969)

Like Whipping Post, this early Gregg Allman–penned gem from the band’s debut album features one of their earliest uses of odd meter, opening with a bluesy, repeating one-bar ensemble riff in A that drops an eighth note from the last beat, resulting in a meter of 7/8, before giving way to a more “stable” groove, in this case 4/4.

The song’s funky, hard-driving verse sections are based on a clever twist on the standard 12-bar blues form that extends it two bars, with the two-dominant chord (B7) interjected after the five (E7#9) and the progression capped off by an octave-doubled ensemble break riff that brings to mind the soulful themes of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies repertoire.

Duane and Dickey both serve up inspired, fiery licks throughout the arrangement, their guitars panned hard left and right in the stereo mix, with punchy lead tones and aggressive string bends and finger vibratos. Gregg kills it vocally, Berry Oakley’s bass line cooks and Butch Trucks’ and Jaimoe’s percussion interlude/breakdown, featuring drums and congas, ushers in a dramatic minor pentatonic “tribal” riff that Oakley scat sings along to, adding intensity and soul to an already earthy melody.

19. Come and Go Blues

Brothers and Sisters (1973)

This underrated masterpiece, originally conceived by Gregg on a fingerpicked acoustic guitar in open G tuning, is built around a hauntingly beautiful, descending blues turnaround that repeats over a G bass pedal tone for the song’s verses. (Check out his stirring live solo performance video of the song from 1981 on YouTube.)

The full ABB reading of Come and Go Blues featured on Brothers and Sisters, with bassist Lamar Williams admirably stepping into the late Berry Oakley’s large musical shoes, develops the composition into a rather ambitious arrangement, with inventive instrumental interludes and ensemble breaks throughout and tasteful improvised solos by Leavell and Betts.

18. One Way Out

Eat a Peach (1972)

One Way Out is a blues song originally recorded (or so it seems) by Elmore James in 1960/’61. Before the Elmore version was released, however, Sonny Boy Williamson II recorded it for Chess Records, releasing it in September 1961. He then re-recorded the song with blues guitarist Buddy Guy in 1963, and this latter version features the arrangement covered by the Allman Brothers, replete with the well-known signature guitar line. Elmore’s version was released posthumously in 1965, bearing a closer resemblance to the earlier Sonny Boy track.

The version released on Eat a Peach was recorded during the band’s final performance at Fillmore East on the night of the venue’s closing, June 27, 1971. It is included on the deluxe, expanded editions of At Fillmore East. The track fades in on Betts’ statement of the primary guitar lick, with the entire band dropping in 16 bars later as Duane emulates Sonny Boy’s harmonica lick with slide guitar. Dickey takes the first solo and it is simply stunning, with laser beam-like intensity and, probably, the greatest Les Paul/Marshall guitar tone ever heard.

Following a brief drum solo, Dickey and Duane trade four-bar licks, and during Duane’s last phrase, bassist Berry Oakley enters a beat early, briefly throwing the band off kilter. They quickly readjust, and this wrinkle is considered an essential part of the song’s charm. The Allmans’ version of One Way Out has been featured in many films, none more effectively than Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, used as the backtrack to a brutal bar fight.

17. Little Martha

Eat a Peach (1972)

Duane Allman’s sole songwriting credit closes Eat a Peach on a wistful note, as it did every Allman Brothers concert of the last 20 years, piped through the P.A. Said to come to Duane in a dream and pieced together over the years, the lilting dobro duet with Betts is played in open Eb. Like so much about Duane, it leaves you wondering “what if.”

“My brother loved playing that kind of stuff, and I have to think there would have been more music coming out of him,” said Gregg.

16. Nobody Knows

Shades of Two Worlds (1991)

The Allman Brothers are revered for instrumental masterpieces like Jessica, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, Hot ‘Lanta, Don’t Want You No More, Mountain Jam, Little Martha and Les Brers in A Minor, but they have on occasion directed that instrumental magic touch to vocal tunes such as Whipping Post, as well as this tour de force from the band’s early Nineties incarnation.

Gregg Allman had derided the tune for being too similar to Whipping Post – both songs are in A minor with a 6/8 feel (as is Hot ‘Lanta) – but make no mistake; Nobody Knows is as powerful a track as any in the band’s history.

“Nobody Knows is one of the best lyrical songs I’ve ever written,” Betts said in ’91. “These are nice, abstract, poetic lyrics. I wrote that about as fast as I could write the words down, at 4:30 in the morning after rehearsal.

“[Producer] Tom Dowd had said, ‘We could use a tune as heavy as ‘Whipping Post” for this record,’ and I thought, ‘Man, that’s a tall order!’ I sat down and those words just started flying out. In 30 minutes I’d written the whole thing, like I was writing a letter to someone.”

15. Mountain Jam

Eat a Peach (1972)

Based on the 1967 Donovan song There Is a Mountain, Mountain Jam served as an extended instrumental jamming vehicle for the Allman Brothers Band throughout the band’s long history.

The first recording of the song is from one of their very first gigs, May 4, 1969; they also played the song on the very last night the Allman Brothers Band ever performed, October 29, 2014. This is wholly appropriate, as no song better represents the adventurous, experimental spirit of the band’s musical DNA.

Listeners get the first hints of Mountain Jam and the end of the album that precedes Eat a Peach, At Fillmore East, following the last strains of Whipping Post as the album fades out.

At nearly 34 minutes in length, Mountain Jam is a wild ride, through beautifully delicate harmonized guitar lines, intensely extraordinary guitar solos from Duane and Dickey, expressive Hammond organ work from Gregg, and lock-tight, swinging rhythm section work from Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks and Jaimoe. Dickey and Duane burst into improvised harmonized lines, all the while displaying incredible chops and dreamlike Les Paul/Marshall stack guitar tones.

A furious tandem drum solo is followed by a deeply syncopated bass solo from Berry and a shift to a shuffle feel and reference to Jimi Hendrix’ Third Stone from the Sun, transitioning seamlessly to a 6/8 instrumental take on Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

14. Statesboro Blues

At Fillmore East (1971)

For a great many of us – especially those who were teenagers in 1971 when At Fillmore East was released – Statesboro Blues represents the very moment the Allman Brothers Band blasted into our lives.

As an aspiring young guitar player, its impact was instantaneous. Duane Allman’s dramatic and distinct slide guitar intro grabs you from the very first note and, as the opening track on what would be the band’s breakthrough album, the hard-rocking, lock-tight sound and spirit of the Allman Brothers was now firmly set in stone. Even Michael Aherns’ understated introduction, “Okay, the Allman Brothers Band,” is now considered an essential part of the track.

Statesboro Blues was written by Piedmont blues guitarist/singer Blind Willie McTell, who first recorded the song in 1928, backing himself on acoustic guitar. Blues singer/guitarist Taj Mahal recorded a great version of the song on his 1968 eponymous debut, featuring guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, and this version is the one Duane heard, inspiring him to learn to play slide guitar.

The story goes that brother Gregg had given Duane the album for his birthday, simultaneously giving him a bottle of Coricidan, a cold medication, as Duane was sick at the time. Inspired by the recording, Duane emptied the pills from the bottle and, wearing it on the ring finger of his fretting hand, taught himself to play slide guitar. 

Today, millions of guitarists the world over use bottle-type slides on their ring fingers – such as Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks – in emulation of Duane Allman.

13. Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’

Idlewild South (1972)

Rhythm and blues and soul were the two styles of music that had the strongest influence on Gregg Allman as a performer and as a composer. He had stated often that such artists as Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Little Milton were hugely influential on his singing style and musical sense.

According to Gregg, “When I heard Ray Charles, I said, ‘That’s my goal in life.’ Ray Charles is the one who taught me to just relax and let it ooze out. If it’s in your soul, it’ll come out.”

Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ kicks off with a dual slide guitar/harmonica lick, followed by a funky blues-like rhythm part laid down by Dickey Betts, abutted by slide guitar from Duane and harmonica from Thom Doucette. Duane plays a stinging, high slide solo that culminates with a syncopated band figure similar to those heard on Black Hearted Woman.

12. Les Brers in A Minor

Eat a Peach (1972)

Like Betts’ earlier masterpiece, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, this majestic nine-minute instrumental, penned by the guitarist in 1971 and recorded by the ABB in the wake of brother Duane’s tragic death late that year, showcases Dickey’s eclectic musical sophistication as a composer and grasp of both jazz harmony and classical orchestration.

The piece begins with an extended, mesmerizing intro, featuring a highly interactive ensemble crescendo that swells from a whisper through a series of meditative tonal-center shifts, from A to G and back, performed in a “floaty” free-time feel and culminating in a climactic succession of loud, dramatic “orchestra hits,” in a way that brings to mind the opening strains from the first and second movements of Beethoven’s ninth symphony.

Near the four-minute mark, Berry Oakley nimbly kicks off the tune’s main theme and establishes its brisk tempo with a growling, flat-picked bass riff, a repeating ostinato figure that outlines an A minor hexatonic tonality, over which Dickey and Gregg then proceed to double the tune’s melody in unison over a rich, syncopated percussion groove.

This is followed at 4:25 by an inventive, jazzy bridge, or interlude, that momentarily interrupts the driving 16th-note groove for about 20 seconds with a somber melody, set to an intriguing chord progression played with a half-time feel, followed by a return to the 16th-note groove and some inspired open-ended soloing and jamming, with each individual solo bookended and punctuated by tight ensemble riffs.

11. Ain’t Wasting Time No More

Eat a Peach (1972)

As the lead single from Eat a Peach, the first Allman Brothers Band album released following the tragic death of founding band member and leader Duane Allman, Gregg Allman’s heartfelt composition captures, in part, his feelings at one of the most difficult times of his life.

The lyrical content of the song deals with overcoming depression, with lines like, “Last Sunday morning the sunshine felt like rain, the week before, they all seemed the same... But with the help of God and two friends, I’ve come to realize, I still have two strong legs and even wings to fly,” and also, “You don’t need no gypsy to tell you why, you can’t let another precious day go by.”

The song is driven by Gregg’s rock-solid piano playing, supplemented by lyrical slide guitar playing by Dickey Betts, ably picking up the Duane Allman mantle, as well as gently flowing percussion from Jaimoe.

10. Ramblin’ Man

Brothers and Sisters (1973)

Written by Dickey Betts in 1972, Ramblin’ Man was the Allman Brothers Band’s only top-10 hit single and the last song recorded by bassist Berry Oakley, shortly before his untimely passing in November of that year. Inspired by a 1951 Hank Williams composition of the same name, the song features Betts singing lead vocal.

Ramblin’ Man saw the Allmans reach a commercial peak and, together with other Betts-penned songs included on the album, represented a stylistic change in direction for the group, from their foundational blues-based and jazz-tinged rock to more of a country-pop flavor, while still upholding their credo of collective improvisation and the jamming spirit that the ABB has always embraced.

Ramblin’ Man was written and performed in the key of G, but the original recording was sped up in the mastering process, which, in addition to increasing the tempo by a few beats per minute, raised its pitch a little more than a half step, resulting in the finished track sounding slightly sharp of the key of Ab.

Along with other Betts compositions featured on Brothers and Sisters, namely Southbound, Pony Boy and the instrumental Jessica, Ramblin’ Man represented Dickey’s emergence as one of the outfit’s principal songwriters, alongside Gregg, and demonstrated that the guitarist could admirably carry the torch as the band’s only full-time guitarist, as they chose, for the time being, not to replace Duane with another six-stringer, instead bringing in the very talented pianist Chuck Leavell as a second instrumental soloist.

Ramblin’ Man gloriously showcases Betts’ signature lyrical soloing style, which is characterized by owing eighth-note rhythms, rolling melodic contours, soar- ing, pedal steel-like bends, smooth legato phrasing and the frequent use of the major hexatonic scale, a sound that is regarded by many as his musical calling card.

Guitarist Les Dudek made a guest appearance on the track, providing the arrangement’s signature sweet harmony leads, which he layered by overdubbing single-note parts.

9. Revival

Idlewild South (1970)

Revival, aka Revival (Love Is Everywhere), represents Dickey Betts’ first songwriting credit with the band. “Revival started out as an instrumental tune,” said Betts. “In fact, we would refer to that first instrumental section of the song as ‘The Gypsy Dance.’ When I wrote it, I had the image of gypsies dancing around a fire in my mind, and I tried to conjure that spirit in the music.”

The song opens with Duane Allman’s strummed acoustic-guitar rhythm part, followed immediately by an evocative, bluesy harmonized guitar line. Once again, the influence of modal jazz is present, as the song moves seamlessly through different tonalities, such as major, natural minor and the Dorian mode.

Drummer “Jaimoe” Jai Johanny Johanson is featured on percussion on the track, lending a Latin feel. This Latin feel, also present on In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, was inspired in part by Latin jazz as well as the Latin flavors South Florida musicians like Mike Pinera (Blues Image) were incorporating into their music at the time.

“In writing this tune – or any of the instrumentals – you have to decide what you are trying to do, and then see if you can make it happen,” said Betts. “These are the mental tools I use to help guide me through, to find the proper direction for whatever piece of music I am working on. I used this approach for songs like In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, High Falls and Revival. Just like the use of words in the telling of a story, every note is of essential importance in crafting a successful instrumental.”

After this initial minor-key instrumental section, the song moves back into a major key for the uplifting gospel-like vocal sections.

8. Jessica

Brothers and Sisters (1973)

Brothers and Sisters was the first album to feature neither Duane Allman nor Berry Oakley, both of whom had died tragically in motorcycle accidents over the previous two years.

Quite incredibly, the band pulled together to create the most successful album of its entire career, on the strength of such powerful Betts compositions as Jessica, Southbound and the band’s only Number One hit, Ramblin’ Man. Brothers and Sisters sold over a million copies within a month of its release, and to date over seven million copies worldwide.

“Here’s the story which has been told many times,” recalled Betts. “I had a general idea of a melody and a feeling for Jessica, but I couldn’t get started on it; nothing was really adding up. My little girl Jessica, who at the time was an infant, crawled up to me and I started playing to her, playing to the feeling of the innocence of her personality. And soon the whole song just fell together. The song was justly named after her for providing the needed inspiration.”

Jessica also displays the influence of some other elements that were important to Betts’ musical development, such as the playing of legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

“Django only used two fingers to fret with,” said Betts, “so I devised a melody that I could play with just the index and middle fingers.” Additionally, Betts’ ancestry includes the fiddle players of Prince Edward Sound, which is located in eastern Canada just above Nova Scotia.

“These fiddle players were known for possessing a very distinct style,” explained Betts, “and the style of the Prince Edward Sound fiddlers sounded just like the fiddle playing of my dad and my uncles. This provided me with an instinct for a melodic approach to playing. One of the best examples of this influence coming to the fore is Jessica.”

7. In Memory of Elizabeth Reed

Idlewild South (1970) and At Fillmore East (1971)

This is the first of many distinctly original instrumental songs Dickey Betts would write for the Allman Brothers Band and, like Whipping Post, its true power, breadth and scope came to fruition in the live setting. It remains one of the most recognizable songs in the band’s catalog, and was a staple in the live shows from the song’s inception until the band’s final shows in 2014.

Said Betts, “[Late Allmans bassist] Berry Oakley and I inspired each other’s improvisational creativity while we were in Second Coming, the band that presaged the Allman Brothers.

One of our favorite things to do was to jam in minor keys, experimenting freely with the sounds of different minor modes. We allowed our ears to guide us, and this type of ‘jamming’ served to inspire the writing of songs like In Memory of Elizabeth Reed and Les Brers in A Minor. We were both fascinated with the modal jazz improvisation of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, such as that heard on Kind of Blue.”

“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed was inspired by a woman I knew named Carmella. At the time, she was involved with a friend of mine, but something started to happen be- tween her and myself. She was a very seductive, sultry, secretive woman, and I thought our little cloak-and-dagger romance was a beautiful image for a song. She and I would rendezvous in this old abandoned graveyard by the river, which was the place I liked to go to write songs.

“I wrote just about everything there at that time; I wrote Blue Sky there, too. When I wrote this song for her, the gravestone next to where I was sitting happened to say, ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed’, so that became the song’s title.”

An essential signature element in this song is the brilliant use of harmonized guitar lines, present in both the initial “intro” section of the tune as well as the main theme and the harmonized melodic lines that wrap up each guitar solo section.

“I first discovered harmonized melodies from listening to western swing music, like Bob Wills, where the melodies are harmonized by guitar, pedal steel, piano and violin,” said Betts.

“Devising harmonized guitar parts became something Duane and I really enjoyed working on together. We would let our imaginations guide us as to what the harmony line should sound like. Of course, the presence of these guitar harmonies became essential to the sound of the Allman Brothers Band.”

6. Melissa

Eat a Peach (1972)

Gregg Allman said that he wrote and threw out 300-400 songs before he wrote his first keeper: Melissa, in late 1967, shortly after Duane traded a beloved guitar to get Gregg a quality acoustic. Allman said that he picked up the guitar not knowing that his brother had tuned it to open E.

“I just started strumming it and hit these beautiful chords,” he said. “It was just open strings, then an E shape first fret, then moved to the second fret. This is a great example of the way different tunings can open up different roads to you as a songwriter. The music immediately made me feel good and the words just started coming to me.”

The brothers Allman cut the song first in 1968 with Butch Trucks’ 31st of February, a demo that was eventually released under the misleading name “Duane and Gregg Allman”. After Duane’s death, as the band finished a few tracks for Eat a Peach, Gregg took out his old favorite.

5. It’s Not My Cross to Bear

The Allman Brothers Band (1969)

Along with Dreams, It’s Not My Cross to Bear is the second of two songs that Gregg had in his back pocket when he traveled from Los Angeles to join the new band in Jacksonville. And, again, it’s remarkable that he wrote such a deep, world weary blues at such a young age, promising a departing lover, “I’ll live on, I’ll be strong,” a promise that seems primarily determined to convince himself.

In a demo recorded in Los Angeles in January 1969, the song is structurally complete and Gregg’s vocals are already deep and true, but it also provides keen insight into what the band added: a sure groove and steady time through the deepest, slowest blues and two contrasting but equally powerful guitar voices, with Duane and Dickey playing solos that bleed, cry and gnash just as surely as Gregg’s simply phrased, powerfully emotive vocals.

No song better encapsulates the way in which the Allman Brothers Band delivered on the elusive goal of countless hippie rockers who loved Muddy Waters: playing blues that were equally original and rooted in the classics.

4. Dreams

The Allman Brothers Band (1969)

Gregg Allman said that he arrived in Jacksonville to join his brother’s new band with a catalog of 22 songs. His confidence in his songwriting flagged as the first dozen songs were rejected, before he got to Dreams, which he always maintained was the only song he ever wrote on a Hammond organ. (He generally preferred guitar or piano.)

The song’s minimalist lyrics read like a blues haiku, anchored by the existentialist dread of being haunted by redemptive dreams so distant you can’t even dream them.

The song, which was immediately worked up by the band, became a perfect skeleton to hang their interpretation of Miles Davis and John Coltrane’s modal jazz explorations. With a bassline directly pinched from Davis’ All Blues and Jaimoe playing drum fills from the same song, Duane Allman played a deeply moving two-part solo over a simply swinging two-chord vamp.

It is the only classic Allman Brothers song to feature one instead of two guitar soloists, with Duane playing a “straight” solo, then picking up his slide to kick the song into overdrive.

Like so much of the debut album, Dreams remained a live staple until the last show. It is arguably the band’s spiritual core.

3. Midnight Rider

Idlewild South (1970)

Gregg Allman’s theme song came to him almost whole in a flash of inspiration. “Midnight Rider hit me like a damn sack of hoe handles,” he said. “It was just there, crawling all over me. And about an hour and 15 minutes later I had the rough draft down... and was putting it down on tape.”

The only problem was that Allman’s inspiration came in the middle of the night and drummer Jaimoe was the only band member he could find to record a demo – and besides, he was locked out of the Capricorn Records studio. When studio managers said to leave them alone after being woken up at 3 a.m., Allman and roadie Kim Payne broke in. Along the way, Payne contributed a crucial line that completed the song: “I’ve gone past the point of caring/some ol’ bed I’ll soon be sharing.”

With his other bandmates nowhere to be found, Allman put a bass in the hands of the awoken road manager Twiggs Lyndon, showing him how to play the distinctive lick running through his brain and telling him to play absolutely nothing else.

After wildly flipping switches trying to turn on the studio boards, Payne managed to get tape rolling and Gregg recorded a demo of Midnight Rider with himself on 12-string guitar, Lyndon playing rudimentary bass and Jaimoe on drums, or maybe percussion – no-one’s recollection is quite clear on that.

They all say, however, that the final version differed little structurally from the quickly recorded demo, other than Duane Allman and Dickey Betts’ subtly sweet guitar work, which put the song over the top, creating a haunting, simple, perfectly crafted classic that will be played long after we are all dust in the wind.

2. Blue Sky

Eat a Peach (1972)

Blue Sky is a gentle ballad-like song with a country feel, revealing the country influences present in the songwriting style of Dickey Betts. He wrote the song as a tribute to his wife, Sandy “Bluesky” Wabegijig, who was of Native American descent.

Eat a Peach was the first album released after the passing of Duane Allman, and Blue Sky represents one of his final recordings with the band. Played rarely in concert at the time, a great version featuring Duane is available on S.U.N.Y. at Stonybrook: Stonybrook, NY 9/19/71, self-released by the band in 2003. Blue Sky, Dickey Betts’ debut as a lead singer on an Allman Brothers album, features beautifully inspired harmonized guitar lines from Dickey and Duane.

“When we originally recorded Blue Sky, Duane and I tried all different kinds of harmonies until we found the one that best suited the song,” said Betts. “We found that the softer-edged harmony was what worked best.”

In many instances, the relationship between the melody and the harmony changes to a combination of thirds and fourths, and this is exactly the case with Blue Sky. The initial guitar melody in the song is based on a scale known as E major hexatonic, which is the same as a standard major scale, but the seventh tone is removed, resulting in a six-tone major scale. The very first melodic line in the song, however, was not harmonized by another guitar.

1. Whipping Post

The Allman Brothers Band (1969) and At Fillmore East (1971)

Of the many timeless classic rock songs residing in the Allman Brothers Band canon, Whipping Post stands as the heavyweight champion of them all.

Released originally on the band’s eponymous debut, the song’s full power was realized in live performance, captured in all its brilliance on the band’s watershed double live album, At Fillmore East. At 22 minutes in length, this version comprises the entire fourth and closing side of the album. It is widely revered as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.

This live version showcases everything original – and everything truly extraordinary – about the Allman Brothers Band: distinctly original music, soulful, expressive vocals and lyrics from Gregg Allman, fiery, virtuoso guitar playing from Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, and jazz-like musical intricacy and precise band interplay.

Whipping Post, written by Gregg Allman, started out as a basic slow blues in A minor. While initially working on it in rehearsal, bassist Berry Oakley said, “Hold it! I have an idea for this tune – let’s work on it tomorrow.” And the next day he came in with a completely rearranged, re-imagined structure and feel that became the Whipping Post we all know.

He had reworked the intro into an odd 11/8 meter that somehow sounds perfectly suited for the song. From there, Duane and Dickey began to forge their unique harmonized guitar lines.

“When Duane and I would work on harmonizing guitar parts, we didn’t use any kind of technical approach,” said Betts. “We didn’t study the structure of the scales or spend time figuring out on paper what should work.

“We approached harmonizing guitar parts in the same way we approached vocal harmonies: we would try a few different ideas, and go with the one that sounded the best to our ears. Usually, I’d have a certain sound in my mind that I was after, and we used a ‘trial and error’ method to find it.”

In honor of Dickey Betts, who passed away at the age of 80 on April 18 2024, we have been leafing through the archives to unearth some of his best interviews with Guitar World. The following is a comprehensive oral history of the Allman Brothers Band, featuring Betts, Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks, and others who were part of the group's storied career. It was first published in the July 2009 issue.

"The Road Goes on Forever.” Gregg Allman wrote and sang the words in Midnight Rider, and his Allman Brothers Band (ABB) adopted them as a motto, and for good reason: despite the death of two founding members, two breakups and an acrimonious parting with guitarist Dickey Betts, this summer the band is marking its 40th anniversary and doing so in high style.

Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, who have now played together for nine years in the ABB, form a dynamic, explosive duo that blows away the competition. In that respect, some things in the Allman Brothers Band never change.

The road for the ABB began in 1968 when Duane Allman, a red-hot session guitarist who had made his mark recording with Otis Rush, Boz Scaggs, Aretha Franklin and others, headed to Jacksonville, Florida, looking to put together a band. His manager wanted a power trio – just like Cream – but Duane reportedly scoffed at the notion, saying, “I ain’t on no star trip.” 

It was a revealing statement, for the group that resulted from Duane’s quest for kindred musical souls was anything but ego-driven. The music of the Allman Brothers Band has revolved around group improvisation and dynamics since their self-titled 1969 debut.

Duane’s musical vision and open mind allowed him to ignore protocol and put together a completely unique hard-rocking outfit featuring two very different but complementary drummers (Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson and Butch Trucks), an inventive bassist who could hold down the bottom end while displaying melodic flair (Berry Oakley), a soulful singer and organist (brother Gregg), and another hot lead guitarist (Betts).

Betts would prove to be a monumental addition, for his participation underscored the band’s adherence to a rule of jazz: that a group needs multiple, equally powerful lead voices to truly generate sparks. 

Betts and Allman rewrote the rules for how two rock guitarists can work together, completely scrapping the traditional rhythm/lead roles to stand toe to toe, alternately cutting each other’s heads and joining together for marvelous flights of harmony.

The ABB’s instrumental majesty was grounded in the blues and in the excellent tunes penned by Gregg Allman and Betts. This combination of a unique vision, instrumental superiority and great songwriting has carried the band through four decades. The Allmans pushed on after Duane Allman’s and Berry Oakley’s tragic deaths, reunited after two breakups and, perhaps most shockingly, have performed without Betts since 2000.

What follows is the ultimate overview of the band’s career, an oral history told in the words of the people who lived it.

The beginning of the Allman Brothers Band

Duane Allman met drummer Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson while working on sessions in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Duane wanted to form his own band, and his manager, Phil Walden, suggested that he create a power trio in the spirit of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. 

Allman targeted bassist Berry Oakley, a Chicago native who was then playing in a Florida band called Second Coming with guitarist Dickey Betts. At Duane’s invitation, Oakley came to Alabama for jam sessions...

Dickey Betts: “The band just sort of happened. It was supposed to be a three-piece with Duane, Berry and Jaimoe. Duane and Jaimoe kept coming and sitting in with Second Coming to get used to playing together, and as we started jamming, something clicked. 

“Eventually Duane asked if I’d go with them. When Butch [Trucks] came along one day and jammed with us, it was something special. All of a sudden the trio had five pieces. We all were smart enough to see that each of us was making a contribution to the sound.”

Butch Trucks: “I had played with Gregg and Duane before, and he called me when he came back to Jacksonville. He was jamming with lots of different people. We played, and it just worked. Jaimoe told Duane I was the guy they needed – he wanted two drummers like James Brown had – but I don’t think Duane wanted me in the band. 

“I fit musically, but I was a bundle of insecurity, and he didn’t want that. He was such a strong person – very confident and totally sure of himself – and that’s the kind of people he wanted around him.”

Betts: “It says a lot that Duane’s hero was Muhammad Ali. He had Ali’s type of supreme confidence. If you weren’t involved in what he thought was the big picture, he didn’t have any time for you. 

“A lot of people really didn’t like him for that. It’s not that he was aggressive; it was more a super-positive, straight-ahead, I’ve-got-work-to-do kind of thing. If you didn’t get it, see you later. He always seemed like he was charging ahead.”

Trucks: “One day we were jamming on a shuffle, going nowhere, so I started pulling back and Duane whipped around, looked me in the eyes and played this lick way up the neck, like a challenge. My first reaction was to back up, but he kept doing it, which had everyone looking at me like the whole flaccid nature of the sound was my fault. 

“The third time I got really angry and started pounding the drums like I was hitting him upside his head. The jam took off, and I forgot about being self-conscious and started playing music. Duane smiled at me, as if to say, 'Now that’s more like it!'

“It was like he reached inside me and flipped a switch, and I’ve never been insecure about my drumming since. It was an absolute epiphany; it hit me like a ton of bricks. I swear, if that moment had not happened, I would probably have spent the past 30 years as a teacher. Duane was capable of reaching inside people and pulling out the best. He made us all realize that music will never be great if everyone doesn’t give it all they have, and we all took the attitude that if you don’t do that, why bother?”

Betts: “Duane was a natural leader, and if he got knocked down, you’d feel compelled to do everything you could to get him back up and going again. He and I talked a lot about that and decided that would be the difference in our band as compared to every other band we’d ever been in: when someone falls, instead of talking about him or taking advantage of him, we’d pull him back up. Whenever we needed a leader, someone would step forward and lead.”

Trucks: “One day, the five of us had just played this incredible jam, and Duane went to the door and said, 'If anyone wants to leave this room, they’re going to have to fight their way out.' We all knew we had something great going, but we didn’t have a singer.”

Phil Walden [co-founder of Capricorn Records]: “They had this great instrumental presence but no real vocalist. So Duane called Gregg and asked him to come down.”

Gregg was still living in Los Angeles, having remained there after the breakup of Hour Glass, a band he and Duane had formed and which had recorded for Liberty Records. The records had little success, and Duane returned to the South, “where we belonged,” says Gregg.

Gregg Allman: “I didn’t have a band, but I was under contract to a label that had me cut two terrible records with these studio cats in L.A. They had me do a blues version of Tammy Wynette’s D-I-V-O-R-C-E, which can’t be done. It was really horrible. They told us what to wear, what to play… everything. I hated it, so I was excited when my brother called and said he was putting a new band together and wanted me to join. I was doing nothing, going nowhere.

“Duane said he was tired of being a robot on the staff down in Muscle Shoals [Sound Studio], even though he had made some progress and gotten a little fame from playing with great people like Aretha and Wilson Pickett. He wanted to take off and do his own thing. He said, 'I’m ready to get back on the stage, and I got this killer band together. We got two drummers, a great bass player and a hell of a lead guitar player, too.' And I said, 'Well, what do you do?' And he said, 'Wait’ll you get here and I’ll show you.'

“I didn’t know that he had learned to play slide so well. We were not together for the 11 months after he left L.A. – the only time we were ever apart – and that’s when he really learned to play slide. He sent me a ticket, but I didn’t have any money, so I cashed it in, stuck out my thumb on the San Bernardino Freeway and got a ride all the way to Jacksonville.

“I walked into rehearsal on March 26, 1969, and they played me the track they had worked up – Muddy Waters’ Trouble No More. It blew me away. It was so intense. I got my brother aside and said, 'I don’t know if I can cut this. I don’t know if I’m good enough.' And he starts in on me: 'Oh, you little punk, I told these people all about you, and you don’t come in here letting me down.'

“He handed me the words to the song, all written out. I said, 'Count it off, let’s do it,' and I did my damnedest. I’d never heard or sung this song before, but by God I did it. I shut my eyes and sang, and at the end of that there was just a long silence. At that moment we knew what we had. Duane knew which buttons to push. He kinda pissed me off and embarrassed me into singing my guts out.”

Walden: “Aside from a true vocal presence, Gregg brought these really important foundation songs that the band was really built around.”

Allman: “They asked if I had any songs, and I showed them 22. They rejected them all except Ain’t My Cross to Bear and Dreams and told me to get busy writing. And within the next five days I wrote Whipping Post, Black-Hearted Woman and a few others. I got on a real roll there. Those songs came out of the long struggle of trying so hard and getting fucked by different land sharks in the business – just the competition I experienced out in L.A. and being really frustrated, but hanging on and not saying 'Fuck it' and going into construction work or something.”

Betts: “Berry played a huge role in the band’s arrangements. Whipping Post was a ballad when Gregg brought it to us. It was a real melancholy, slow minor-key blues, along the lines of Dreams. Oakley came up with the heavy bass line that starts off the track, along with the 6/8-to-5/8 shifting time signature. 

“Oakley called a halt to the rehearsal and said, 'Let me work on this song tonight, and let’s get back to it tomorrow.' By the next day, he had that intro worked out. When he played that riff for us, everyone went, 'Yeah! That’s it!' Oakley morphed a lot of those songs into something different.”

Breaking through with guitar harmonies

The band’s first real musical breakthrough was the extensive use of guitar harmonies. Betts, with his knack for crafting memorable melodies, generally played the line first. Allman, with his perfect pitch and spot-on ear, picked up anything and created a harmony on the spot.

Betts: “We got those ideas from jazz horn players like Miles Davis and John Coltrane and fiddle lines from western swing music. I listened to a lot of country and string [bluegrass] music growing up. I played mandolin, ukulele and fiddle before I ever touched a guitar, which may be where a lot of the major keys I play come from. 

“But I also always loved jazz, and once the Allman Brothers were formed, Jaimoe really fired us up on jazz, which is all he listens to. He had us listening to a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and a lot of our guitar arrangements came from the way they played together.

“Duane and I had an immense amount of respect for each other. We talked about being jealous of each other and how dangerous it was to think that way, that we had to fight that feeling when we were onstage. He’d say, 'When I listen to you play, I have to try hard to keep the jealously thing at bay and not try to out-do you when I play my solo. But I still want to play my best!'

“We’d laugh about what a thin line that was. We learned a lot from each other. Duane had a strong belief in himself, and he was damn good. I was damn good too; I just didn’t believe in myself the way Duane did.”

Warren Haynes: “The Allman Brothers Band is based on the fact that no one onstage can rest on their laurels; you have to bring it. That’s where that fire comes from, and it certainly emanates from the intensity of having two great lead players like Dickey and Duane throwing sparks off of each other. 

“Obviously, jazz and blues musicians have been doing this for decades, but I think they really brought that sense that anyone onstage can inspire anyone else at any given time to rock music.”

Allman: “Duane was all about two lead guitars. He loved players like Curtis Mayfield and wanted the bass, keyboards and second guitar to form patterns behind the solo rather than just comping. Duane also loved jazz guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow and Kenny Burrell.

“But the main initial jazz influence came from Jaimoe, and Jaimoe really got all of us into Coltrane, which became a big influence. I brought the blues to the band, and what country music you hear in our sound came from Dickey. We all dug this different stuff, and we all started listening to the other guys’ music. What came out was a mixture of all of it.”

Betts: “Duane and Gregg had a real 'purist' blues approach, but Oakley and I, in our band, would take a standard blues and push the envelope. We loved the blues, but we wanted to play in a rock style, like what Cream and Hendrix were doing.

“Duane was smart enough to see what ingredients were missing from both bands. We knew that we didn’t have enough of the purist blues, and he didn’t have enough of the avant-garde/psychedelic approach to the blues. So he tried to put the two sounds together, and that was the first step in finding the sound of the Allman Brothers Band.”

A new voice on the American music scene

The band moved to Macon, Georgia, and spent countless hours living and playing together, in the process forming a real brotherhood. Their self-titled debut, featuring five Gregg Allman originals and covers of Muddy Waters and Spencer Davis songs, was released in November 1969. It heralded the arrival of a new voice on the American music scene, but few were listening...

Walden: “The first album sold less than 35,000 copies when it was released.”

Betts: “We were just so naïve. All we knew is that we had the best band that any of us had ever played in and were making the best music that we had ever made. That’s what we went with. Everyone in the industry was saying that we’d never make it, we’d never do anything, that Phil Walden should move us to New York or L.A. and acclimate us to the industry, that we had to get the idea of how a rock and roll band was supposed to present themselves.

“Of course, none of us would do that, and thankfully, Walden was smart enough to see that would just ruin what we had. We just stayed on the road, playing gigs and getting tighter and better.”

Allman: “We sure didn’t set out to be a 'jam band', but those long jams just kinda emanated from within the band, because we didn’t want to just play three minutes and be over. And we definitely didn’t want to play nobody else’s songs like we had to do in California. We were going to do our own tunes, which at first meant mine, or else we were going to take old blues songs like Trouble No More and totally refurbish them to our tastes.”

The band’s second album Idlewild South, was released less than a year later. Producer Tom Dowd, who would become an honorary member of the band, helped them expand their palette. Still, the album did only marginally better than its predecessor despite two singles, Midnight Rider and Revival and the debut of Betts’ masterful instrumental In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.

Allman: “When the first record came out at Number 200 with an anchor, and dropped off the face of the earth, my brother and I did not get discouraged. But I thought Idlewild South was a much better record, and when that died on the vine, I thought, 'Damn, maybe we were wrong about this group.'”

Walden: “I doubted myself. It seemed like I had just been wrong and that they were never going to catch on. People just didn’t grasp what the Allmans were all about, musically or any other way. But they kept touring, going across the country, establishing themselves city by city as the best live band around, and building a base.”

Betts: “Duane was bursting with energy; he was a force to be reckoned with. His drive and focus were incredible, as was his intense belief in himself and our band. He knew we were going to make it. We all knew we were a good band, but no one else had that supreme confidence. And his confidence and enthusiasm were infectious. He helped us all believe in ourselves, and that was an essential key to the success of the Allman Brothers Band.”

Allman: “We played 306 nights in 1970, traveling most of the off days. We were in a Ford Econoline van and then a Winnebago. That kind of schedule puts a lot of wear and tear on your ass, but we were sure getting better. We simply realized that we were a better live band than studio outfit because we were always ready to experiment – offstage as well as on, I may add. And the audience was a big part of what we did, which couldn’t be duplicated in a studio. A light bulb finally went off: we needed to do a live album.”

At Fillmore East

The Allman Brothers’ marathon live shows were certainly drawing raves. Onstage, the group combined the Grateful Dead’s go-anywhere jam ethos with a far-superior musical precision. Under the circumstances, a live album was an obvious choice. The result was the double-album At Fillmore East. To cut the album, the band played New York’s Fillmore East for three nights on March 11, 12 and 13 of 1971. 

A mobile 16-track recording studio was parked on the street outside the theater, with Dowd and a small crew set up inside. Things went smoothly on the first night until the band unexpectedly brought out sax player “Juicy” Carter and harmonica player Thom Doucette.

At Fillmore East’s sales numbers were strong from the start, and the band kept on the road. Duane’s constant faith seemed to be paying off. But things were far from calm...

Tom Dowd: “One of the guys asked me how to mic the horn, and I thought he was joking. They started playing and the horn was leaking all over everything, rendering the songs unusable. I ran down at the break and grabbed Duane and said, 'The horn has to go!' and he went, 'But he’s right on, man.' And I said, 'Duane, trust me, this isn’t the time to try this out.' He asked if the harp could stick around, and I said sure, because I knew it could be contained [on the recording] and wiped out if necessary.

“Every night after the show we would just grab some beers and sandwiches and head up to the Atlantic studios to go through the show. That way, the next night, they knew exactly what they had and which songs they didn’t have to play again.”

Betts: “We just felt like we could play all night and sometimes we did. We could really hit the note. There’s not a single fix on Fillmore. Everything you hear there is how we played it.”

Dowd: “That album captured the band in all its glory. The Allmans have always had a perpetual swing sensation that is unique in rock. They swing like they’re playing jazz when they play things that are tangential to the blues, and even when they play heavy rock. They’re never vertical but always going forward, and it’s always a groove. 

“Fusion is a term that came later, but if you wanted to look at a fusion album, it would be Fillmore East. Here was a rock and roll band playing blues in the jazz vernacular. And they tore the place up.”

Betts: “There’s nothing too complicated about what makes Fillmore a great album. We were a hell of a band, and we just got a good recording that captured what we sounded like. I think it’s one of the greatest musical projects that’s ever been done in any genre. It’s an absolutely honest representation of our band and of the times.”

Jaimoe: “Fillmore was a particularly great performance and represents what a typical night was like for us. That’s what we did!”

Walden: “Atlantic/Atco rejected the idea of releasing a double-live album. [Atlantic executive] Jerry Wexler thought it was ridiculous to preserve all these jams. But we explained to them that the Allman Brothers were the people’s band, that playing – not recording – was what they were all about, and that a standard-length phonograph record was confining to a group like this.”

Allman: “All of a sudden, here comes fame and fortune. In a three- or four-week period, we went from rags to riches, from living on a three-dollar-a-day per diem to 'Get anything you want, boys!'”

Butch Trucks: “Duane was strong, confident and honest. He wanted to experience everything, good or bad, and when he realized that what he was doing was negative, he would stop. I saw him experiment with every drug there was, but once he realized it was affecting his music, he stopped and never did it again. And that included heroin. He never stuck a needle in his arm, but he would snort it. 

“One night in the summer of ’71, in San Francisco, he came to my hotel room and jumped in my face. He said, 'When Dickey gets up to play, the rhythm section is pumping away, and when I get up there you’re laying back and not pushing at all.' I looked him dead in the eye and said, 'Duane, you’re so fucked up, you’re not giving us anything.' He looked me in the eye, walked out the door and never touched the stuff again. 

“I think he knew I was telling the truth, and that’s what he wanted to hear. He needed someone to tell him what he already knew, and it was one of the few times I had the balls to get in his face.”

Dr. John [keyboardist and peer of the Allmans]: “Duane was so special, man, a real sweetheart. He was out there, past left field, but he was as sweet as they come. In some way, Duane knew he lived on the edge. I don’t think he had a death wish, but he knew that he was pushing it, that his lifestyle wasn’t necessarily compatible with life. I remember being in Miami with him, and he got an Opel because that was supposed to be the car you couldn’t turn over, and he just wanted to prove that he could flip it.

“We were there doing a session with Ronnie Hawkins, and the three of us was havin’ a drink with a hurricane comin’ up, and he said something like, 'If I’m not here, could you look after my brother?' It wouldn’t have been his style to be that direct, ’cause he wasn’t that clear about anything. But he knew he might not be around for real long, and we both understood that’s what he was saying. It was eerie, man.”

Tragedy strikes

At Fillmore East was certified Gold on October 14, 1971. 20 days later Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle crash in Macon, while on a break from recording the band’s followup album, Eat a Peach, in Miami. He was one month shy of his 25th birthday and had been playing slide guitar for less than four years.

Allman: “We didn’t enjoy our [breakthrough with] Fillmore for long. A lot of the initial impact of the joy was absent because of the heavy tragedy that happened to my brother. We worked so hard, so long, to get there, then, bam, he was gone.”

Betts: “We thought about breaking up and all forming our own bands. But the thought of just ending it and being alone was too depressing.”

Scott Boyer [musician close to the Allmans]: “Gregg was extremely tore up, which is only natural. Actually, every musician in Macon was pretty down. We couldn’t believe Duane was gone. It was inconceivable how someone that alive could be dead. He was a central figure for all of us, and, of course, he was the central figure for Gregg. They were extremely close.”

Trucks: “It was just unacceptable that he was gone. Unfathomable. We thought about quitting because how could we go on without Duane? But then we thought, How could we stop? We decided to take six months off, but we had to get back together after a few weeks because it was too lonely and depressing. A musician gets his emotions out by playing music. We were all just devastated, and the only way to deal with it was to play.”

The band had already recorded several tracks for Eat a Peach. These included Little Martha, a gorgeous acoustic duet between Betts and Allman, which was the only music Duane ever officially wrote, and Blue Sky, Betts’ country rock song, which features a stunning dual-guitar break. Just weeks after Duane’s death, the band recorded four more outstanding tracks, including Melissa, Betts’ instrumental Les Brers in A Minor and Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More, Gregg’s defiant response to his brother’s passing. 

The double-album release was rounded out by more great tracks from the Fillmore shows, including the 34-minute Mountain Jam, One Way Out and Trouble No More. Eat a Peach was an instant classic, but as the band returned to the road, they felt the absence of their guiding light profoundly.

Allman and Betts worked constantly, recording solo albums even as the ABB began cutting Brothers and Sisters, their follow-up to Eat a Peach, featuring the hits Ramblin’ Man and Jessica. Pianist Chuck Leavell, who had played on Gregg’s Laid Back solo effort, became a crucial new member of the ABB.

Trucks: “We played gigs as a five-piece, but there was a big hole there. How could you not miss such a personality? But we were up there playing the music that he started. We were playing for him, and that was the way to be closest to him. Duane had put this thing inside all of us and we couldn’t walk away.”

Chuck Leavell: “I was asked to work on Laid Back. The Brothers were recording Brothers and Sisters at the same time, the sessions often overlapped, and we all hung around the studio an awful lot. Before I knew what was going on, I was working on that, too. Things were pretty loose.”

Betts: “We did what we had to do. We were forced to bring new people into the band, and replacing Duane with another guitar player was out of the question. We added Chuck Leavell, and it changed the whole direction of the band – a little too much in the end. It wasn’t by any means all bad change; Jessica wouldn’t be the same tune without Chuck, who is just a great, great player. But the band headed off the path of what the original players had envisioned from the first day.

Trucks: “Dickey took over. While Duane was around we were a blues-based band and we added John Coltrane and Miles Davis to the mix. After Duane died, we started heading in a country direction, because that was Dickey’s background.

“We all thought Ramblin’ Man was too country to even record. We knew it was a good song, but it didn’t sound like us. 

“We went to the studio to do a demo to send to Merle Haggard or someone, and then we got into that big long guitar jam, which kind of fit us, so we put it on the album, and it became a hit. Then it more and more and more became Dickey’s band.”

Shortly into sessions for the new album, tragedy struck the band again. On November 11, 1972, Berry Oakley was killed in a motorcycle crash, just two weeks past the one-year anniversary – and only three blocks from the location – of Duane’s death.

The band added Lamar Williams and finished Brothers and Sisters, which was released in August 1973. It became the Allman Brothers Band’s first Number One album, thanks in part to the hit single Ramblin’ Man, as well as Jessica and Southbound, which both remain band staples. 

The Allman Brothers were just about to find their greatest success, but the band was reeling from the impact of so many changes.

Betts: “After Duane died, it was still very dynamic at first, but it just slowly slipped away. And then we lost Berry, and it was very hard to continue. I’m not weighing Duane’s loss against Berry’s loss, but losing two members was just so tough. Berry was also a huge personality. 

“He was the social dynamics guy: he wanted our band to relate to the people honestly. He was always making sure that the merchandise was worth what they were charging, and he was always going in and arguing about not letting the ticket prices get too high, so that our people could still afford to come see us.”

Trucks: “Brothers and Sisters took off and we became big rock stars and were the number-one band in the country, but the music became secondary to everything else. Of course, having all these gorgeous women falling over us and all this stuff was fun. It was a big party. But the music became secondary. 

“Eventually, we all realized that the drugs and everything else had become so destructive that we were killing ourselves, and it got to where we didn’t like each other. We just couldn’t keep it going.”

Betts: “The whole thing probably wouldn’t have even lasted as long as it did if it weren’t for Chuck Leavell. He was just such a strong player.”

Breakups and reunions

By the time the group’s live effort Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas was released in 1976, the Allmans had disbanded. They reunited in 1978 with guitarist “Dangerous” Dan Toler, who had played with Betts in his band Great Southern, and released Enlightened Rogues in early 1979. But some indefinable spark was missing, and the band’s music grew weaker over the course of two uncompelling albums recorded for Arista: 1980’s Reach for the Sky and 1981’s Brothers of the Road.

Dowd: “We tried very hard to reach the classic sound on Enlightened Rogues. We worked our fingers to the bone.”

Trucks: “That band just didn’t work. The chemistry wasn’t there. The only reason the first album [Reach for the Sky] was half successful was that Tom Dowd worked so hard.”

Betts: “We just could not measure up to the original band. Even when we had some great players, there was a pull, a tension. The unity was lacking. And we didn’t have another slide guitarist, so I played slide, which I never really liked, and which also took away from the sound of my guitar.”

Trucks: “At Arista, [label founder] Clive Davis tried to turn us into Led Zeppelin and brought in outside producers, and it just kept getting worse.”

Betts: “When the music trend started turning away from blues-oriented rock toward synthesizer-based dance music arrangements, the record company started to dictate what type of record we could make, and we got caught up in that whole thing. 

“A guy like Eric Clapton has a way of being a chameleon, of finding songs that keep him in the forefront and surviving through times when the kind of music he loves to play isn’t popular. 

“The Allman Brothers Band was never able to do that. We either sounded like our band or we didn’t. The band never really had anything special when we’re not able to do the instrumental jams and improvisation – which were kind of taken away from us for a while. We were even asked not to mention southern rock in an interview or wear hats onstage.”

Allman: “Arista tried to throw us into doing something that we weren’t. The whole music scene of the Eighties just wasn’t conducive to our music at all. We cut two albums and…it was very frustrating. Embarrassing, really.”

Betts: “We broke up in ’81 because we decided we better just back out or we would ruin what was left of the band’s image.”

Throughout the '80s, the members of the Allman Brothers Band toured with different groups. By the end of the decade, the new classic rock radio format had given the Allman Brothers’ great songs renewed prominence, while the 1989 four-album Dreams box set shone a light on their legacy. 

Epic Records, which had both Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts under contract, suggested an ABB reunion. The band took to the road with two new players: guitarist Warren Haynes, who had played with Betts for several years, and bassist Allen Woody, who was hired after open auditions.

The Allman Brothers band returned to the studio with Dowd and produced 1990’s Seven Turns, a surprisingly strong comeback. They followed it up with Shades of Two Worlds the following year, then showed their mettle on two live releases and 1994’s Where It All Begins.

Betts: “Classic rock stations really brought the Allman Brothers back, and Stevie Ray Vaughan opened the whole thing up. He just would not be denied and kept making those traditional urban blues records. He just shoved blues down people’s throats, and they got to likin’ it. He just kicked the door open.

“I remember how beautiful it made me feel to hear him on the radio. And I think that a lot of other people felt the same way and were more ready for us to reappear. The Who were touring, and the Stones were getting ready to hit the road. CBS wanted us to get back together because everyone else was doing it. But it wasn’t nearly that simple. We knew we had to go slow, to see if the music was up to snuff and whether we really wanted to do it.

“Seven Turns was a tough album, because we knew that the critics would use it to determine whether we should be back playing together or should have remained broken up. We were under pressure to show that we belonged back together. We never doubted it, but the album simply had to prove that.”

Allman: “To me, there wasn’t a lot of pressure on Seven Turns. It was more of an adventure: let’s see what a few years away from each other did for us. And it was good. We needed a break from each other and came out swinging.”

Betts: “There were a variety of reasons that group worked better than some of the others. For one thing, Warren and Allen knew what we were after. They had studied us for years and understood where they fit into the band. And Warren was the first guitarist who came along since Duane who could really stand on his own and play off of me, which is the basis of our whole style. 

“He’s a great player and has his own style, so he was not pulled into constantly trying to sound like Duane, though he was plagued with that comparison from day one.”

Haynes: “I had listened to the Allman Brothers since I was nine years old, and I studied that music hard. But once I joined the band, some of the things that they were doing became obvious to me in a way that I could never have figured out as a listener.

“At the beginning I was constantly drawing the line about how much of Duane’s influence to show. It was always left up to me how much of it to insert. They’ve always said, 'Play like you. That’s what we hired you to do.' They definitely allowed me the creative freedom to interject my own personality into the music. Not a lot of bands would do that. 

“The Allman Brothers were very open minded about that from the very beginning, because that music was built on the foundation of two guitar players working equally together. If you don’t have that, the music suffers.”

Allman: “From the start, Woody and Warren were full-on Allman Brothers, much more so than some people in earlier incarnations. And that made a big difference.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Allman Brothers Band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1995. Gregg Allman remembers the event primarily for what he didn’t do – speak coherently – and how it prompted him to sober up.

Allman: “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame night is what made me finally clean up. I could barely stand up. I meant to say something about my mother and something about Bill Graham. I meant to say a lot of stuff, and I was too gone to say any of it. All day I tried to be really cool about it, but you just cannot. Later, I watched it on TV, and I was mortified. 

“That’s what it took for me to get serious about cleaning up. I didn’t go into a rehab. I hired a private nurse to come in to my house in Novato, California. It was a real rough year, but I sure needed it.”

Departure of Dickey Betts

In 1997, Haynes and Woody left the Allman Brothers Band to pursue their power trio, Gov’t Mule, full time. The band replaced them with bassist Oteil Burbridge and guitarist Jack Pearson and soldiered on with a somewhat quieter, more groove-based sound. 

In ’99, Pearson departed and was replaced by Derek Trucks, Butch’s then-19-year-old nephew. One year later, Trucks had already begun to establish himself as a dynamic soloist when, after a brief and shaky spring tour, the band members told Dickey Betts that they would no longer perform with him.

Trucks: “We did not fire Dickey. We wrote him a letter and said we would not tour with him that summer, but dates were already booked and we were going to honor them with someone else. He responded by hiring a lawyer and suing us, and then we sat there in arbitration for weeks. After all the stuff that was said, there’s no way we can work together again.”

Betts: “I knew that there was tension that had to snap, but I had no idea that it was all on me. I thought something would snap that I would have to take care of, like I had so many times before. I called Gregg, and he said, ‘I don’t owe you an explanation. Listen to the fucking tapes [of the spring tour],’ and hung up.”

Allman: “We made this decision for a simple reason: the music was suffering. It had ceased to be a band – everything had to be based around what Dickey was playing. I was actually getting ready to walk because I could not stand the situation anymore. I even wrote a letter of resignation. Then I spoke with Butchie [Trucks], and he was thinking the same thing, and we just realized that was crazy. 

“After so many years of drinking and abusing drugs, I finally cleaned up, and I didn’t want to waste one minute of time for the rest of my life. God, I had wasted enough time! I was finally sober. That monkey was off my back. I even quit cigarettes and I quit it all at once. 

“I realized I was on death’s doorstep, and I was thankful to God that I had woke up before all the innings of the game were over. I wasn’t gonna put up with nothing – not another minute of bullying or negativity mixed with music. I’d quit music first, and I don’t think I’m ever gonna quit music.

“It’s definitely hard to maintain a band for so many years for many, many reasons. It’s a give-and-take thing, so similar to a marriage or relationship. You have to maintain a balance or everyone suffers.”

Betts: “It was a real family for so long, and we took care of each other. We took care of brother Gregg, and we took care of brother Butch. It’s amazing that we kept going for 30 years with our two big brothers gone. Then it finally flew apart, and it’s kind of okay. I just happened to be the one that it came down on.”

Guitarist Jimmy Herring joined the ABB for their 2000 summer tour. That August, Woody passed away. Allman called Haynes and extended an offer to perform with the group. Unsure of the Gov’t Mule’s future, Haynes accepted and returned to the Allmans the following March for their annual residency at New York City’s Beacon Theater. 

He was billed as a special guest, with no guarantees of what would come next. Haynes and Derek Trucks immediately struck an explosive chemistry, which has continued to deepen over the years. Subsequent to Haynes rejoining the band, the ABB released Hittin’ the Note, their last album of new material, in 2003.

Haynes: “No one knew what I was going to do, including me. I had some concerns about coming back to the Allmans, but Gregg’s phone call was really a saving grace, because I needed to stop wallowing in my misery over Woody’s death and plunge into something. I agreed to play some shows and see if the vibe and the music were good.”

Trucks: “Warren was the guy we needed. I’m not sure we would have continued at all if Warren hadn’t taken the job. I simply can’t imagine who else could have done this gig.”

Haynes: “The band has certainly undergone a strange transformation, but in a very positive way. This particular unit plays great together and probably listens more intently than any band I’ve ever been in, which makes it easy to go some place different every night. And that is the goal: to take this venerable institution someplace new without ever losing touch with the four-decade tradition that makes the Allman Brothers Band something really special.”

Derek Trucks: “It’s just an underlying respect for the band’s history and legacy, which Warren and I both share. You want to make music that can stand on its own, and you want to be able to listen to it in 20 years and be proud. It’s a big obligation to make music as the Allman Brothers, and both of us want to make sure that the name is back in a very positive way. You don’t want to be the guy who let it slip!”

Allman: “Where does Derek come from? I don’t know, but if you believe in reincarnation...”

Trucks: “I can’t explain Derek and don’t even try. I’ve been playing with him nine or 10 years now and I still have no idea what he is going to do. Every time he plays something it’s a surprise, and it’s astounding what that says about his musical depth. I think he is what Duane may have become if he had more time. Remember, Duane was 24 when he died and had only been playing slide for a few years.”

Allman: “Probably not a day goes by that we don’t talk about Duane. It’s almost like he’s with us. Sometimes when I’m onstage I can feel his presence so strong, I can almost smell him. It’s like he’s right there next to me. For years I thought that my brother really got shortchanged because he never quite got to see what he had accomplished, but I’ve slowly come to realize that he left a hell of a legacy for dying at the age of 24.

“When we perform, the drummers are back there, behind me, and I’m on the frontline of the stage. One night at the Beacon, I looked down and realized I was the only one left on the frontline. I guess it makes me appreciate the whole thing even more, really. 

“It’s hard to stick together, and that’s probably why a lot of other good bands don’t last this long. My brother, Woody, Oakley – they can’t be replaced because they were all unique individuals. But it doesn’t mean the whole shebang has got to fold. We still have music left to play.”

Kenny Wayne Shepherd got the chance to play Duane Allman’s 1957 Les Paul Goldtop at his Macon, GA show on Friday (June 9) and didn’t waste the opportunity to stretch out an electric guitar that is now, quite literally, a museum piece.

The instrument is famed for its use on the track Layla and was used by Allman for the majority of the Allman Brothers Band’s early material, until September 1970, at which point he traded it for a 1959 Les Paul Burst.

The 1957 Goldtop sold at auction for $1.25 million in 2019, making it one of the most expensive guitars ever sold at auction. These days, the guitar usually sits under glass at The Big House museum in the Allman Brothers Band’s defacto hometown, Macon, GA.

Shepherd played like he’d forgotten this, though – and fan shot clips show that, while he stopped short of hurling it around his shoulder, he certainly gave the revered electric guitar a solid workout. 

In the videos, the blues virtuoso can be seen performing a number of tracks, including his own Woman Like You, Long Time Running and his go-to Buffalo Springfield cover Mr Soul.

The performance raises our (bushy and distinguished) eyebrows for several reasons. Firstly, there’s the aforementioned iconic Allman association and historic nature of the instrument itself. 

Secondly, the fact that Shepherd is known far and wide as a resolute Strat player, but here takes to a Gibson Les Paul like a duck to water.  

Thirdly and finally, perhaps the most shocking thing is that despite the fact that the guitar he’s holding is worth more than the average American home, Shepherd seems absolutely unabashed in his performance.

More power to KWS, then, for resisting the obvious urge to default into delicately reverential tribute territory (or whip out a slide) and instead simply play the instrument – and you can’t deny it sounds good in his hands.

The guitarist’s composure may be down to experience, of course. When it comes to big-name guitars, it’s not his first rodeo. 

Back in September, Shepherd played David Gilmour’s iconic black Strat live, a guitar that eventually sold for nearly $4m – though in that show he did make a nod to its previous owner in a performance of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.

Tedeschi Trucks Band, led by slide and electric guitar wizard Derek Trucks and guitarist and vocalist Susan Tedeschi have announced the release of Layla Revisited (Live At LOCKN'), a one-off live recording of the seminal Derek & the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, performed in its entirety at the LOCKN' Festival in Arrington, Virginia on August 24, 2019.

The set also finds TTB joined by Phish leader Trey Anastasio, as well as frequent collaborator Doyle Bramhall II.

You can check out a performance of Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad, featuring dual Trucks and Anastasio solos, above.

The Layla performance came as a surprise to fans in attendance at LOCKN' that night, with the set initially billed only as “Tedeschi Trucks Band featuring Trey Anastasio,” with no mention made of the album.

But Tedeschi and Trucks’ connection to Layla, which saw Clapton joined by Allman Brothers Band slide guitar great Duane Allman, ran deep: it was initially released on November 9, 1970, the same day Susan Tedeschi was born; Trucks’ parents were such fans of the record that they named Derek after the band; and Trucks spent 15 years as a member of the Allman Brothers Band and has toured extensively with Clapton.

“By the time that I started playing guitar, the sound of Duane Allman’s slide was almost an obsession,” Trucks said in a statement. “His playing on Layla is still one of the high-water marks for me. The spirit, the joy, the recklessness, and the inevitability of it. My dad would play that record for me and my brother to fall asleep to and further sear it into my DNA.”

Layla Revisited (Live At LOCKN') will be released July 16 via Fantasy Records. It’s available for preorder now.

Tedeschi Trucks Band are also hitting the road for limited capacity shows as part of their Fireside LIVE tour. You can check out all the upcoming dates here.

The Allman Brothers Band’s final show with founder and guitarist Duane Allman has been uncovered - and is set for release later this year, as The Last Note.

Recorded October 17, 1971 at the Painters Mill Music Fair in Owings Mills, MD, the show took place just 12 days before Allman died in a tragic motorcycle accident.

The show was captured on a handheld cassette machine by 18-year-old radio journalist Sam Idas, and is described as a “simple audience recording”, enhanced by modern technology.

Idas was originally scheduled to interview Allman after that evening’s show.

“My only intention was to record the interview,” the journalist recalls. “This was a brand-new cassette recorder with an internal microphone, and I had one 60-minute cassette tape. I was sitting there with the recorder in my lap, and I remember thinking 'Why don't I try this out? I can record the concert!'

“It was a totally spontaneous decision. I'd been to many concerts, but this was the only time I had the thought - and the motivation - to record the show.”

That cassette was eventually uncovered a few years ago, and when ABB manager Bert Holman caught wind of it, that set the wheels in motion for a release.

The Last Note is set to be released on October 16 2020 in a package that includes never-before-published photos, extensive liner notes from ABB archivist John Lynsky and even photos of Idas’ actual cassette.

The tracklist for the album is as follows:

1. Statesboro Blues
2. Trouble No More
3. Don't Keep Me Wondering
4. One Way Out
5. In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed
6. Hot 'lanta
7. Whipping Post

For more info, head over to The Allman Brothers Band.

Not content with the status quo, industrious young guitar players have endeavored over the decades to make things more difficult for themselves.

Some have tried playing the guitar behind their back, over their head, with their teeth, with their friends' teeth, etc. And then there was the inventive guitarist who, many decades ago, decided to slip a bottle over his finger and slide it along his guitar's strings to produce a magical sound (He probably emptied the bottle himself, if you know what I mean).

While playing the guitar with your teeth is, was and always shall be a novelty, slide guitar - and slide guitarists - is and are here to stay. They actually started digging in their heels long before Robert Johnson made his haunting Delta blues recordings in Texas in the 1930s. 

Since Johnson's time, players - including guys like George Thorogood, Derek Trucks, Ry Cooder, Jerry Douglas and Roy Rogers - have built entire careers around slide guitar and its many stylistic varieties.

Below, we present 10 tracks that represent essential listening in the world of slide guitar. Please note that we're sticking with regular ol' six-string guitar - no lap steel, sacred steel, pedal steel, etc. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) These songs are presented in no particular order. I repeat: These songs are presented in no particular order.

• For more slide goodness, check out the latest issue of Guitar World, where Slide Rules!

1. The Allman Brothers Band - Statesboro Blues

Guitarist: Duane Allman

A generation of blues-influenced rockers toyed with slide guitar for several years, slowly bringing it into mainstream music (Check out Jeff Beck's performance on Evil Hearted You by the Yardbirds), but no one dragged it into the modern era quite like Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. 

He used the slide to imitate the sound of a blues harp - not to mention mesmerize countless concert goers who were knocked out by his dexterity and intensity. Perhaps his quintessential slide performance is the Allmans' At Fillmore East version of Blind Willie McTell's Statesboro Blues. 

As Rolling Stone put it, it features the sort of playing that gives people chills. Of course, be sure to seek out other live versions of the song, including the one on the band's recently released SUNY at Stonybrook album.

2. Sonny Landreth - Überesso

Guitarist: Sonny Landreth

Respected Louisiana-based slide player Sonny Landreth started appearing on music fans' radar in earnest after the release of the 2007 Crossroads Blues Festival DVD. It features a few tracks by Landreth (jamming with Eric Clapton and such), including the uber-exciting instrumental, Überesso.

Landreth's unique slide technique lets him fret notes and play chords and chord fragments behind the slide. He plays with the slide on his little finger, so his other fingers have more room to fret. Check out his performance of Überesso from the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival below. Yes, he's awesome.

3. Steve Miller Band - The Joker

Guitarist: Steve Miller

Although not primarily known as a slide player, Steve Miller put the slide to fun and creative use on his 1973 hit single, The Joker, playing a hummable, tasteful slide solo for the masses (and imitating a whistle a few times in the process). 

Although it's no Überesso (See above), it shows that slide guitar has been invited to the chart-success party, especially in the early '70s, much like our next selection ...

4. George Harrison - Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)

Guitarist: George Harrison

You'll read it in other roundups of great slide guitar songs - comments like, "Although he wasn't a virtuoso like these other players..." Yeah, whatever. OK, he wasn't Jeff Beck, Steve Howe or Ritchie Blackmore, but George Harrison, who, as a member of the Beatles, influenced millions of humans to play guitar, suddenly started playing slide guitar in 1969, inventing an entirely new guitar persona for himself. 

What he came up with was a distinctive, non-blues-based style that incorporated hints of Indian music, some pointers he picked up while learning sitar and other Beatles-esque odds and ends. 

While My Sweet Lord and Badfinger's Day After Day (featuring Harrison on slide) are better known, 1973's Give Me Love perfectly displays his new-found style. For some quality later work, check out Cheer Down from 1989 and "Any Road" from 2002.

5. Foghat - Slow Ride

Guitarist: Rod Price

Staying in the '70s for a moment, let us consider Foghat's Slow Ride, another slide-based song that topped the charts. Perhaps the polar slide opposite of George Harrison, the heavily blues-influenced Rod "The Bottle" Price (Yes, they called him "The Bottle") let it all hang out in his solo near the fadeout of Foghat's signature track. Be sure to also check out Foghat's Drivin' Wheel and Stone Blue. Price, a product of the UK, died in 2005.

6. Led Zeppelin - In My Time of Dying

Guitarist: Jimmy Page

Although the "big three" guitarists who emerged from the '60s rock scene in England - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page - flirted with slide guitar at different points in their careers, none took it as far, or used it with as much success, as Page. 

For proof, just listen to In My Time of Dying from Physical Graffiti. The recording (the most popular version of a song Josh White recorded in the mid-'40s), features Page sliding away in open A (E-A-E-A-C#-E). 

Although Page also played slide on When the Levee Breaks, Traveling Riverside Blues and What Is and What Should Never Be, his distinctive slide style simply defines the powerful and dark In My Time of Dying.

7. Elmore James - Dust My Broom

Guitarist: Elmore James

We've mentioned a few "blues-influenced" players, which is basically another way of saying "players who were influenced by Elmore James." James - who was actually dubbed the "King of the Slide Guitar" - is best known for his 1951 version of Dust My Broom (I Believe My Time Ain't Long). 

The song's opening riff is one of the best-known and most influential slide guitar parts ever. Yes, it sounds a lot like what Robert Johnson played on his I Believe I'll Dust My Broom several years earlier, but James played his riff on an electric guitar, pretty much claiming it for himself in the process and sending chills down the spine of a new generation.

8. Johnny Winter - Highway 61 Revisited

Guitarist: Johnny Winter

The lanky Texan (and former Brit) simply burns it up in his legendary cover of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited from Second Winter, his second album. Be sure to investigate the acoustic Dallas from Winter's self-titled 1969 album. If you can convincingly play these two songs, it's time to hang up your T-square and/or apron and look for session work!

9. Derek Trucks Band - Sahib Teri Bandi/Maki Madni

Guitarist: Derek Trucks

The list takes an exotic turn with this middle-eastern-flavored track by Derek Trucks. With his deep Allman Brothers Band lineage, we know Trucks (and Warren Haynes, of course) can tackle roots rock, extended blues jams and more, but this 10-minute instrumental track from his 2006 album, Songlines, steps way out of those boundaries and truly shows what Trucks is capable of. 

He makes the guitar sound like an exotic instrument from a distant land and time. Check out this live performance from 2008, below.

10. Rory Gallagher - Want Ad Blues/Wanted Blues

Guitarist: Rory Gallagher

For our official acoustic guitar entry, let's not forget the late, great Rory Gallagher, shown here playing a version of John Lee Hooker's Wanted Blues. It's hard to believe this Irish master of the Stratocaster was also a ridiculously accomplished traditional blues slide player.

Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section guitarist Pete Carr, who played with everyone from Duane and Gregg Allman and Paul Simon to Rod Stewart and Bob Seger, died on June 20 in Florence, Alabama. He was 70 years old.

As the lead guitarist for the famed studio band, Carr contributed to hits including Simon’s Kodachrome, Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night and Seger’s Mainstreet – that’s him playing the song’s iconic electric guitar lead.

Carr also played with Joan Baez, Cat Stevens, Donovan, Luther Ingram, Joe Cocker, Boz Scaggs, the Staple Singers, Barbra Streisand, Wilson Pickett, José Feliciano and Hank Williams, Jr., among many others.

Born in Daytona Beach on April 22, 1950, Jesse Willard “Pete” Carr began playing guitar at 13, inspired by bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Ventures, as well as players like James Burton and Chet Atkins.

Two years later, he caught a performance by the Houserockers, an early version of the Allman Joys, in Daytona and introduced himself to Gregg and Duane Allman.

"I was about 15, and I went to see the Allman Joys play at the Club Martinique in Daytona Beach," Carr recalled to Swampland.com. "I had my guitar case with me, and introduced myself when the band took a break and asked Gregg Allman to show me some guitar lines.

“Gregg replied, ‘That's my brother, Duane's, department.’ At that point I introduced myself to Duane Allman. That meeting began a friendship, which lasted until Duane's death in a motorcycle crash on October 29,1971.”

In 1968, Carr and the Allmans began playing together in the group Hour Glass. They produced one album, Power of Love, with Carr primarily on bass guitar, as well as undertook some recordings at the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals.

After Hour Glass dissolved, Carr opted to focus full-time on studio work, moving to Muscle Shoals and eventually becoming the lead guitarist of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section in the early 1970s.

Over the next decade he performed on countless classic rock and pop recordings, including  Simon’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and Still Crazy After All These Years, and seven Seger albums, including Stranger in Town, Against the Wind and Like a Rock.

Carr also recorded four solo albums and led the duo LeBlanc & Carr with singer and songwriter Lenny LeBlanc. The pair notched a Top 20 single with the 1977 song Falling.

In 1981, Carr appeared onstage with Simon & Garfunkel at the duo’s massive reunion concert in New York City’s Central Park, playing acoustic and electric guitar.

Asked about the biggest thrill of his music career, Carr told Swampland that it’s “really hard to answer,” before going on to praise Simon.

“I always thought Paul Simon was fantastic, in the same league as the Beatles, so when he walked in the studio the first time it was a very awe-inspiring moment for me," he said.

“I remember vividly as he walked through the front door and I saw his face. I had taught myself an acoustic guitar instrumental he did on a Simon and Garfunkel album called Angie when I was a kid. I always thought that he was one of the best, if not the best songwriter ever.”

Though remembered by many as the guitarist who played slide on the extended outro of Derek And The Dominos’ rock epic, Layla, there’s actually a huge amount of other Duane Allman material to check out. 

Here, we’re concentrating on his standard-tuned non-slide soloing, which played an equal part in establishing Duane’s credentials – particularly the attention-grabbing solo at the end of Wilson Pickett’s cover version of The Beatles’ Hey Jude, which would make Duane known to Eric Clapton, pre-Layla. 

Duane was well-regarded enough by top industry figures of the day to be taken on as a full time session musician at FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, playing for Aretha Franklin, Otis Rush, Boz Scaggs and many others.

Though Duane is probably most associated with a Goldtop Gibson Les Paul, he was known to use various other models, including the Fender Strat – so there’s no need to feel you must have a specific guitar to play in his style. 

A sweet-sounding, treble-rich guitar and a light, creamy overdrive is all you need to tackle this month’s tab, including our final two examples – which are based on the harmonised dual-lead guitar lines Duane played with Dickey Betts on tracks such as Blue Sky – one of the last recordings he made in his tragically short life.

1. Bright major pentatonic sounds

Duane was first and foremost a melodic player, with influences ranging from Robert Johnson to Miles Davis. Using a neck pickup and medium overdrive, this example takes an E major pentatonic (E F# G# B C#) direction and adds a few staccato rhythmic notes at the end. Use these approaches for a bright, Southern rock vibe.

2. Country-rock bends

Going for more of a soaring high register style, this Allman-influenced lick adds in some country-rock inspired string bends where the bent notes ring against a fretted note – aka an ‘oblique’ bend. 

This all takes place in bar 3. As you can see, you bend the second string at the 12th fret while holding the first string at the same fret – a classic lick!

3. Southern fried lickin'

An alternative take on our previous lick, this idea goes more for a memorable hook rather than what feels easy under the fingers – and you may need to chop and change position around the 9th to 12th frets to find perfect finger position at any given moment. 

Try using either your second and third fingers for the oblique bends here.

4. Harmonised arpeggios

Taking our inspiration from the Allm an/Betts brand of harmony licks, this ringing arpeggio could easily be harmonised with a second guitar playing other notes from the same chords. 

You probably know E, E7 and A chords – just fret a shape you know and play the notes in time with our arpeggio.

5. More arpeggios

This lick begins in the same vein as our previous arpeggio before switching to the kind of harmony line that the Allman Brothers became so famous for. 

Our track is in E Mixolydian (E F# G# A B C# D). To harmonise with our lick, aim to always be a 3rd higher or lower than the notes we play. For example, where we play an A note you’d play C#; where we play B you’d play a D, and so on.

"I remember hearing 'Hey Jude' by Wilson Pickett and calling either Ahmet Ertegun or Tom Dowd and saying, 'Who's that guitar player?'" says Eric Clapton in the top video below.

It turns out that guitar player was a 22-year-old guitarist named Duane Allman, aka "Skydog."

"I just filed it away," Clapton adds. "To this day, I've never heard better rock guitar playing on an R&B record. It's the best."

In November 1968, Wilson Pickett showed up at Rick Hall's Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, hoping to record, but with no material or ideas. Allman, who was working for Hall (as one of several lead guitarists), suggested they record a version of a then-hot single by the Beatles, "Hey Jude."

Hall and Pickett thought it was an insane idea; after all, the Beatles' version of the song was literally climbing the charts as they spoke. Somehow, however, Allman convinced the duo (Perhaps he mentioned the fact that the composition was already a proven hit), and you can hear the complete track in the bottom video (and most of it in the top video).

The result? A sublime vintage R&B recording by one of the masters — and one of Clapton's all-time favorite guitar solos.

Of course, after a year-plus of success with the Allman Brothers Band, Allman found himself in the same studio as Clapton, recording yet another classic set of tracks, 1970's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Head here to read our ode to Clapton and Allman's epic solo on "Layla,"

2019's far from over, but it's already been a banner year for record-shattering electric guitar auctions.

Back in June, Pink Floyd legend David Gilmour rewrote the record books with his much-hyped personal guitar auction. Now, it has been revealed that Duane Allman's 1957 Gibson Les Paul, which he used to record Layla with Eric Clapton, has changed hands for an amazing $1.25 million. 

The guitar was Allman's main instrument in the early years of The Allman Brothers Band, and can be heard extensively on the band's first two albums - which include the original versions of songs like Whipping Post, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed and Midnight Rider - and Derek and the Dominos' Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Shortly after the Layla sessions concluded, Allman traded the guitar for a 1959 cherry sunburst Les Paul owned by the Stone Balloon's Rick Stine. The guitar is said to have changed hands three more times before being acquired by its most recent owner in 1977. The guitar has since been refinished twice. 

The Les Paul had been on display at the Allman Brothers Band Museum in Macon, Georgia, and had been played in the intervening years by Billy Gibbons, Derek Trucks, Vince Gill and a number of other guitar legends. 

Last month, Allman's At Fillmore East Gibson SG sold for $591,000, instantly making it one of the 20 most valuable guitars ever sold.

On July 21 and 22 Heritage Auctions sold off 19 instruments from Graham Nash’s personal collection, including the famous 1969 Martin D-45 he played with Crosby, Stills & Nash at Woodstock, as well as instruments that once belonged to Johnny Cash, Stephen Stills, Bo Diddley and others.

The guitar that garnered the most pre-auction interest, however, was a 1961/1962 Gibson SG that had belonged to Duane Allman and is famous for being the instrument played on the live recording of "Statesboro Blues" from the Allman Brothers Band’s classic At Fillmore East.

And the SG did not disappoint. Listed with an opening bid of $125,000, the Gibson fetched a whopping $591,000, making it one of the 20 most valuable guitars ever sold.

The SG is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a part of the "Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll" exhibit. Prior to the auction, Nash said, “This is the famous From 'One Brother to Another' guitar, traded between Dickey Betts and Duane on all their live shows. This is a very special guitar. Duane was obviously one of the great guitar players in the world. To be able hold his guitar and humbly play A minor, that's about the best I can do.” 

Nash’s Woodstock Martin D-45 made an impressive showing as well, selling for $162,500 after an opening bid of $75,000.

For more information on the sale, head to Heritage Auctions.

Graham Nash will be selling off 19 instruments from his personal collection through Heritage Auctions on July 21 and 22. Among the instruments set to go up for auction include the famous 1969 Martin D-45 he played with Crosby, Stills & Nash at Woodstock, as well as instruments that once belonging to Duane Allman, Johnny Cash, Stephen Stills, Bo Diddley and others.

You can check out some of the guitars below, with commentary from Heritage Auctions.

1969 Martin D-45 (opening bid, $75,000)

Nash played this guitar onstage with Crosby, Stills & Nash at the Woodstock festival. He paid for the Martin using some of the advance the trio received from their first recording contract with Atlantic Records. The guitar is all original, and features Brazilian rosewood. "We each bought D-45s from Martin,” Nash said. “That was 1969, and so right before Woodstock, we bought these guitars and took them to Woodstock."

Duane Allman's Circa 1961/1962 Gibson SG (opening bid $125,000)

This is best known as the guitar he played on the live recording of "Statesboro Blues," the opening track of At Fillmore East. It is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a part of the "Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll" exhibit. Said Nash, “This is the famous From 'One Brother to Another' guitar, traded between Dickey Betts and Duane on all their live shows, [like at] the Beacon Theatre in New York. This is a very special guitar. Duane was obviously one of the great guitar players in the world. To be able hold his guitar and humbly play A minor, that's about the best I can do.” 

Stephen Stills 1960 Gretsch 6120 (opening bid, $25,000)

This guitar was owned and played by Stephen Stills while he was a member of Buffalo Springfield. Nash has played it as well. Said Nash, "I have nothing from the Hollies because it wasn't important. We were so busy being the Hollies and making the next record. We didn't think that stuff that we had would be collectible years later. Stephen had no concerns with parting with this guitar." 

1960 Fender Esquire Custom (opening bid, $15,000)

Nash played this guitar at the very last show Crosby, Stills & Nash ever performed. Said Nash, "I played this Esquire for years. As a matter of fact, this was the guitar I was playing on the very last show of Crosby, Stills & Nash ever. It's a great guitar. It's a great tone. John Gonzalez, my guitar guy for almost 30 years, says this sounds great in the front of the house. I'm so lucky."

Johnny Cash's 1934 Martin 0-17 (opening bid, $20,000)

This guitar was owned by Johnny Cash and is personally etched by Johnny and June Carter Cash with a penny nail. Nash has played it as well. Johnny's autograph is noticeable on the back in the center, while "Love You" etched by June, is on the back, bass-side upper bout. The guitar features a Brazilian rosewood neck.

For more information and to see the full lineup of guitars, head to Heritage Auctions.

We all know a great lick when we hear one—Jimmy Page’s solo breaks in “Whole Lotta Love” and Mark Knopfler’s blistering triads in “Sultans of Swing,” for example.

Moments like these grab your attention and aurally brand your ears forever.

Or, sometimes it acts more subliminally: You suddenly find yourself playing a certain lick over and over again, wondering, Where have I heard this before?

Through the years, these licks have evolved into a vocabulary for the guitar. And like great writers who are always able to find the right word to make a point, great guitarists always have that essential lick at their disposal to express, in the moment, what they’re feeling. And whereas the best writers are able to string those words together to form remarkable prose, the best guitarists link their licks to form living, breathing, musical statements.

Today, we bring you this slippery Mixolydian lick in the vein of the late, great Duane Allman.

Origin: Prior to his passing in 1971, Duane Allman produced some of the greatest rock-flavored slide-guitar licks ever waxed. This beauty comes courtesy of that special evening in 1971 when ABB played Live at Fillmore East.

Theory: Mixolydian is the mode of the blues, particularly blues-rock, and Allman milks the D Mixolydian (D–E–F#–G–A–B–C) mode for all it’s worth in this slippery medium.

Playing Tip: Allman plied his slide in open E tuning on this one, but seeing as this lick occurs on the top two strings, you don’t need to retune your ax.

Scott Sharrard, longtime musical director, co-writer and guitarist for Gregg Allman, has shared an animated clip for the title track of his latest album, Saving Grace. You can check out the video, directed by Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr. and animated by Ronlee Nemeth, above. 

“Saving Grace” was recorded at FAME studios, with Sharrard backed by members of the Swampers of Muscle Shoals. For the recording, Sharrard played Duane Allman’s storied 1957 Les Paul Gold Top, on loan to him from the estate. This is the first time the guitar has been heard since Duane’s death.

“I think it’s her best moment on the record,” Sharrard said.  

Sharrard told Billboard about the song: "Like others, I've struggled with anxiety and depression my whole life, and I've struggled to do that while trying to be a fully functional husband and father. In the end, this song is about losing the plot and diving into despair full stop. I think it’s a song about suicide really, about feeling so hopeless that you're ready to slip and let go."

As previously reported, Sharrard recorded Saving Grace during his time with Gregg Allman. The album was produced by Sharrard with Scott Bomar and Charles Martinez; half the record features the Hi Rhythm Section (Howard Grimes, Reverend Charles Hodges and Leroy Hodges), and the other half renowned Muscle Shoals musicians David Hood, Spooner Oldham (‘The Swampers’) and Chad Gamble. 

The album also features “Everything a Good Man Needs,” Gregg’s last known original song, co-written with Sharrard.  Originally planned for Gregg’s Grammy-nominated effort, Southern Blood, Allman’s steep health decline prevented him from recording the song.

“Gregg had a pure passion and heart,” Sharrard said. “That authenticity and dedication is a daily inspiration, and I will always carry that with me onstage and in the studio. Gregg always said ‘the way you could do me most proud is to use our experience and let it inspire you to write your own beautiful music.’ ”

For more information on Scott Sharrard, check out his official website.

Last time, we examined the guitar genius of the great Duane Allman, who, as founder of the Allman Brothers Band, rose to prominence as one of the greatest and universally heralded blues-rock guitarists of all time.

We focused on his single-note soloing on classic Allman Brothers’ cuts like “Stormy Monday” and “Whipping Post.” This month’s column is dedicated to Duane’s mastery of the art of slide guitar.

Duane possessed an instantly recognizable sound on electric slide, earmarked by masterful phrasing and smooth, “singing” vibrato.

Great examples of his slide guitar prowess include “Trouble No More” and “Dreams” from the band’s debut release, The Allman Brothers Band; “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’,” from Idlewild South; “Statesboro Blues” and “Done Somebody Wrong” from At Fillmore East; and “One Way Out” from Eat a Peach.

He also lent inspired slide work to the title track and many others on the Derek and the Dominoes album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Incredibly, Duane had been playing slide guitar for only about a year at the time of the band’s debut release. He recalled, “I heard Ry Cooder playing slide on Taj Mahal’s debut album, and I said, ‘Man, that’s for me.’ ” Brother Gregg Allman concurs. “He just picked it up and started burnin’. He was a natural.”

For slide playing, Duane wore a small glass Coricidin bottle (Coricidin was a cold medication) on his ring finger. He usually played slide in open tunings, most often open E (low to high, E B E G# B E) and occasionally open A (E A E A C# E). He also played slide in standard tuning on songs such as “Dreams” and “Mountain Jam.”

In the early days, Duane would re-tune his gold-top Gibson Les Paul between songs in order to play slide. Later, co-guitarist Dickey Betts gave Duane a two-pickup 1961 Gibson SG/Les Paul Standard that was used solely for slide playing. The design of the SG, with its double-cutaway body, is well suited to slide work, allowing easy access to the upper regions of the fretboard.

Duane chose to wear the SG high on his body to facilitate navigating the board overall. The musical examples in this column focus on the use of open E tuning for slide. FIGURE 1 illustrates how to tune to open E: the sixth, second and first strings are tuned normally (E, B and E); the fifth and fourth strings are tuned one whole step higher (A to B and D to E); and the third string is tuned one half step higher (G to G#). The resulting tuning is, low to high, E B E G# B E. Strumming across all of the open strings sounds an E major chord.

The same is true when barring or placing the slide across all of the strings at the 12th fret. Likewise, barring a finger or placing the slide across all of the strings at any given fret will form a major chord, as shown in FIGURE 2. A great majority of slide licks in open E tuning are formed by moving back and forth between a two-fret span of the fretboard.

FIGURE 3 illustrates one such pattern, which forms an E hybrid scale, one that combines elements of E minor pentatonic (E G A B D) and E major pentatonic (E F# G# B C#). Two notes are sounded on each string at either the 10th or 12th fret, and three notes are sounded on the fifth string with the inclusion of G#, at the ninth fret.

Practice this pattern by first fretting normally, and then play it using the slide. Some basic rules for slide playing: For proper intonation, you’ll want to, in most cases, position the slide directly over and parallel to the fret wire. Apply only enough pressure against the string to sound a note clearly; do not allow the slide to “bang” into the frets. Also, lightly lay unused fret-hand fingers across the strings behind the slide to help suppress unwanted overtones and ghost notes.

When playing slide, Duane fingerpicked exclusively, using his thumb, index and middle fingers to pick the strings. A major element in the uniqueness of his sound was his pick-hand muting techniques: while one finger picked a string, the other two were used for muting.

For example, when he picked a string with his thumb, his index and middle fingers would rest lightly on the higher strings, muting them; when he picked a string with his index finger, his thumb would mute the lower strings; and when he picked with his middle finger, he would mute the string with his thumb and index fingers. This technique afforded Duane’s slide playing unparalleled clarity and precision. An essential slide exercise involves sliding back and forth between notes of the E hybrid scale, with careful attention paid to playing “in tune.”

FIGURES 4 and 5 offer two different ways one can practice sliding to and from each note in this position. One of the most common vehicles for slide soloing in blues and rock is the 12-bar blues shuffle. FIGURE 6 illustrates a basic shuffle rhythm part played in the key of E using open E tuning. Use only conventional fretting (no slide) to perform this part. FIGURE 7 offers an example of how to play a slide solo over this rhythm part: repeatedly moving the slide back and forth (higher and lower) on the fretboard creates the sound of a slide vibrato.

The “width” of this movement, as well as the speed, is every player’s choice; strive to keep the center of the vibrato movement over the fret for proper intonation. The aforementioned “Statesboro Blues” and “One Way Out” are celebrated slide guitar masterpieces. FIGURE 8 illustrates a “Statesboro Blues”-like solo, and FIGURE 9 offers a solo in the style of “One Way Out.”

Work through each example carefully, and for inspiration, listen to the recordings and pay strict attention to every detail in Duane’s articulation.

PART ONE

PART TWO

We recently shared our story about Eric Clapton's isolated lead guitar track from the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

This, of course, reminded us of the equally fascinating lead guitar and vocal track from Derek and the Dominos' classic 1970 track, "Layla."

What you're actually hearing (in the YouTube player below) is a combination of tracks; there's a rhythm guitar track from the chorus, the lead in the verses and choruses, Duane Allman's manic slide solos, crystal-clear acoustic guitar at the end of the song—and another guitar that's filtered through a revolving Leslie speaker, a la "Badge."

You also get to hear Clapton's lead vocal, which is doubled on the choruses.

“The song and the whole album is definitely equal parts Eric and Duane,” says producer Tom Dowd, who introduced the two guitar titans, then sat back and watched them soar together.

“There had to be some sort of telepathy going on because I’ve never seen spontaneous inspiration happen at that rate and level. One of them would play something, and the other reacted instantaneously. Never once did either of them have to say, ‘Could you play that again, please?’ It was like two hands in a glove. And they got tremendously off on playing with each other.”

Nowhere was the interplay between Clapton and Allman more sublime than on “Layla,” which, says Dowd, features six tracks of overlapping guitar: “There’s an Eric rhythm part; three tracks of Eric playing harmony with himself on the main riff; one of Duane playing that beautiful bottleneck; and one of Duane and Eric locked up, playing countermelodies.”

Take note of the Leslie guitar, which kicks in at 5:25. Criteria Studios in Miami had one of the first guitar input devices for the Leslie that could vary the speed with a foot switch, and legend has it that Clapton was pretty fond of it. Enjoy!

In this edition of In Deep, we will examine some of the key elements of Duane Allman’s signature style as a lead guitarist.

One of the best examples of the genius of Duane Allman can be found on the timeless, classic live album, At Fillmore East (1971), which captures the Allman Brothers Band live in concert at the peak of their powers.

Duane’s razor-sharp articulation and masterful touch abound, starting with the slide guitar tour de force “Statesboro Blues,” through the smoldering slow blues “Stormy Monday” and continuing through the fiery, aggressive solos performed on “Whipping Post,” “You Don’t Love Me” and other great tracks.

Duane’s rich, warm tone was achieved via his main ax, a 1958 tobacco sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard, played through Marshall “Plexi” 50- and 100-watt heads, usually running two 4x12 Marshall bottoms.

For additional distortion, he very occasionally used a Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, usually in the studio. A key to Duane’s virtuosity was the fact that, like Jimi Hendrix, he had extensive experience as a session guitarist, working closely alongside R&B greats like Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and King Curtis.

Through his studio work, Duane had developed a great sense of rhythm as well as a keen understanding of economy, in terms of phrasing. This understanding resulted in improvised solos that remained cohesive and conversational no matter how long they stretched out or how far they roamed from the original starting point.

For this column, let’s use two of Duane’s signature songs, “Stormy Monday” and “Whipping Post,” as our points of focus. “Stormy Monday,” written and originally recorded by blues great T-Bone Walker, is played in the key of G. For soloing, Duane relied primarily on a few standard “blues-approved” scales. FIGURE 1 illustrates a scale most guitar players are well familiar with, G minor pentatonic (G Bb C D F), as played in third position.

FIGURE 2 illustrates the G blues scale, which is the same as G minor pentatonic but additionally includes the flatted fifth (b5), Db. Most blues players move alternately between minor and major pentatonic scales based on the same root note. Eric Clapton and B.B. King are two great examples of guitarists whose solos are almost always based on a combination of these two scales.

FIGURE 3 illustrates the G major pentatonic scale (G A B D E) in an extended pattern that diagonally traverses the fretboard from third to 12th positions. Duane often used a soloing device that can be traced to B.B. King, one of his biggest influences. King’s signature soloing approach combines the notes of minor and major pentatonic scales in a very specific fretboard pattern, or “shape.” The pattern, known as “B.B.’s box,” is illustrated in FIGURE 4.

This small handful of notes can be ordered and phrased in nearly an infinite number of ways, resulting in many great blues licks. FIGURES 5–8 offer four different ways in which Duane would use this shape as a jumping off point to improvised solo ideas.

PART ONE OF THREE

Now let’s focus on soloing over a 12-bar slow blues form along the lines of “Stormy Monday” and in the style of Duane Allman, as illustrated in FIGURE 9.

I begin in bars 1 and 2 with a melodic idea based on G major pentatonic, but in bar 3, I morph into G minor pentatonic by overbending the second, A, up and step and a half to the fourth, C. At the end of bar 4 into bar 5, I apply the overbending technique to E, the sixth, bending that note all the way up to the G root note, repeating the melodic motif into bar 6.

When performing these bends, line up additional fingers behind the fretting finger—for example, reinforcing the ring finger with the middle finger or both the middle and index—to help it push the string. Doing so will give you better pitch control and stability when bending. The same is true for bend vibratos. Throughout the remainder of the example, I limit my movement to the eighth and 10th positions to demonstrate that a great amount of melodic invention can be found without moving up and down the fretboard.

The intent here is to create lines that are expressive and vocal-like while also evoking a bit of the Duane-like focused intensity. For his “Whipping Post” solo, Duane drew primarily from the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G), two fretboard patterns of which are shown in FIGURES 10 and 11. Both patterns are very useful for soloing, so you’ll want to memorize them thoroughly.

FIGURE 12 offers an eight-bar solo along the lines of Duane’s “Whipping Post” solo. The song is played in 12/8 meter, which affords a lot of room for rhythmic creativity, and Duane made the most of the opportunity every time he played it. I begin this solo with a whole-step bend from the A root up to the second, B, followed by subtle movement down through the notes of the A Dorian mode. In bar 2, I play a quick repeated hammer/pull phrase that emphasizes two notes of a G major triad (G and B) before moving into a line based on A minor pentatonic (A C D E G).

Bar 5 offers a unique rhythmic superimposition that Duane used often. Another classic Duane-ism is illustrated in bar 7, as quick pull-offs on the top three strings alternate back and forth in an ascending-and-descending manner. Try using your index and ring fingers to execute this phrase as well as your index and middle fingers and index and pinkie, or a combination of any of these. The aim should be, as always, clarity in execution.

PART TWO

PART THREE

Scott Sharrard joined Gregg Allman’s band as guitarist in 2008 and became its Musical Director in 2014. His first run as MD was at the Macon Opera House, shows captured on the Back To Macon, GA live album and DVD.

“We had been spending a lot of time writing together, developing this relationship as collaborators and he determined that the best way going forward was for me to be his MD,” Sharrard said.

Over the last few years of Allman’s life, he and Sharrard became increasingly close. Sharrard was behind the only two original songs on Allman’s final album, Southern Blood, which is being released Friday, September 8: he wrote “Love Like Kerosene” and the two co-wrote ”My Only True Friend,” the lead single, a profoundly moving farewell.

In a recent conversation, Sharrard went deep on the origins of that song, his relationship with Allman and how Southern Blood came to be. The album was recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where Duane Allman first made his mark as session musician working with Wilson Pickett and others. Don Was produced the album.

Gregg was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2013, but almost no one knew about it. When did you find out?

He was doing his second–to-last Allman Brothers run at the Beacon [in March 2014] and I went over to his hotel for a writing session. We had been working on “My Only True Friend” and we were trying to come up with a pre-chorus. He sat me down and told me this news about his terminal illness and I said, “Look Gregg if you want to work, we can work. But we can take the day off, too.”

And he said, “No, this is the time to work.” And that’s when he changed the line to “I hope you’re haunted by the music of my soul when I’m gone.”

Wow. What a heavy moment. Can you describe the process of the songwriting before and after that?

The song started about six months before that when I was at his house for a songwriting session and I had a dream where Duane was talking to Gregg. I woke up, ran downstairs grabbed my guitar and pen and paper and basically got the intro and verse exactly as you hear it on the record. I had the first two lines and the chorus line: “You and I both know the road is my only true friend.”

When Gregg woke up I showed it to him right away and he loved it. We worked on it back and forth over the next few months. And when he shared that diagnosis and he added the pre-chorus line, I realized that what we started writing from a dream I had about Duane giving Gregg advice from the beyond became Gregg saying good bye to everyone as he was going into this battle.

Although I never told Gregg the story of Duane, he could feel I was tapped into his energy. Honestly, that was the magic of our collaboration: as music director, guitarist, songwriting partner and friend, I was basically ferrying him across the end of his career and life. That was kind of my job and it’s all in that song, which we basically wrote together over the last few years.

Did the song fall into place when Gregg added that line that changed the focus to a farewell?

Honestly, we were writing that song right up to the final take. We put it off all week in Muscle Shoals because Gregg kept saying, “The song needs something else.” And [percussionist] Marc Quinones suggested that I write a third verse. I always listen when Marc speaks, because he’s never wrong, so I went back to my hotel and worked on the lyrics and wrote that third verse.

The next day I came into the studio and handed it to him. He read it right there standing in front of the Neumann mic getting ready to cut the song. He sat down, read it again and said, “This is it. Let’s go.” I told the band, “Guys, we added another verse, this is how it’s going to go.” We got the horn arrangement adjusted.

Don made sure everyone was on the same page and then we cut the song you hear on the record. It was literally down to the last minute.

That’s amazing, and it doesn’t sound like that at all. You would never know he hadn’t been singing those words for a very long time.

Honestly, man, it’s one of those recording moments that you can’t explain because they are just magical. We played it a few times live and rehearsed it many, many times and Gregg was never really getting all the way in and I swear to God he inhabited the song as we cut it.

What you hear was a first or second take, cut live on the floor with the band, and he just was inside the song, or it was inside him. He found his home in the song just in time and I’d like to think the third verse helped him. I think the stumbling block was he didn’t see the end of the story and I’m really thankful to Marc for his suggestion, which put me to work.

I was up all night working on different ideas for a third verse and I ended up with: “On and on I roam/it feels like home is just around the bend. I’ve got so much left to give but I’m running out of time, my friend.” It’s the goodbye letter.

Amazing. And it’s an illustration of when desperation and inspiration meet. You think about all the times you can struggle to come up with a line or a verse for months but you nailed that verse perfectly in one night – because you had to.

Thanks. I’ve written hundreds of songs, but over the course of working with Gregg for almost a decade I learned what he wanted to sing: the words he would fall on, the rhythms he liked. It wasn’t always conscious that he was showing me this, but as we were writing that song, he was hipping me to all these turns of phrases he preferred for vocal phrasing.

We were working on two other songs and we actually finished one, which I am going to put on my solo record coming out next spring. We ran out of time and to cut it for this record and honestly the tune didn’t really fit what we were doing. It’s a funky upbeat, twisted blues tune. We actually wrote it before his terminal diagnosis and it really didn’t fit the vibe of Southern Blood, as much as he wanted to do it.

I had really grasped what he wanted to sing and say because I had spent so much time writing with him and he had a very, very specific approach. He knew exactly what he wanted as a vocalist, a songwriter and a lyricist: understanding how to match all those things up and make them fit who he was is the mark of a great interpreter of songs. We’re talking Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra territory.

Right. And it’s fascinating because early in his career he was such a terrific songwriter as well as interpreter and as his songwriting slowed down his interpretive skills grew to the point where everything he sang became a Gregg Allman song. I think that’s partly because he always retained a composer’s sense of song.

Yes. His songwriting would still stand out though obviously with less frequency. He was very gun shy about writing anything. He was a master editor, both as a writer and singer. One of the great things about Gregg was his economy of phrasing when he sings and he brought that into his aesthetic choices. He was extremely critical when it came to “Is this song ready?” Gregg was a guy who saved his bullets.

The other song that strikes me as profoundly emotional is Tim Buckley’s “Once I Was.”

Oh, absolutely! You hit the nail on the head, brother. That’s my favorite track. I think it’s the emotional center.

Gregg told me over 20 years ago about his love of Tim Buckley and I’ve written about it but I didn’t see or hear him discuss it much elsewhere. And I’m just wondering how this came to be, and if Gregg spoke to you or others much about his passion for Buckley.

First of all, thanks for asking about it. It’s easily my favorite song on the record and not a single person has asked about it in an interview! Gregg never talked much about his love of Buckley for whatever reason; you are honestly one of the first people inside or outside the family who knows about it. The story behind how this song happened is very dear to me.

To understand, you have to go back again to the day in the hotel when he told me the news. We’re working through what he shared with me emotionally, we’re writing and playing and we take a break. He picks up the guitar and sings and plays “Once I Was” all the way through and I’m literally crying in front of him. I said, “Gregg, please tell me you wrote that song” and he said, “Oh man, I wish I did. That’s by Tim Buckley.”

And I said, “You’re a Tim Buckley fan?” and he says “Oh yeah” and I just went, “That’s great.” Because my dad is a musician and he used to play Tim Buckley stuff all the time, so we started talking about Tim and his songs and I asked if he had ever played “Once I Was” for anyone and he said, “No, I haven’t.” I asked if he had ever played it live, in a studio, a demo, and it was all, “Nope, nothing.”

And I asked him, “Why don’t you record that song?” and he just sort of went, “Oh, I don’t know” and then we moved on. He didn’t want to talk about it more, but he started warming up with it regularly when we would write and I said “Dude, we’re getting that on one of your records.”

That was a few years before these sessions. When we started talking about songs for the records, I told Don that he had to hear Gregg sing this Tim Buckley song. I said that Gregg might be a little hesitant but we had to make it happen and Don was way into it.

When we got to the studio I saw it had fallen off the docket and I kind of got in Gregg’s face about it and said we had to cut a version. We had rehearsed it with the band at soundcheck. I was determined to cut this song, so we had it ready. Lo and behold, at the last minute he said, “Yeah, let’s do it today.”

And, again, this was the second or third take through, fully live on the floor. Art Edmaiston’s sax solo is gorgeous and it’s just such a beautiful track. He changed the words of the third verse. It’s again a great example of his mastery of interpretation to tell his own story. He makes it rhyme and makes it more Gregg and also changed the whole focus of the song in those last two lines to make it more aligned with where his mind and soul were at that moment and it’s brilliant.

That song was something that he and I shared and I was determined to have him share it with the world. I can’t listen to it yet because I know that song cut really deep for him. It’s still too much.

When you guys were in the studio did everyone know about Gregg’s health?

No. There was a general understanding of his health frailty, but only a few people knew, starting with [Gregg’s manager] Michael Lehman, Chank [Middleton, his best friend] and Shannon [Allman's wife]. He certainly didn’t need to share the terminal diagnosis with me but honestly, I think he thought it was important that I knew so that musically we got the last album dialed in.

He didn’t want to share it widely and that was his decision. There’s a line there where this man’s dying wish was to go on stage and after all he did for rock and roll to help create it and refine it, the least we could do for the guy was to honor his dying wish, right?

Absolutely. And it says so much about Gregg’s devotion to the music and his muse that that was his dying wish! I said to Don and I’ll say to you: what you guys did to help Gregg fulfill this final vision is an amazing thing.

We tried our best. I’m a perfectionist so I still see some of the cracks. I can step back enough to say, “Ok, this was the best we could do under the circumstances we had.” But they were not ideal circumstances. We had a great band, we had Don Was, we had Fame studio and those were great advantages, but everything else about the recording sessions was very challenging, especially having the time to do what needed to be done.

Don’s master stroke was bringing in Jackson [Browne] to sing backing vocals on “Song for Adam.” We were about to lose the track because Gregg never sang the last two lines. Don did a wonderful job editing the take together and bringing in Jackson’s distinct voice gives the song a deeper meaning.

Jackson and Gregg were such good friends and admirers of each other’s work since they were teenagers, I couldn’t think of a better way for the record to come to a conclusion than with a lyric that Gregg always related to through the tragic loss of his brother at a young age. Personally, it reminds me that my greatest hope is that they are together somewhere in the cosmos admiring the grand picture and pulling for all of us that got left behind.

Did it ever feel like a burden to have this knowledge of Gregg’s illness, which would obviously impact you a lot, and not be able to discuss it with anyone?

No. The only thing that was frustrating during that time was the work aspect of it. The implosion of the record industry in the last 20 years really fucked up the bottom line for everybody. What should we have been doing? Writing and recording songs for six months to a year. But the way the economy of being a musician works now and has fucked up everybody, trickling all the way up to Gregg is he had to be on the road to support his operation.

Because of these time constraints, we didn’t get as much original material as I would have liked. Gregg was working on a song with [keyboardist] Pete Levin that was really good and he never quite finished. [Note: Levin recently cut this song in the same Fame studios in Muscle Shoals for an upcoming solo album.] We had several more in various stages and I think there could have been a lot more.

I had spoken to Patterson Hood and Jason Isbell and was trying to get them together with Gregg, which he was really interested in. I was also trying to get Bonnie [Raitt] and Gregg together.

There was a lot of really exciting stuff on the docket and time just ran out of us. Losing those opportunities mostly had to do with his health struggles combined with his touring schedule. It was a lot to juggle. I really don’t have any regrets but if there was anything I could have done differently it would have been that.

But Gregg also really loved to perform and I’m not sure anything would have kept him off the road.

Absolutely!

You mentioned Michael, Chank and Shannon and they really were his core support group, right?

Yes, very much so. Michael Lehman always looked out for Gregg, and Chank is Gregg’s spirit animal. There’s very little we could have accomplished without him. He’s a rock. He was Gregg’s comfort for many years, along with Shannon for the last couple of years.

Shannon is special and she was Gregg’s saving grace, particularly in the last year of his life. She gave him the spiritual and emotional comfort he needed to carry on. It was above and beyond. Gregg was very, very lucky to have Shannon and Chank to ease his suffering.

Every day is step by step when you lose someone you’re close to. With Gregg, I lost a multi-layered human being. He was an icon that I looked up to as a kid. I saw the Allman Brothers when I was 12 and that’s what set me on my path. Then to meet him, play with him, collaborate with him and have him impact my own music… I mean, he used to learn my songs and sing them back to me and listen to my records and bring me into his dressing room and say, “Man, I love this song...” It was like, “What the fuck is going on here?”

It got deeper and deeper and deeper and it was quite a journey. There are very few people who had the privilege to go through what I went through with him, and it all came to a head with Southern Blood. For it to be his final recording and to be a handful of people entrusted to execute the project is… it’s an honor is what it is.

On January 1, 1969, Duane Allman, an in-demand 22-year-old session guitarist, cracked open his notebook/diary and jotted down his New Year’s resolution:

“This year I will be more thoughtful of my fellow man, exert more effort in each of my endeavors, professionally as well as personally. Take love wherever I find it, and offer it to everyone who will take it.

"In this coming year I will seek knowledge from those wiser than me and try to teach those who wish to learn from me. I love being alive and I will be the best man I possibly can.”

It turned out to be a big year for Allman; his new group, the Allman Brothers Band, would record and release their monumental self-titled debut album—the one that features "It's Not My Cross to Bear," "Dreams" and "Whipping Post."

Rolling Stone's Lester Bangs called it "consistently [...] subtle, and honest, and moving," describing the ABB as "a white group who've transcended their schooling to produce a volatile blues-rock sound of pure energy, inspiration and love." Bruce Eder at Allmusic says it "might be the best debut album ever delivered by an American blues band, a bold, powerful, hard-edged, soulful essay in electric blues with a native Southern ambience."

Duane also played the occasional session in 1969, adding his instantly recognizable slide guitar to Aretha Franklin's cover of the Band's "The Weight," which you can check out below.

Allman died almost three years later, on October 29, 1971. He was 24.

Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, Rounder Records' 2013 box set honoring the musical legacy of the late Allman Brothers Band guitarist, was a critical and commercial success.

On October 28, Rounder will offer a limited-edition vinyl version of the retrospective. Each of the 1,000 individually numbered copies will include all the music from the CD editions—129 tracks—on 14, 180-gram vinyl LPs.

The set also includes a 56-page booklet full of rare photos and essays by journalist Scott Schinder and Duane's daughter, Galadrielle Allman, who compiled the collection with producer Bill Levenson.

This retrospective includes classic Allman Brothers Band songs plus a collector’s cache of rare singles and long-out-of-print album tracks. The songs range from Duane's early recordings with Gregg Allman in the Escorts, Allman Joys and Hour Glass, to his studio work with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs and Delaney & Bonnie. There's even a live jam session with the Grateful Dead.

Below, check out our exclusive Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective (vinyl edition) unboxing video—plus a new interview wth Galadrielle. We discuss Skydog, her father’s legacy, her career and more.

What would you like people to take away from this new vinyl package?

The real desire with this package—and also with my book—is to humanize Duane, to take him out of the pantheon of the gods and return him to the mortal world. One where you can actually fall in love with the guitar, work really hard and achieve. The albums hang together really well and there’s a story there about his growth and style strengthening and developing. If you listen chronologically, you can hear him growing and changing. By the end, you hear the full-blown master of improvisational rock guitar.

You mentioned your book, Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman. What made you decide to write it?

I‘ve always been focused on writing and really had a sense of being born into his amazing story. I actually started it in my twenties but backed off because of the scale and scope of it. But when I turned 40, I said that if it’s going to happen, it has to be now. I took the better part of three years doing the research and the next two years doing the writing. It was an incredibly fulfilling and satisfying experience.

Was there a particular moment in your life when you realized the enormity of your father’s contributions to guitar and music?

There really isn’t one particular time that I remember of becoming aware. When I was a child in the early Seventies, they are at the peak of their power playing stadiums. Some of my earliest memories are of being at concerts, but the thing that’s incredible is that the legacy and admiration for my father has only grown during my lifetime. He was a revered guitar player, but a lot a people didn’t know that he played on Layla and all of the other work he did outside of the Allman Brothers Band. Just the depth of his session playing and the incredible way it goes through every genre of American music. It’s an incredible accomplishment for somehow who lived for less than twenty-five years.

Of all of your father’s works, are there any that stand out to you as extra special?

There are so many that have his special fire. I love the song “Please Be with Me,” which is where my book got its title. That sentiment is something I’d want to say to him. I also really love his acoustic slide playing. That moves me and feels really intimate. It’s like you’re sitting in a room with him. There are a lot of treasures of music in this collection that are really heartfelt and come from a place of passion.

Was Gregg the one who introduced Duane to the guitar?

Yes. When Gregg was really young, he got a paper route in order to buy his first guitar. Duane became fascinated with it and the two of them would often struggle over who would get a turn. By Christmas, their mom had bought a second guitar to keep Duane from torturing him over it. But Gregg taught Duane all of the initial licks. He also has a great line about it. He says, “Duane passed me up like I was standing still!” [laughs].

What would you say is the most important thing anyone has ever told you about your dad?

Everyone in his band at a different moment has looked me in the eyes and said they’ve never known anyone else like him. He had an incredible level of personal intensity and drive as well as a certainty that they would succeed. They still invoke him as the first person who made them believe that they could play on a high level. He was the fire, and they all give him credit for that.

Are there any other projects you’re working on?

I’m working on a novel right now. It’s a story about teenage friendship and the impact listening to music together and going to shows has on their lives. It’s a coming-of-age story that’s punctuated by music. I’ve also got a short story included in a book that’s out now called Crime Plus Music: Twenty Stories of Music Themed Noirby Jim Fusilli. It’s very exciting.

How would you like Duane Allman to be remembered?

My father had an amazing ability to be emotionally expressive with his instrument. There was no barrier between what he was feeling and what he was playing. That was his real strength. He’ll always be known and credited for helping to bring slide guitar into the rock genre and for his emotionally powerful, improvisational influence. But he was a master of expressing in the moment. That’s the way he’ll be remembered.

James Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.

When it was released as a CD box set in 2013, Rounder Records’ deluxe collection, Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, was a critical and commercial success.

On October 28, Rounder will offer a limited-edition vinyl version of the retrospective. Each of the 1,000 individually numbered copies will include all of the music from the CD editions—129 tracks in total—on 14, 180-gram vinyl LPs.

• Rounding out the box is a 56-page booklet that includes rare photos, plus essays by journalist Scott Schinder and Duane's daughter, Galadrielle Allman, who compiled the collection alongside reissue producer Bill Levenson. New to this edition are several previously unpublished photos of the artist, which will be featured on each album sleeve.
• To make this release even more special, Rounder Records has joined forces with the direct-to-fan platform leader, PledgeMusic to bring this box set to fans. Pledgers can pre-order the box set and also select bundles that will include exclusive items available only to pledgers.

They will include:

The Super Deluxe Bundle which features one of 50 limited-edition, numbered LPs in a custom printed Skydog shipping carton, a copy of Please Be With Me: A Song For My Father, Duane Allman signed and individually numbered by Galadrielle Allman. Number in book will correspond with number on vinyl box, a leather slipmat, embossed with Skydog title treatment. A lithograph poster, an eight-panel postcard set, and a black-and-white photo.

The Deluxe Bundle will include the Skydog box, custom printed Skydog shipping carton, a copy of Please Be With Me: A Song For My Father, Duane Allman signed and individually numbered by Galadrielle Allman (number in book will not correspond with number on vinyl box), a leather slipmat, embossed with Skydog title treatment. A lithograph poster, a postcard set, and a black-and-white photo.

The Standard Bundle will include the Skydog box, custom printed shipping carton, an eight-panel postcard set, and a black-and-white photo.

To pre-order, visit PledgeMusic.com.

Did you know that Joe Walsh knew Duane Allman? Did you know Duane Allman taught Joe his method of playing slide guitar?

For that matter, did you know that Joe Walsh and Duane Allman share a birthday? It's November 20. Talk about coincidences.

In the two videos below, presented courtesy of Gibson Guitars, Walsh demonstrates how to play slide as he was taught it by Allman.

“I had the opportunity to play some concerts where the Allman Brothers were on the same show, and I got to sit down with Duane,” Walsh explains. “And he showed me how to play slide guitar.” So grab your guitar and your favorite slide, and get ready to learn the Duane Allman method of slide playing.

There can be no denying that pianist/guitarist Bobby Whitlock has made an immeasurable impact on rock history.

Whitlock is a co-founder—along with Eric Clapton—of Derek and the Dominos, whose 1970 album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, is a bona-fide rock masterpiece. He's also appeared on several other seminal albums, including George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass (1970).

This month, Whitlock, along with wife and musical partner CoCo Carmel, will hit the road with the Just Us Tour. It's an intimate, 11-date run that features an all-acoustic set of material from Whitlock’s past, as well as the stories behind the songs.

Expect to hear classic Dominos songs, including “Bell Bottom Blues," “Tell the Truth,” “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad,” “I Looked Away,” “Keep on Growing” and “Thorn Tree in the Garden,” as well as newer songs co-written by Whitlock and Carmel.

What makes the tour even more special is that a top-notch guitarist from each city on the tour will be joining Whitlock and Carmel on stage. The guitarists include Josh Roberts, Kelvin Holly, Moses Mo, Godfrey Townsend, Pat Harrington, Matt Hamann, Andy Argondizza, Angelo Santelli, Bob Wagner and Nicholas Tremulus, all of whom will add their own interpretations of these classic songs.

I recently spoke with Whitlock and Carmel about their tour and what it was like to be a member of Derek and the Dominos.

GUITAR WORLD: How did this new tour come together?

WHITLOCK: A few months ago, someone contacted me about checking out this amazing guitar player he knew. He said he already knew all of the songs and that we should get together. So I watched a video of the guy and sure enough, he was great! His name was Tolo Marton, and he’s one of the premier guitar players from Italy. So we had him come down to play a gig and it was just fantastic. He knew every song and could also improvise and do his own thing. It was around the same time we were putting together dates for this tour, and that’s when we decided to have a premier guitar player from each city come sit in with us.

What do you enjoy most about these intimate shows as opposed to ones with a full band?

CARMEL: For me, it’s natural and a more personal experience. It also gives Bobby the chance to really talk about the songs—how they came about and how it all went down in the studio. You can’t do that with a band.

WHITLOCK: It puts you closer to the audience and leaves things open for interpretation. I can also tell you stories like how Eric [Clapton] and I were sitting in his house one day. Eric’s got a guitar on his lap and was having heart pains over Patti Harrison. We were sitting there talking about our three favorite subjects—guitars, cars and women. After he got to the woman part of the conversation, Eric turns to me and says, “Why does love got to be so sad anyway, Bobby?” I said, “Why does that have to be such a long song title?” [laughs]. The song started right then.

How did you meet Eric Clapton?

WHITLOCK: I was working with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and some tapes we had done had been sent to George Harrison. George liked it and turned us on to Eric, who was in Blind Faith at the time and doing a tour. Eric asked us to be the opening act for their American tour and the two of us became friends and started hanging out together. Our band was all about having a good time singing and playing, and Eric really wanted to be a part of that camaraderie. So he asked to be in the band.

That was such an amazing era for music. What was the vibe like back then?

WHITLOCK: Everyone felt like they were bullet proof. We were young guys playing music like we had been around for 18 lifetimes, and it was non-stop. But it was never about the money, the drugs or anything else. It was always about the music.

How did Derek and the Dominos get together?

WHITLOCK: It all started when George called Eric and asked us to put together the core band to record what would become All Things Must Pass. At the time, Eric and I were just hanging out and writing songs, but after the album was complete we started rehearsing and putting it all together. We did a few tours and then went to Miami to record.

How did Duane Allman become involved in those sessions?

WHITLOCK: While we were recording the album, we found out that the Allman Brothers Band were playing at a nearby convention center. So we all went down to see them and stood right in front of Duane. I remember when Duane looked down and saw Eric, he just stopped playing. He just couldn’t believe it! Then when Duane stopped, Dickey Betts looked over and saw Eric and he stopped playing too! [laughs]. After they had regained their composure, we waited until after their set and asked them to come over. We all went back to the studio and hung out all night jamming. That’s when Eric and Duane became friends and we asked him to play on the record with us.

What was the songwriting process like for Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs?

WHITLOCK: Before we recorded anything we would always jam. I remember the first song Eric and I wrote together was “I Looked Away." Then we were messing around with bluesy stuff and wrote "Bell Bottom Blues." The next thing we jammed on the following night had a funky, Latin feel that eventually became "Keep on Growing."

What are you looking forward to most about the Just Us Tour?

CARMEL: Everything! Bobby and I have never toured together. We love to travel and getting out there and meeting people. This is really all about Bobby and his legacy. I’m looking forward to playing these songs and seeing the excitement of the audience.

WHITLOCK: For me, it’s getting to play with all of these different guitar players. I’m excited to hear what someone else’s take is on a song that I wrote. To think that I was 22 when I recorded All Things Must Pass and Layla still blows me away. People have written to us saying they’ve waited nearly 40 years to hear all of these songs in one show. I know Eric has done one version or the other of “Layla” and maybe “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad” a few different times, but no one has ever heard all of these songs together. We’re really looking forward to it.

For more about Whitlock, Carmel and their tour, visit bobbywhitlockandcococarmel.com.

The Just Us Tour:

• September 11 – Memphis, TN – The Warehouse w/ Josh Roberts
• September 12 – Nashville, TN – The City Winery w/ Kelvin Holly
• September 15 – Decatur, GA – Eddie’s Attic w/ Moses Mo (of Mother’s Finest)
• September 19 – New York, NY – B.B. King Blues Club w/ Godfrey Townsend
• September 20 – Sellersville, PA – Sellersville Theater w/ Pat Harrington
• September 22 – Fall River, MA – Narrows Center For The Arts – Matt Hamann
• September 23 – Somerville, MA – Johnny D’s w/ Andy Argondizza
• September 26 – Cleveland, OH – The Beachland Ballroom w/ Angelo Santelli
• September 27 – Rochester, NY – The Lovin’ Cup w/ Bob Wagner
• September 29 – Ferndale, MI – The Magic Bag w/ Angelo Santelli
• October 1 – Berwyn, IL – Fitzgerald’s w/ Nicolas Tremulus

James Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.

Duane Allman had three primary Les Pauls during his time with the Allman Brothers Band.

The 1957 goldtop he played on the band’s first two albums as well as most of the Derek and the Dominos Layla sessions has been on display at the Big House Museum in Macon, Georgia.

The other two Les Pauls, a 1959 cherry burst and a 1958 or 1959 dark burst, are owned by Duane’s daughter Galadrielle and have long been on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. She made sure that both guitars made it to the Beacon, along with Duane’s goldtop, for the Allman Brothers Band’s final performances this past October.

“I’ve always wanted to see them play the guitars, knowing that it would be amazing for everyone,” Galadrielle says. “It’s a daunting thing to try to imagine these fragile and valuable things out in the world, and it had to be the right time and place.”

The guitars’ histories are long and varied. In September 1970, Duane traded the goldtop for the cherry burst after swapping the pickups between the instruments. The cherry burst became his primary guitar, heard on At Fillmore East. In June 1971, guitar dealer Kurt Linhof sold Duane the dark burst, which became his main guitar until his death on October 29, 1971.

According to Galadrielle’s moving memoir, Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman, her mother Donna took the cherryburst from Duane’s apartment after his death and soon lent it to a musician friend—who had introduced Duane and Donna. She asked him to return it when her daughter was 21.

[[ For more about the Allman Brothers' six-night run at New York City's Beacon Theatre, pick up the January 2015 issue of Guitar World! ]]

Gregg had the darkburst, but the band’s road manager Twiggs Lyndon was worried about its fate. A classic car aficionado, Lyndon traded Gregg a 1939 Ford Opera coupe for the guitar, determined to hold it for Galadrielle until she was “old enough not to give it to the first guitar player she dated.” He took the guitar on tour with the Dixie Dregs, and it was on the road with him and band when Lyndon died in a skydiving accident in 1979.

Dregs guitarist Steve Morse safeguarded the guitar for over a decade, recording several tracks with it. On April 2, 1990, Twiggs’ brother Skoots Lyndon met Donna Allman at Duane’s Macon grave and presented her with the guitar for her daughter.

Fittingly, it was Skoots who traveled to Cleveland to transport the guitars to New York, guarding them with the expected vigilance. After decades behind glass, both guitars were not in playable shape. Lyndon, who is on the Deep Purple crew, asked Morse guitar tech Tommy Alderson to prep the guitars. He began working on them at 10:30 at night on an ironing boarding in room 805 of the Millburn Hotel, pronouncing them done at about three in the morning.

“I kept it really simple because they are very fragile,” Alderson says. “I cleaned the pots real good and got the intonation as right on as you can get with flattened frets. I flattened the necks with the truss rod so I could measure and set the bridge so it didn’t buzz or fret out.”

Alderson was struck in particular by the pickup setup on the cherry burst. “They are set different than anything I’ve ever encountered,” he says, “dropped down a fair amount below the pickup ring. The pickup pole adjustments had the screws turned up so they would pick up the signal. Also unusual, the bridge pickup is a lot weaker than the neck pickup. I plugged it in and put it in the middle, and it was the ‘One Way Out’ sound. It was just crazy to hear.”

The guitars’ unique sounds were apparent the moment Haynes and Trucks played them.

“You plug them in and the sound of Duane is unmistakable,” Haynes says.

“The sound is so distinct and powerful,” adds Derek Trucks. “There was definitely some extra spirit in the room. At one point, [his uncle, drummer] Butch looked down, saw I was playing Duane’s goldtop and was really struck.”

“It was during ‘Dreams,’ ” Butch recalls. “And seeing and hearing Derek play the solo on the guitar Duane used was very emotional.”

Alan Paul is the author of One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band.

Now in paperback, Randy Poe's Skydog: The Duane Allman Story (Backbeat Books) is revised and expanded, with a new afterword by the author, plus a foreword by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. It's the definitive biography of Duane Allman, one of the most revered guitarists of his generation.

Skydog reveals the complete story of the legendary guitarist: his childhood and musical awakening; his struggling first bands; his hard-won mastery of the slide guitar; his emergence as a successful session musician; his creation of the Allman Brothers Band; his tragic death at age 24; and his thriving musical legacy.

The book is available now at the Guitar World Online Store for $18.99.

The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East has been considered rock’s best live album since its 1971 release.

Recorded March 12 and 13, 1971, at the New York club, the album captured the original Allman Brothers Band at the peak of their powers, playing with verve, grace, intensity and seemingly telepathic communication.

Guitarists Dickey Betts and Duane Allman finished one another’s phrases, spun beautiful leads off each other’s riffs and prodded themselves to guitar heights that have rarely, if ever, been equaled.

Over the years, different versions have been issued, including the expanded The Fillmore Concerts, but the holy grail for Allmans fans has been hearing the many unreleased tracks from the shows, mostly stemming from Friday, March 12, as most of the album was culled from the final night.

A new deluxe set, The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings, delivers almost all of the music played by the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East during these shows in great, remastered sound. The set consists of six CDs or three Blu-ray discs, which are mixed for Surround Sound and bring the band’s performance to a shimmering new life.

Duane Allman famously invited several guests, including soprano saxophonist Juicy Carter, harmonica player Thom Doucette and percussionist Bobby Caldwell (the drummer from the headlining Johnny Winter And), to sit in, much to the consternation of producer Tom Dowd. Dowd convinced the band to banish the horns for the second night and chose different versions of songs or edited out most of the guests’ contributions, which can now be heard — and mostly prove Dowd’s point.

The final performance captured on the collection came a few months later, on June 27, 1971, the closing show of the Fillmore East. It includes promoter Bill Graham’s entire, ecstatic introduction, which concluded with “We’re going to round it out with the best of them all, the Allman Brothers Band.”

We spoke with compilation producer Bill Levenson about the release.

GUITAR WORLD: This set has been talked about for so long. Do you think it came out the same way it would have if you had done it any time in the last 20 years?

The main difference in the last year or two was the Blu-ray and Surround Sound. I don’t think we would have done that in the Nineties when we were first talking about it. I think that’s what doing it in 2014 brought us — a Blu-ray set.

And I’m very excited about the Surround Sound. The goal was really to put the listener in the 10th row of the Fillmore, with everything in front of you and the reflections and the audience behind you. I grew up in New York and went into the Fillmore. It had a distinct sound, a fabulous sound, and you can feel the auditorium in any album recorded there. I was trying to recreate being in the Fillmore, and I do think we were able to capture the magic of what was in that hall.

”

Among other things, you finally brought us the sax stylings of Juicy Carter, which we’ve only been able to hear dabs of before. It’s really interesting but not hard to hear why Tom Dowd was upset about his sudden appearance during a recording.

Yes. What really made it work was just to find the place in the mix where it was forward but not too forward, dissonant but not too edgy. To be honest, there are moments where we buried him because he was went off in really dissonant tangents. It’s still there; you hear if you listen, but he’s been pulled back. During these times, he was playing two saxes at once — baritone and saxophone — and some of the playing gets really out there.

It was really the magic of the fader.

This set scratched a lot of our itches, but a big one that remains is the first show, Thursday, March 11, which Tom Dowd said he recorded and which apparently featured a full horn section.

Thursday night is the blind spot for all of us. I’ve picked through the vaults hundreds of times, and there’s not even a hint of it existing, not even a reference somewhere. The only time it’s even mentioned is in a Tom Dowd interview, and he’s no longer with us to ask. But I am certain that there’s no tape, not even a tape that’s taped over … I just used everything we had.

Alan Paul is the author of the best-selling book One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. You can read an excerpt about the recording of At Fillmore Easthere.

Democracies very rarely work in rock bands.

Most successful groups usually have one dominant member (maybe two) who provides the artistic vision the rest can respect and rally around.

Without strong leadership, you can usually kiss any band goodbye. This appears to be the underlying lesson in Guitar World writer Alan Paul’s excellent new book, One Way Out: The Inside History of The Allman Brothers Band (St. Martin’s Press).

[[ Video: Get an Exclusive Look at the Allman Brothers Band Performing "Midnight Rider" in 1992 from the 'Live At Great Woods' DVD ]]

Written with the Allman Brothers Band’s participation, One Way Out is perhaps the most in-depth look at one of America’s most beloved, but thoroughly dysfunctional ensembles.

With slide guitar genius Duane Allman at the helm, the Brothers started out strong and sure. They went from strength-to-strength in the late Sixties and early Seventies, becoming one of the world’s truly inspired improvising bands as evidenced by their landmark 1971 double album At Fillmore East.

The Allman Brothers Band was largely Duane’s conception, and it was his unflagging energy and incredible guitar playing that drove them to mesmerizing heights as they blended rock, jazz, blues and country in new and exciting ways. Unfortunately, the guitarist was killed in a motorcycle accident in October of ’71 just as the band was achieving large-scale commercial recognition.

In the aftermath, co-guitarist Dickey Betts picked up the baton, and for a while it looked like he would lead them to new-found glory. Their next two albums, Eat a Peach (1972) and Brothers and Sisters (1973) were artistic and commercial triumphs. However, Betts’ temperamental behavior made him a less than ideal captain, and over the next several decades the band split into warring factions that became the stuff of legend. Astonishingly, they continued to play solid, often inspired, music and somehow survived—but just barely.

The band’s incredible rise and their trials and tribulations naturally make for a great story and engrossing reading. Alan Paul has written about the Allmans in Guitar World for the last 25 years, and his depth of knowledge shows.

[[ Guitar World’s Blues Greats Subscription Offer: Get one year of Guitar World plus a new digital EP, 'Legacy Recordings Presents: Blues Greats! Past & Present,' featuring “Get On With Your Life" (Live) by the Allman Brothers Band! ]]

He manages to get every surviving member of the band—past and present—to be shockingly honest in their assessment of their music and relationships with each other. Even the group’s famously easygoing guitarist Warren Haynes gets into the act as he expresses his exasperation at the sometimes strange and unpredictable behavior of his gifted, but flawed, band mates.

The book is written in an oral history format, so the stories are salty, unfiltered and straight from the horse’s mouth. It’s a good thing, too, because the Allmans’ story is often so bizarre and harrowing it’s hard to believe it’s true. The word “definitive” gets tossed around so often it has lost some of its meaning, but this 400-page journey into the heart of rock and roll darkness deserves the accolade.

The book also makes you wonder just what would’ve happened if Duane had been around to kick some butt …

One Way Out: The Inside Story of the Allman Brothers (St. Martin’s, February 18) is available for pre-order at Amazon.com. For more about Alan Paul, visit alanpaul.net.

Brad Tolinksi is the editor-in-chief of Guitar World magazine.

The March 2014 issue of Guitar World magazine is available now: Eric Clapton's 50 Greatest Guitar Songs, How the Layla Sessions Almost Destroyed the Allman Brothers Band, Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Winter and More! It's available at newsstands and at the Guitar World Online Store.

From the GW archive: This story was originally published in the January 2011 issue of Guitar World.

Duane Allman played a gorgeous 1957 Gibson Les Paul goldtop for the first 18 months of his two and a half years in the Allman Brothers Band.

He played the goldtop on the band’s first two albums, which featured the original versions of “Whipping Post,” “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” “Midnight Rider,” “Revival” and other classics, and he played it on his numerous sessions with other artists, including Derek and the Dominos’ 1970 masterpiece, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Then Allman swapped the guitar for a sunburst Paul, and this piece of rock and roll history disappeared into the ether.

Now the goldtop is back where it belongs: in the spotlight. Today, Duane’s former guitar is on display at the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House in Macon, Georgia.

What’s more, it can be heard on a new recording, Guitar Magic, by the Skydog Woody Project, which also features the 1976 Gibson Thunderbird bass once owned by late ABB/Gov’t Mule bassist Allen Woody.

The story of how Duane and the goldtop became separated is a classic tale of guitar lust.

On September 16, 1970, the Allmans played a show in Duane and Gregg Allman’s hometown of Daytona, Florida. Duane, fresh off recording Layla with Eric Clapton and company, was, as usual, playing his ’57 goldtop.

The opening band was a local group called the Stone Balloon, whose guitarist, Rick Stine, was playing a 1959 cherry sunburst Les Paul, which caught Duane’s eye. While making Layla he had fallen in love with Clapton’s cherry sunburst. Wanting one of his own, Duane offered to swap Les Pauls with Stine. When Stine balked, Allman upped the ante, throwing in $200 and one of his regular Marshall 50 heads.

Stine agreed, but Duane had one caveat: he wanted the goldtop’s pickups for his new ’burst. The electronics were swapped, and the deal was done. Exactly one week later, on September 23, Allman played his new guitar when the Allman Brothers Band performed at the Fillmore East in New York City, a fact born out by video footage from the show. He played his new cherry ’burst throughout the rest of his career, which ended far too soon when he was killed in a motorcycle crash on October 29, 1971.

Meanwhile, Allman’s original goldtop drifted around Daytona, passing through the hands of three different owners, the last of which eventually sold it to a local guitar store. In 1977, the shop sold it to Gainesville guitarist Scot LaMar. He’d heard from his friend Billy Bowers that Duane’s Les Paul was for sale in Daytona, and he rushed to the store to purchase it. He paid $475, a fair price for a vintage Les Paul in 1977.

The goldtop had some damage, including a bite mark on the headstock from a previous owner’s dog. LaMar had two respected luthiers refinish the guitar, but he was dissatisfied with the results and eventually had the instrument refinished by Tom Murphy, the man behind the Gibson Historic series and probably the most renowned “goldtop guy” in the world. The guitar was restored to its original glory and placed on display at the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House.

Opened last year in the communal house where various members of the band lived, played and jammed together from 1970 to 1973, the Big House Museum includes thousands of artifacts from the ABB’s career. The goldtop is displayed along with artifacts directly related to it, including a shirt given to Duane by Clapton during the Layla sessions and two amps Duane used with the guitar: a Fender Showman and a 50-watt Marshall head, which were sometimes used together.

Other items on display at the museum include Berry Oakley’s Fender Jazz “Tractor” bass and Showman amp, a T-shirt from the first-ever run of ABB merchandise, a Fender Bassman that Dickey Betts used during the band’s earliest days and one of Duane’s Marshall cabs. It also includes a recreation of the famous Fillmore East stage, where the band recorded its landmark At Fillmore East live album in 1970. The display includes a set of vintage Ludwig drums used by Butch Trucks from 1968 to 1970, and a pair of road cases with stenciled lettering pictured on the cover of At Fillmore East.

The guitar will be on display at the Big House at least through this year, and probably longer. “The guitar is where it belongs right now,” LaMar says. “People need to appreciate it and see it.”

Remarkably, LaMar’s generosity with the instrument includes a firm belief that it should be played as well as viewed. “It’s a real living legend and it shouldn’t exist only behind glass,” he says. “It’s a shame to me how many of our greatest guitars have become dead artifacts.”

Putting his money where his mouth is, LaMar recently lent the goldtop to guitarist Joe Davis, who used it to record Guitar Magic, which also features bassist Garry Harper playing Allen Woody’s Gibson Thunderbird bass, on loan from Woody’s father. Davis and Harper released the album under the name the Skydog Woody Project, an amalgam of Woody’s name and Duane’s nickname, Skydog. “There was magic in these instruments,” Davis says, “and it impacted everything we did.”

The project got rolling after Davis heard about the goldtop and got in touch with LaMar, who invited him to come visit. The two men spent a few days hanging out, but while LaMar showed Davis many to-die-for vintage axes, the goldtop was not among them. “I think he was testing me out,” Davis says. “He took me swimming in alligator-infested water and watched how I acted and how I treated the guitars. During those days, I got discouraged that I might never even see the goldtop because it wasn’t discussed. But we made a great friendship, which started with our mutual love of Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman.”

At long last, LaMar produced Duane’s 1957 goldtop and shocked Davis by asking if he wanted to play it. “I knew right away that this is the perfect guitar,” Davis says. “I went home satisfied that I got to see the Layla guitar and thrilled that I got to play it.”

Davis could barely dream that within months he would be in the studio recording an album with that piece of rock and roll history. “It’s the first time I‘ve recorded an album and not thought about how it will sell at all,” says Davis, who has released four other CDs. “I’m just thinking about how it happened and feeling very pleased that I had this opportunity.”

LaMar says he was just happy to see and hear the guitar being put to good use. Derek Trucks has also performed with the instrument, and LaMar hopes Warren Haynes will lay his hands on it soon as well. “I want people to see it and hear it,” LaMar says. “It’s not my guitar; it’s Duane Allman’s. I’m just babysitting.”

Photo: E.J. Devokaitis

I had the thrill of my musical life last year when I got to play Duane Allman’s 1957 Goldtop Les Paul on a Macon, Georgia, stage.

I grew up listening to Lonnie Mack playing in bars around my Ohio hometown and have been greatly influenced by Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Roy Buchannan, Rory Gallagher, Peter Green, Carlos Santana and a host of others.

But it was the Allman Brothers Band’s Duane Allman and Dickey Betts who hit me the hardest. Their mix of rock, blues, jazz, soul and country improvised by virtuoso players just floored me — and it still does!

Willie Perkins, the ABB’s tour manager during their golden era, 1970 to 1976, has been my manager for the past 15 years. So the Brothers and their music have played a huge role in my life and career, which made playing Duane’s Goldtop a thrill and pleasure almost beyond words.

The 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, serial No. 7 3312, is relatively light for a Les Paul, with a big, rounded neck profile. It was refinished by Tom Murphy in 1997 at Gibson’s Historic Division and set up much as Duane might have played it, including the stringing “over” rather than through the stop bar (something I do on my guitars as well). This gives the guitar a nice, supple feel while sacrificing little if any of the famous Les Paul sustain.

I own and play a 1996 Gibson Historic Collection Les Paul Goldtop R7, which I’m elated to say is very similar to Duane’s guitar in appearance and feel. Duane’s is a bit lighter, perhaps because the pickguard, pickup switch ring and pointers have been removed, but the guitars looks and feel virtually identical.

This Goldtop is Duane’s voice on the first two ABB albums (The Allman Brothers Band and Idlewild South), as well as on Derek and the Dominos’ Layla sessions.

Even un-amplified, the guitar truly speaks in a lively resonant voice, as I learned sitting outside the back door of the Cox Capital Theater in the quiet of the Georgia night with Willie Perkins by my side: Any Duane fan would have recognized that guitar in the dark! It had the same tonal character in that Macon alleyway that it has on all of those famous recordings. After listening to that guitar thousands of times, I could barely believe it was in my hands and I was going to play it on stage.

I played my Gibson Flying V through my reissue Marshall model 1962 Bluesbreaker as we played songs from our Atlas Records CDs Live as Hell and More Live as Hell for about an hour (for that part of the show). Drummer Dave Fair, bassist Chris Perreault and I were loving the crowd and having a fine night. And then it really got special, as Willie came onstage bearing Duane’s guitar. He said, “This is my friend Duane Allman’s guitar, and I carried it all over the country, but my friend Sonny Moorman’s gonna play it tonight.”

I then invited Berry Duane Oakley, son of original ABB bassist Berry Oakley, to play with us. He came out carrying his dad’s “Tractor” bass, plugged in to Chris’s Ampeg SVT, and we started into the ABB classic “Dreams.” After that, we rolled right into “One Way Out.” Videos of both are at the bottom of this post.

I had been worried I would be too nervous to play this iconic instrument — that I would freeze up and choke at the prospect — but its current owner, Scot LaMar, had admonished me to “Play it like I stole it,” so I dedicated myself to giving it my all. From the moment I first picked it up, it could not possibly have seemed more natural for me to play that guitar. I felt absolutely and totally at home!

It was a special pleasure to play it alongside Berry Duane Oakley, who is truly his father’s son! I’ve never heard ANYONE other than his dad play those songs with the kind of feel, fire and emotion that he delivered, and the combination of Dave and Berry’s stellar playing and the magic of Duane’s guitar truly made a dream come true for me.

What was it like to play Duane Allman’s guitar? Man, we were hittin’ the note!

Very special thanks to Scot LaMar, E.J.Devokaitis, the Big House Museum, Dave Pierson, GABBA, and of course, Willie Perkins, for making this happen.

"Dreams"

"One Way Out"

Photo: Terry Reeves Martin

For more about Sonny Moorman, visit sonnymoorman.com.

The new video below offers Duane Allman fans a sneak peak at the new seven-disc Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective Box Set. The set, which will be released March 5 on Rounder Records, includes rare recordings by Allman's early bands, including the Escorts, Allman Joys, the 31st of February and the Bleus.

Extensive liner notes are accompanied by a tribute from Allman's daughter.

For more info about the box set, head here.

On March 5, Rounder Records will release Skydog: The Duane Allman Retrospective, a deluxe, seven-disc box set.

The set, which will sell for $139.98, contains Allman's best-known and most commercially successful recordings with the Allman Brothers Band and Derek and the Dominos, plus session work with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs, Clarence Carter, King Curtis, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Ronnie Hawkins, Otis Rush, Laura Nyro, Lulu, the Sweet Inspirations, Laura Lee, Spencer Wiggins, Arthur Conley, Willie Walker, the Lovelles, the Soul Survivors, Johnny Jenkins, John Hammond, Doris Duke, Eric Quincy Tate, Herbie Mann and others.

Skydog was produced by Galadrielle Allman (Duane’s daughter) and two-time Grammy-winning producer Bill Levenson. Rounder Records’ Scott Billington served as executive producer. Scott Schinder contributed comprehensive historical liner notes, complemented by additional notes by Galadrielle Allman.

In her recollection of her father, who died when she was a young child, Galadrielle writes, “I am very lucky that my father is Duane Allman, an artist who left behind a wealth of incredible music . . . Working on this retrospective, I have gotten closer than I ever have been to understanding my father’s development as a musician and a man.”

Over seven discs, Skydog tells the Duane Allman story with rare, never-before-heard gems alongside hits.

“I hope the celebration of Duane’s life inspires you to live fearlessly and enjoy life,” Galadrielle concludes. “I know that would have made him proud.”

• Disc One
• 1 THE ESCORTS Turn On Your Love Light 2:33
• 2 THE ESCORTS No Name Instrumental 3:13
• 3 THE ESCORTS What’d I Say 4:04
• 4 THE ALLMAN JOYS Spoonful 2:27
• 5 THE ALLMAN JOYS Gotta Get Away 2:38
• 6 THE ALLMAN JOYS Shapes Of Things 2:47
• 7 THE ALLMAN JOYS Crossroads 3:32
• 8 THE ALLMAN JOYS Mister, You’re A Better Man Than I 4:45
• 9 THE ALLMAN JOYS Lost Woman 5:23
• 10 HOUR GLASS Cast Off All My Fears 3:31
• 11 HOUR GLASS I’ve Been Trying 2:39
• 12 HOUR GLASS Nothing But Tears 2:29
• 13 HOUR GLASS Power Of Love 2:51
• 14 HOUR GLASS Down In Texas 3:08
• 15 HOUR GLASS Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 3:01
• 16 HOUR GLASS B.B. King Medley 7:07
• 17 HOUR GLASS Been Gone Too Long 3:03
• 18 HOUR GLASS Ain’t No Good To Cry 3:08
• 19 31ST OF FEBRUARY Morning Dew 3:46
• 20 31ST OF FEBRUARY Melissa 3:12
• 21 THE BLEUS Milk And Honey 2:34
• 22 THE BLEUS Leavin’ Lisa 2:43
• 23 THE BLEUS Julianna’s Gone 2:59

Disc Two
1 CLARENCE CARTER The Road Of Love 2:54
2 CLARENCE CARTER Light My Fire 2:49
3 WILSON PICKETT Hey Jude 4:06
4 WILSON PICKETT Toe Hold 2:49
5 WILSON PICKETT My Own Style Of Loving 2:41
6 WILSON PICKETT Born to Be Wild 2:45
7 LAURA LEE It’s How You Make It Good 2:32
8 LAURA LEE It Ain’t What You Do (But How You Do It) 2:05
9 SPENCER WIGGINS I Never Loved A Woman (The Way I Love You) 3:01
10 ARTHUR CONLEY Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da 3:00
11 ARTHUR CONLEY Stuff You Gotta Watch 2:15
12 ARTHUR CONLEY Speak Her Name 2:39
13 ARTHUR CONLEY That Can't Be My Baby 2:22
14 WILLIE WALKER A Lucky Loser 2:20
15 THE LOVELLES I'm Coming Today 2:59
16 THE LOVELLES Pretending Dear 2:38
17 ARETHA FRANKLIN The Weight 2:53
18 ARETHA FRANKLIN It Ain't Fair 3:22
19 SOUL SURVIVORS Darkness 2:56
20 SOUL SURVIVORS Tell Daddy 2:30
21 SOUL SURVIVORS Got Down On Saturday 3:10
22 KING CURTIS Hey Joe 2:56
23 KING CURTIS Foot Pattin' 4:49
24 KING CURTIS Games People Play 2:46
25 KING CURTIS The Weight 2:47
26 THE SWEET INSPIRATIONS Get A Little Order 2:06

Disc Three
1 THE BARRY GOLDBERG BLUES BAND Twice A Man 4:26
2 DUANE ALLMAN Goin' Down Slow 8:44
3 DUANE ALLMAN No Money Down 3:25
4 DUANE ALLMAN Happily Married Man 2:40
5 OTIS RUSH Me 2:55
6 OTIS RUSH Reap What You Sow 4:53
7 OTIS RUSH It Takes Time 3:25
8 THE DUCK & THE BEAR Going Up The Country 2:34
9 THE DUCK & THE BEAR Hand Jive 2:41
10 BOZ SCAGGS Finding Her 4:10
11 BOZ SCAGGS Look What I Got 4:13
12 BOZ SCAGGS Waiting For A Train 2:41
13 BOZ SCAGGS Loan Me A Dime 13:01
14 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Don't Want You No More 2:26
15 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND It's Not My Cross To Bear 5:01
16 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Black Hearted Woman 5:07
17 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Trouble No More 3:45

Disc Four
1 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Every Hungry Woman 4:13
2 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Dreams 7:16
3 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Whipping Post 5:16
4 RONNIE HAWKINS One More Night 2:22
5 RONNIE HAWKINS Will The Circle Be Unbroken 2:50
6 RONNIE HAWKINS Matchbox 3:05
7 RONNIE HAWKINS Down In The Alley 5:08
8 RONNIE HAWKINS Who Do You Love 2:13
9 LULU Marley Purt Drive 3:21
10 LULU Dirty Old Man 2:20
11 LULU Mr. Bojangles 3:08
12 LULU Sweep Around Your Own Back Door 2:40
13 JOHNNY JENKINS I Walk On Gilded Splinters 5:16
14 JOHNNY JENKINS Rollin’ Stone 4:56
15 JOHNNY JENKINS Down Along The Cove 3:02
16 JOHNNY JENKINS Voodoo In You 4:50
17 JOHN HAMMOND Shake For Me 2:42
18 JOHN HAMMOND Cryin’ For My Baby 2:39
19 JOHN HAMMOND I’m Leavin’ You 3:20
20 JOHN HAMMOND You’ll Be Mine 2:42
21 DORIS DUKE Ghost Of Myself 3:06

Disc Five
1 ERIC QUINCY TATE Comin’ Down (demo version) 2:52
2 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Hoochie Coochie Man (live) 5:00
3 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Midnight Rider 2:58
4 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Dimples (live) 4:59
5 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND I'm Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town (live) 9:21
6 DELANEY & BONNIE & FRIENDS Soul Shake 3:06
7 LAURA NYRO Beads Of Sweat 4:47
8 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ 3:28
9 DELANEY & BONNIE & FRIENDS Living On The Open Road 3:03
10 ELLA BROWN A Woman Left Lonely 3:23
11 ELLA BROWN Touch Me 2:59
12 BOBBY LANCE More Than Enough Rain 5:51
13 DEREK & THE DOMINOS I Am Yours 3:34
14 DEREK & THE DOMINOS Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad? 4:41
15 DEREK & THE DOMINOS Have You Ever Loved A Woman 6:52
16 DEREK & THE DOMINOS Layla 7:03
17 ERIC CLAPTON & DUANE ALLMAN Mean Old World 3:48

Disc Six
1 SAM SAMUDIO Me And Bobby McGee 3:31
2 SAM SAMUDIO Relativity 3:14
3 SAM SAMUDIO Goin' Upstairs 5:06
4 RONNIE HAWKINS Don't Tell Me Your Troubles 2:13
5 RONNIE HAWKINS Sick And Tired 2:45
6 RONNIE HAWKINS Odessa 3:19
7 DELANEY & BONNIE & FRIENDS Gift Of Love 2:09
8 DELANEY & BONNIE & FRIENDS Sing My Way Home 4:02
9 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Statesboro Blues (live) 4:17
10 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed (live) 13:04
11 GRATEFUL DEAD Sugar Magnolia (live) 7:20
12 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND One Way Out (live) 4:57
13 HERBIE MANN Push Push 10:03
14 HERBIE MANN Spirit In The Dark 7:59
15 HERBIE MANN What’d I Say 4:57

Disc Seven
1 DELANEY & BONNIE & FRIENDS Come On In My Kitchen (live) 3:42
2 DELANEY & BONNIE & FRIENDS Going Down The Road Feeling Bad (live) 4:03
3 DELANEY & BONNIE & FRIENDS Poor Elijah / Tribute To Johnson (Medley) (live) 4:54
4 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND You Don't Love Me / Soul Serenade (live) 19:25
5 COWBOY Please Be With Me 3:41
6 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Stand Back 3:24
7 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Blue Sky 5:09
8 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Blue Sky (live) 11:24
9 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Dreams (live) 17:56
10 THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Little Martha 2:07

Need to brush up on -- or simply learn how to play -- slide guitar? Check out these two tab books and one DVD (plus an extra book, an ode to Duane Allman, one of slide's greatest heroes) that tell you how to do exactly that, and a whole lot more. They're all available at the Guitar World Online Store.

• Warren Haynes: Guide to Slide Guitar

BOOK/CD: Learn the slide guitar stylings of Warren Haynes from the man himself! The legendary guitarist of Gov't Mule, Phil Lesh and Friends, the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers Band offers instructions on choosing a slide, perfecting left- and right-hand techniques, playing rhythm, and blues soloing-on electric and acoustic. The Warren Haynes Guide to Slide Guitar will give you the most in-depth and personal lessons ever on how to play slide guitar in the style of Warren Haynes. (Cherry Lane Music, softcover with CD, $19.99)

• Warren Haynes: Electric Blues and Slide Guitar

DVD: Warren Haynes, a member of the Allman Brothers Band, has enjoyed an outstanding solo career as a bluesman. On this great DVD he covers a wide range of blues and slide skills and techniques, including phrasing, vibrato, string bending and soloing as well as mixing major and minor scales, using space, and looking for blue notes within intervals. An intense and rewarding blues lesson guaranteed to improve your playing! Includes a new introduction by Jeff Golub. (Hot Licks, $24.95)

• Fretboard Roadmaps: Slide Guitar The Essential Patterns That All the Pros Know and Use

BOOK/CD: A must for every slide guitarist, this book/CD pack teaches how to: play lead and rhythm anywhere on the fretboard, in any key; play a variety of slide guitar styles using moveable scale patterns, common licks and slide techniques; play in open G tuning, open D tuning, open A tuning, open E tuning, and standard tuning; and more. (Softcover with CD, $14.99)

• Skydog: The Duane Allman Story

BOOK: Now in paperback - revised and expanded, with a new afterword by the author - this is the definitive biography of Duane Allman, one of the most revered guitarists of his generation. Skydog reveals the complete story of the legendary guitarist: his childhood and musical awakening; his struggling first bands; his hard-won mastery of Now in paperback - revised and expanded, with a new afterword by the author - this is the definitive biography of Duane Allman, one of the most revered guitarists of his generation. Skydog reveals the complete story of the legendary guitarist: his childhood and musical awakening; his struggling first bands; his hard-won mastery of the slide guitar; his emergence as a successful session musician; his creation of the Allman Brothers Band; his tragic death at age 24; and his thriving musical legacy. (By Randy Poe, foreword by Billy Gibbons, Backbeat Books, $18.99)

Learn about all four items at the Guitar World Online Store.

The lesson book Duane Allman: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of His Guitar Styles and Techniques lets you explore the songs and solos of Southern rock guitar legend Duane Allman.

It is available now at the Guitar World Online Store for $22.95.

The softcover book/CD was written by Dave Rubin and features a moving foreword by Duane Allman's daughter, Galadrielle Allman.

Songs covered include "Blue Sky," "Dreams I'll Never See," "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," "It's Not My Cross to Bear," "Layla," "Leave My Blues at Home," "Little Martha," "Mountain Jam," "(They Call It) Stormy Monday (Stormy Monday Blues)" "Trouble No More (Someday Baby)," "Whipping Post" and more.

For more information or to order, visit the Guitar World Online Store.

Longtime Guitar World writer and editor Alan Paul has released One Way Out: An Oral History of the Allman Brothers Band. The Ebook is available exclusively through Amazon Singles for $2.99.

“It’s their story in their words,” Paul says. “I went through hundreds of hours of interviews, pulling out the quotes to tell the tale of this American institution.”

Most of the interviews were originally conducted for Guitar World, but the book includes many never-before-published quotes from band members Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Jaimoe, Butch Trucks, Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, the late Allen Woody, Jack Pearson and Jimmy Herring, plus friends and associates like Eric Clapton, Tom Dowd, Phil Walden and Billy Gibbons.

One Way Out is the most complete exploration of the Allman Brothers' music yet, tracking the band’s career from their 1969 formation through their historic 40th anniversary star-studded Beacon run, right on up to today. It includes the most in-depth look at the acrimonious 2000 parting with founding guitarist Betts; an intense discussion of Betts and Duane Allman’s revolutionary guitar styles; and thorough behind-the-scenes information on the recording of At Fillmore East, Layla, Eat A Peach and other classic albums.

“I learned a lot reading One Way Out,” says ABB bassist Oteil Burbridge. “If you want to know the real deal, read Alan Paul.”

One Way Out also includes: A highly opinionated discography with short reviews of over 50 albums from the ABB, Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Gov’t Mule, Derek Trucks Band and more; a list of Essential Southern Rock Albums; and an excerpt from Paul’s lauded book Big in China, which is being made into a major motion picture by director/producer Ivan Reitman.

“Alan Paul is one of America’s foremost experts on the Allman Brothers Band,” says E.J. Devokaitis, curator and archivist of the Allman Brothers Band Museum at the Big House. “For the past 20 years, he has written informative, comprehensive articles on the band, and he truly understands the essence of their significance. It’s great to see him release this chronicle.”

For more information about One Way Out: An Oral History of the Allman Brothers Band, or to order, visit amazon.com.

The new June 2012 issue of Guitar World is available now at the new-and-improved Guitar World Online Store.

On the cover this month? Slipknot!

Making their first U.S. appearance since the death of Paul Gray, Slipknot are the most anticipated band on this summer’s Mayhem Festival tour. Guitar World catches up with Mick Thomson and Jim Root. The issue also includes a double-sided Jim Root poster!

And speaking of summer tours, check out the issue's 2012 Summer Tour Spectacular, which tells you everything you need to know about tours by Megadeth, Cannibal Corpse, The Devil Wears Prada, We Came as Romans and a host of other rockers, who discuss the pleasures and perils of summer touring. We check in with the Mayhem Festival, the U.S. Torture Tour and more.

Other features include:

John 5: The virtuoso talks about his latest solo album, God Told Me To, and countless side projects, including a recent collaboration with David Lee Roth.

The GW Guide to Gigging: From preparation and load-in to soundcheck and showtime — here’s everything you need to know to make each performance a monster success.

The Making of Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power: Vinnie Paul, Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown talk about the making of the album on which they — and guitarist Dimebag Darrell — took Pantera’s music to its greatest heights 20 years ago. PLUS: Five modern metalists speak out about the Pantera classic.

Brothers of the Road: The making of Eat a Peach, Duane Allman's last recording with the Allman Brothers Band.

... and reviews of the DV Mark Triple 6 amp, the Jackson Chris Broderick Soloist guitar, the Orange OPC Musician's Personal Computer (and practice amp), the Zoom RB Recorder Sample Interface Controller, the Mullinax "Oh, Salvation" P-90 Pickup Set and the Morley Buffer Boost ...

... and columns by Glenn Proudfoot, Metal Mike, Keith Wyatt, Dale Turner and Andy Aledort ...

... and tabs of Pantera's "By Demons Be Driven," Slipknot's "Wait and Bleed," Led Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown" and The Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville."

The June issue is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

Photo: Ari Michelson

Gregg Allman will join the fray of rock stars turned authors when his autobiography -- My Cross to Bear, is published on May 1.

It will be available in bookstores and via digital retailers.

Allman, who wrote the book with Alan Light, made the announcement his Facebook page.

The book will feature the singer's "unflinching tale of his life on stage and off," including his rock and roll lifestyle, his relationship with Cher and his struggles with drugs and alcohol.

The book also deals with his many tribulations, including the tragic death of his brother, Duane.

Two thousand eleven was a banner year for solo releases by members of the Allman Brothers Band. Gregg Allman’s Low Country Blues, Warren Haynes’ Man in Motion and Tedeschi Trucks Band’s Revelator were all nominated for the Best Blues Album Grammy Award. But the fourth and final release is the sleeper pick: Renaissance Man by founding Allman Brothers drummer Jaimoe and his Jasssz Band. Released December 17, 2011, by lil'Johnieboy Records to less attention than any of his bandmates’ efforts received, Renaissance Man is a diverse, eclectic and thoroughly listenable album. Jaimoe is the band’s founder and heart, and the group features a septet of swinging, in-the-pocket players, including a great three-man horn section. But what makes it all work is Junior Mack’s revelatory singing and guitar work. A New Jersey native and longtime staple of the New York blues world, Mack reveals wide ranging talent on Renaissance Man, with several memorable originals that span the blues, rock and jazz worlds. Mack also helps the band make the blues classic “Leaving Trunk” their own, turns in a moving version of the soul classic “Rainy Night in Georgia” and re-imagines the Allmans’ “Melissa” as a bossa nova. Mack and Jaimoe bring their Jasssz Band to New York’s Gramercy Theater tonight, January 27. Jaimoe and the Allman Brothers will be back in Manhattan for their annual residency at the Beacon Theater, playing 10 shows starting March 9. We caught up with Mack -- and Jaimoe couldn’t resist jumping on the phone to sing the praises of the man he calls his “secret weapon.” Who came up with the bossa nova arrangement of the Allman Brothers classic “Melissa”? Who arranged that? JUNIOR: That was me, and it was the kind of discovery that’s a happy accident. I was playing a private gig for the CEO of Alcoa with my solo band and I found out he was from Brazil and at the last minute they told me the band should play as much Brazilian music as possible – except I really didn’t know any. I started thinking of songs that could adapt to a bossa nova beat and I thought of “Melissa.” We tried it and I thought it worked beautifully. When I played it for Jaimoe, he loved it and we immediately added it to the set. How big of an influence were the Allman Brothers on you? JUNIOR: Very big. I have always loved their music and so meeting and playing with Jaimoe was a thrill and continues to be so. And, of course, it also helped provide a group of hardcore fans who were ready to listen to us and have been very supportive. The Allman Bros connection has helped tremendously. It’s been a great experience all the way. I grew up listening to Jaimoe and the Allman Bros as a kid, so there’s not too much more I can ask for. All that being the case, was it intimidating for you to start playing with Jaimoe? JUNIOR: It was a little intimidating but it came mostly from the seasoned cats that were also on the bandstand. I’m a self-taught guy. I didn’t go to school for music.. I don’t really know how to write or read music, so the intimidation came from playing with guys who are really stellar musicians like [saxophonists] Kris Jensen and Paul Lieberman and [trumpeter] Reggie Pittman and trying to relay my songs and ideas to them. These guys could communicate a little better than I could on a musical level. JAIMOE: Junior is on everyone else’s level; he just didn’t realize it right away. Junior played a lot of blues for a lot of years and that's how people think of him, but it’s not all they can do. He not only plays all diff styles, but he writes all different ways. I would say he is more of a composer because of the way he writes and the way he plays; it’s never random. JUNIOR: I’m rooted in the blues, so that’s in any music I play, sing or write, but I don’t really break it down. I just play and try to play what’s right for the song.

The Allman Brothers Band are honoring the 40th anniversary of the Eat a Peach album by hailing 2012 as “The Year of the Peach.”

They'll kick off the year when they receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award February 11 during Grammy Week in Los Angeles; the group will be mentioned on February 12 national TV broadcast.

“It’s shaping up to be a great year,” says Butch Trucks, who co-founded the band in 1969 with Gregg Allman, drummer Jaimoe, guitarist Duane Allman, bassist Berry Oakley and guitarist Dickey Betts. “We just wanted to make music that was honest and play it for friends, which is pretty much what we’ve done. It’s an honor to be able to be recognized like this.”

Up next, the band will launch their annual residency at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, where they will perform 10 shows beginning March 9 (See full itinerary below). Tickets for those shows go on sale January 6. The Allman Brothers Band have performed more than 200 sold-out Beacon Shows since they began the March tradition in 1989.

Confirmed New York City Beacon Theatre dates:

• Fri3/9
• Sat3/10
• Tues3/13
• Weds3/14
• Fri3/16
• Sat3/17
• Tues3/20
• Weds3/21
• Sat3/24
• Sun3/25

In the following video, Guitar World associate editor Andy Aledort shows you how to play in the style of Duane Allman.

For the full two-hour lesson, check out our Learn Slide Guitar DVD.