The Allman Brothers life and biography

The Allman Brothers Band is an American rock/blues band, formed in 1969 by brothers Duane Allman (slide guitar and lead guitar) and Gregg Allman (vocals, organ, songwriting), who were supported by Dickey Betts (lead guitar, vocals, songwriting), Berry Oakley (bass guitar), Butch Trucks (drums), and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johanson (drums). While the band has been called the principal architects of Southern rock, they also incorporate elements of blues, jazz, and country music, and their live shows have jam band-style improvisation and instrumental songs.

Duane and Gregg Allman were born one year apart in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1946 and 1947, respectively. Their father died when they were young, and when Duane was 12, their mother moved the family to Daytona, Florida. They grew up listening to the great blues artists on southern radio stations and were soon playing music themselves. After Gregg received a guitar for Christmas he taught Duane some basics that he had picked up, and then switched to keyboards. By the time they were in their mid-teens, both were members of local groups like the House Rockers and the Untils.

In 1965 they formed a four-piece unit, the Allman Joys, and recorded a rendition of Willie Dixon's classic, "Spoonful." A year later they were brought to Hollywood by Bill McEuen but the group only lasted until 1967. The brothers formed another band, Hourglass, but the results were less than spectacular. "They handed us a boxful of demos and said pick out your album," Gregg said in Rock 100. Their label wouldn't even let the band play in clubs and eventually the group folded. The brothers' brief recordings from this period can be heard on the LPs Early Allman and Power of Love.

Gregg stayed in California to honor the remainder of the Hourglass contract, while Duane headed back south where he latched on to a highly lucrative but artistically unsatisfying job as a studio sideman. "Oh man! Studios--that's a terrible thing! You just lay around and you get your money, man," Duane once said in Guitar Player. He added tasteful guitar lines to songs by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Delaney and Bonnie, King Curtis, Boz Scaggs, Clarence Carter, and others while helping to establish Rick Hall's Muscle Shoals as one of the nation's recording capitals.

At the same time Duane was hanging out with Butch Trucks and his band, 31st of February. Gregg, who had been writing tunes out west, was convinced by Duane to come home and play. Upon his return the brothers recorded some demos with Truck's outfit before hooking up with The Second Coming, a progressive Jefferson Airplane-style band headed by Dicky Betts and Berry Oakley. The unit became the Allman Brothers Band and from their first jam together, Duane knew he had a hot group. "It lasted two-and-a-half hours," he told Guitar Player. "When we finally quit, nobody ever said a word man. Everybody was speechless. Nobody'd ever done anything like that before."

Duane eventually quit his studio work as the band went to New York to record their debut LP. The Allman Brothers Band, released in 1969, was mainly blues as the brothers were allowed the freedom that their Hourglass sessions prohibited. "Before we went into the studio to record our first album, we had a very clear idea of what we were all trying to do musically and that it was unique--a style totally different from anything else anyone was playing," Dicky Betts told Guitar World. "It wasn't that we got lucky as we went along; from the earliest rehearsals, we had the same mindset."
The unique aspect of the Allman Brothers was the unison counterpoint guitar lines that Duane and Betts played so brilliantly together. This approach reached its peak on their Live at the Fillmore East LP, released in 1971 after their second studio album, Idlewild South. The band was building a reputation on their four-hour live sets that transformed the blues in much the same way as Eric Clapton's trio, Cream. Recorded on March 12 and 13, 1971, three of the double LP's seven songs totalled 54 minutes, creating one of the most stunning live albums in rock history.

The two guitarists stretched classics like "Statesboro Blues" and "Stormy Monday" into new forms while creating beautiful and blistering originals like "Hot 'Lanta" and "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed." With Gregg on keyboards and vocals, Oakley on bass, and Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson both pounding on the drums, the Allman Brothers were a very high-powered machine. "The Allmans simply plowed straight ahead, unrelenting, not content to stop until both themselves and the audience were dizzy from exhaustion," Rock 100 stated.

The new formula of two guitars and two drums spawned an entire school of southern rock bands: Wet Willie, the Outlaws, .38 Special, Molly Hatchet, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels, Black Oak Arkansas, and the three-guitar attack of Lynyrd Skynyrd. With the exception of the latter, most of these bands just seemed like imitations, mainly because none of them included a guitar genius like Duane Allman.

"Duane was the father of the band," said Gregg in Guitar Player. "He had a lot to do with the spontaneity of the whole thing. He was like the mother ship. Somehow he had this real magic about him that would lock us all in, and we'd take off." Although he is hardly ever mentioned in the same breath as his contemporaries, Duane was as equally inventive and skillful as Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, or Jimmy Page. His work on Clapton's Layla LP prodded the Englishman to new heights and created one of the finest rock albums of all time.

The Allman Brothers band took a devastating blow on October 29, 1971 when Duane was killed in a motorcycle crash at the age of 24. A tight-knit family, the Allman Brothers band continued on without replacing Duane and issued Eat a Peach in 1972. One half of the LP consisted of live cuts from their Fillmore dates and the studio side included the hit "Melissa." Betts took control of the band's direction and continued in his instrumental vein with "Jessica" on their next album, Brothers and Sisters. They had their biggest hit, "Ramblin' Man," but were also struck again by tragedy when Berry Oakley died just 13 months after Duane in an eerily similar accident.

By 1974 the media began to focus more on the group's personal lives than their music as Gregg's solo tour, drug bust, and marriage to singer Cher took the spotlight while the group's financial situation worsened. Win, Lose or Draw saw the band continuing but breaking no new ground in 1975, the same year Capricorn issued a compilation LP, The Road Goes On Forever. Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas was released a year later and consisted of outtakes from 1972-75 sessions as the band began to disintegrate.

The final straw came when Gregg testified against their road manager, Scooter Herring, who eventually got 75 years in jail on a drug conviction. "He threw Scooter away just because he didn't need him anymore," Betts told Rolling Stone, "and there's not one person in this band who won't tell you anything different than that. That's why there's no Allman Brothers band... There is no way we can work with Gregg again ever."

Betts left to form Great Southern while Johanson organized Sea Level with pianist Chuck Leavell and bassist Lamar Williams. By 1979 the wounds were healed, however, as Gregg, Trucks, and Johanson jammed with Great Southern in New York's Central Park, sparking the first Allman Brothers reunion. Their comeback LP, Enlightened Rogues, was controlled by Betts as he again explored the dual guitar approach with Dan Toler. "Whatever Enlightened Rogues lacks in virtuosity, it makes up for in emotional intensity," stated Rolling Stone. Jas Obrecht in Guitar Player called it their "strongest album since Eat a Peach. It's good to see them back."

They followed with Reach for the Sky, which seemed hollow compared to Rogues. "We had a bad experience with (recording executive) Clive Davis," Betts told Guitar Player. "We did two albums with him--one of them was a real good album, and one of them was a real bad one.... The last album we did wasn't worth a...you know." The reunited Allmans lasted only one more album longer, Brothers Of The Road, before disbanding. Gregg hooked up with Toler and produced a major hit thereafter with I'm No Angel in 1987.

In the late 1980s, Mike Caplan of Epic Records had signed both Betts and Allman to separate contracts in hopes of getting them back together. By 1989 his strategy paid off and the Allman Brothers 20th Anniversary Tour, their first tour in eight years, was on the road playing their classic tunes. "We're just taking it easy and seeing what happens from here," Butch Trucks told the Detroit Free Press. Though enthusiastic, Betts expressed caution, joking in Rolling Stone that the folks from Epic "were afraid we would break up again before we ever finished the tour." The tour was a success as it coincided with the release of Dreams, a retrospective multi-disk box set containing several previously unreleased tracks.

After the tour the band members were back in the studios working once again with producer Tom Dowd on Seven Turns. Released in 1990, the album was praised as an encouraging return to the vintage sound of the Allman Brothers of old, and the single "Good Clean Fun" received considerable air play. Any doubts about the new incarnation of the pioneers of southern rock were removed in 1991 when the Allman Brothers released Shades of Two Worlds. "Charged by top-flight performances from Dickey Betts and Gregg Allman, the band summons up both the spirit and the musical resonance of the original group," remarked John Swenson in Rolling Stone. Swenson joined other reviewers in applauding the addition on these two albums of Warren Haynes, a slide guitarist who has done more than a creditable job of filling Duane's shoes: "He references Allman's tone and signature techniques yet animates his presentation with his own distinctive personality."

Now in their third decade together, Allman, Betts, Trucks, and Johanson have run the full gamut of emotions, yet they continue to produce an enduring, distinctive brand of rock and roll. "They've gone through a lot of peaks and valleys," producer Tom Dowd told the Free Press, "but now they're enjoying each other's company again, and they realize how valuable they are to each other."

Warren Haynes began appearing with the Allmans again in 2000 and rejoined full-time in 2001, while also maintaining his active schedule with Gov't Mule. (Haynes also toured during this time and later in the decade with former members of the Grateful Dead). Haynes' return marked a new period of stability and productivity for the band after nearly four years of lineup shifts. The Haynes-produced Hittin' the Note was released in 2003 to popular and critical acclaim, as was the Live At the Beacon Theatre DVD film (2003, certified Platinum 2004). The live CD One Way Out (2004) also chronicled the Beacon concerts.

The Allman Brothers garnered back to back Grammy Award nominations in 2003 and 2004 in the category of Best Rock Instrumental for performances of "Instrumental Illness" from Hittin' The Note and One Way Out. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named Duane Allman, Warren Haynes, Dickey Betts, and Derek Trucks to their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, with Allman coming in at #2 and Trucks being the youngest guitarist on their list.

The Allman Brothers Band celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2009. That year's Beacon run also marked the 20th anniversary of their appearances in that venue; and the band focused on paying tribute to Duane, inviting guest appearances from those who had played with him.

In March 2010, The Allman Brothers Band's New York run changed venues from the Beacon Theater to the far uptown United Palace Theatre, but in March 2011, the Allman Brothers returned to the Beacon Theater, playing their 200th show there on March 26.

In 2012, the Allman Brothers Band was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Discography:
-The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
-Idlewild South (1970)
-At Fillmore East (1971)
-Eat a Peach (1972)
-Brothers and Sisters (1973)
-Win, Lose or Draw (1975)
-Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas (1976)
-Enlightened Rogues (1979)
-Reach for the Sky (1980)
-Brothers of the Road (1981)
-Seven Turns (1990)
-Shades of Two Worlds (1991)
-An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: First Set (1992)
-Where It All Begins (1994)
-An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band: 2nd Set (1995)
-Peakin' at the Beacon (2000)
-Hittin' the Note (2003)
-One Way Out (2004)

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