A Funeral In Macon

I remember the first time I went to Macon, Georgia.  It was 1997-ish and I was in Warner Robins on Air Force business [some things never change].  There was a long break in the meeting I was attending.  Knowing that Macon was close by, it was finally time for me to make an Allman Brothers pilgrimage.  I had to see two places if nothing else – the Big House on Vineville Avenue, and Rose Hill Cemetery, where original Allman Brothers members Duane Allman and Berry Oakley are buried side by side.  At that time. the Big House was a private residence.  ABB “Tour Mystic” and photographer Kirk West and his wife Kirsten lived there.  If one wanted to see the inside of the house, you had to make an appointment.  The Wests have since moved out and the Big House has become quite a museum for all sorts of ABB artifacts.  I had to settle for just seeing the outside of the place.  I didn’t feel comfortable making an appointment to traipse through someone else’s home, regardless of its social and cultural importance.

Rose Hill Cemetery has been in existence since 1840.  It’s just off downtown Macon, nestled between Riverside Drive and the Ocmulgee River.  A set of railroad tracks runs parallel to the river.  The road that runs around the perimeter of the entire cemetery also runs next to railroad tracks.  On the other side of that narrow road is the final resting place of a lady named Elizabeth Reed Napier.  If that name rings a bell, it’s because that is the place where Dickey Betts wrote his instrumental from the album Idlewild South - In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.  There is a large segment of the cemetery reserved for Confederate Civil War dead.  A lot of them are buried there.  The entire cemetery is situated on a long hill, with long gentle slopes in places and steep climbs in others.  There are one-lane roads that run throughout the place, and one needs to be careful while driving through, lest they slip over the roads’ edges and have their day ruined.

I had no idea where Duane and Berry were buried when I first entered the cemetery.  I parked my rental car on one of those very narrow, single-lane, winding roads and began to explore the place on foot.  About five minutes after I set out on my quest to find Duane and Berry, a gentleman [accompanied by his wife] noticed me and asked in his most pronounced Southern accent “are you looking for the Allman Brothers?”  “Yes. sir, I sure am”.  He pointed over the road I was walking on and down the hill.  “They’re down there.”  The written word doesn’t do justice to his elocution, but suffice to say he sounded more “at home” than me, a transplanted Yankee.  The climb down the hill was a little steep, but there they were – two marble-white graves sitting side by side.  The graves gleamed in the Georgia sunlight as if they were two giant sugar cubes.  I got closer and I noticed things.  Some people left stones, others left flowers, and still others left quarters and guitar picks.  Over the years some miscreant visitors defaced the graves, forcing the Oakley family to take the step of enclosing the graves with brick and iron fencing.  I digress, but just a little.  For Peachheads everywhere, this is Mecca.  We don’t face Macon and pray five times a day, but it is the spiritual home of the band we Peachheads love and cherish.

The Allman Brothers Band has always been about family.  The Big House served as a communal home for the band’s extended family.  Berry & Linda Oakley [and their daughter Brittany (who is on the back cover of Brothers and Sisters)] lived there.  Duane Allman lived there for a time, as did Gregg, who had a brief relationship with Berry’s sister Candace.  Dickey Betts wrote Blue Sky and Ramblin’ Man there.  Like most families, they fought.  The worst fight came in 2000, when Dickey Betts and the band parted ways.  That was a sad parting for us Peachheads [angry and bitter for the participants].  But while Dickey and the band were estranged, it was good to know the children remained friends.  Devon Allman has a picture of him, Duane Betts and one of Roy Orbison’s sons in a Nashville bar from April 2016.  Devon’s comment was “A Betts, an Allman & an Orbison walk into a bar..........”   I mention this because the extended family was at the funeral.  Jaimoe and his family were there, as was percussionist Marc Quinones.  Derek Trucks, his wife Susan Tedeschi and their daughter were there.  Berry Duane Oakley was there.  I remember from way back in 1989 when I saw the reunion tour in Sacramento, and Berry Duane joined the band onstage to play Southbound, but I digress [just a little].  Cher was there with her son with Gregg, Elijah Blue.  Gregg had told Dan Rather in an interview a couple of years ago that he and Cher were much better friends than they were spouses. 

Mama Louise [Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images]

Jaimoe [Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images]

Derek Trucks [Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images]

Chank Middleton [Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images]

Cher [Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images]

The rest of Gregg’s clan was there [his widow Shannon, sons Michael & Devon, and daughters Delilah & Layla in addition to son Elijah Blue], including Duane’s daughter, Galadrielle.  Dickey Betts was there with his son Duane and his manager David Spero.  Mr. Spero graciously allowed me to use some of the photos in this blog.  Mama Louise from the H&H Restaurant was there.  She used to feed the band during the lean early days in Macon [I met her once – she’s a very sweet lady].  She even got a credit on the Fillmore East album [“Mama Louise:  Vittles”].  Otis Redding’s family was reported to be there as well.  Warren Haynes is in Spain on tour with Gov’t Mule, but his wife Stefani was there, as was Rose Lane Leavell, whose husband Chuck was in England fulfilling a prior obligation.  Gregg’s lifelong friend Chank Middleton and his manager Michael Lehmen delivered eulogies at the service.

Former President Jimmy Carter was there.  I’m sure this was the first time that Secret Service agents were ever present for a rock star’s funeral.  The first time Mr. Carter ran for president in the 1970s, the Allman Brothers Band played fundraisers to raise money for his then-fledgling campaign.   The Carter-Allman connection continued as Mr. Carter was on-hand to present Gregg an honorary doctorate in humanities from Macon’s Mercer College.  Mr. Carter had this to say when he learned of Gregg’s passing:

“Rosalynn and I were deeply saddened when we learned that Gregg Allman had passed. Gregg and the Allman Brothers Band were very helpful to me in my 1976 presidential campaign. Gregg Allman was better known than I was at that time.  Gregg Allman was there when I needed him and Rosalynn and I have always been grateful to him.”

The funeral service itself was held at Snow’s Memorial Chapel, the same place where Duane Allman’s funeral took place 46 years ago.  It was a private affair.  At Gregg Allman’s request, there was a “no suit” rule.  Suit jackets were allowed.  The only ties that I saw were worn by personnel from Snow’s, as that is part of the professionalism that comes with their jobs.

Snow's Memorial Chapel [Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images]

The procession ran from the front of Snow’s on Cherry Street.  It ran from Cherry Street to First Street, then on to Riverside Drive.  Fans by the hundreds lined both sides of the street all the way to Rose Hill Cemetery.  Gregg’s final resting place is near those of his brother Duane and Berry Oakley.  According to Michael Lehman, that was in keeping with Gregg’s wishes.  He said that a “Good Samaritan” in Macon had owned 10 plots adjacent to Duane and Berry, and would sell them at to Gregg at the cost she paid.  Gregg and his manager bought all 10 plots.

[Courtesy of Woody Marshall/Macon.com]

Macon TV station WMAZ ran a live video feed, as did radio station Q106.  Oldest son Michael Allman also ran his own live Facebook feed from inside his limo on the way to Rose Hill.  He captured the crowds as they lined the funeral procession from Snow’s Memorial Chapel until he reached Rose Hill.  There was a twenty-minute film clip of the graveside service posted on-line.  It was from this clip that I could identify those who attended.  The clip starts with Gregg’s casket sitting in the shade of a tent.  The cemetery was filled with fans who payed their respects while keeping a respectful distance from the mourners.  The only sound you can hear is the sound of bagpipes.  Then the photographer panned to the left, and you can see the mourner’s getting out of their cars [after having passed by Elizabeth Reed Napier] to make the long, slow trek up the hill to Gregg’s final resting place.  And there he was, wearing an orange t-shirt, blue jeans and a straw cowboy hat – Dickey Betts.  For this Peachhead [and I’m sure all the others] this was a most-welcome sight.  Duane Betts and David Spero were walking beside him.  It was a beautiful, sunny day in Macon.  It looks like it was quite hot.  Dickey, Duane Betts, and David Spero seated themselves in the shade of a nearby tree, but they still felt the need to fan themselves to fight the heat.  The mourners inside the tent fanned themselves as well.

Delilah Allman

Shannon Allman

The Allman Clan & Cher

Duane Betts, Dickey Betts, David Spero [With permission of David Spero]

[R-L] David Spero, Berry Duane Oakley, Dickey Betts, Duane Betts, Susan Tedeschi

[Courtesy of Rj Howson, with permission from David Spero]

[Courtesy of Associated Press]

I was struck by one final sight. After the brief gravesite service the mourner’s filed out of the tent.  There was Gregg’s casket – alone.  But he wasn’t alone – there were scores of quiet, respectful fans to watch over him until he was lowered into the ground.

After the funeral, there was a private party at the Big House.  Berry Duane Oakley and Duane Betts played.  According to someone who posted on the Allman Brothers Band website, Dickey played In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, but I can’t confirm that.  The front gates to the Big House parking lot, which bears the band’s mushroom logo and a phrase from Midnight Rider [“the road goes on forever…”] were closed.  But fans gathered in front of the gates and around the Big House to hear the music.

The Big House [Courtesy of Woody Marshall/Macon.com]

Some final thoughts – As tense as things were between Dickey and Gregg over the last several years, there was a look of sadness on Dickey’s face.  Berry Duane Oakley and Duane Betts are almost carbon copies of their respective fathers’ younger selves.  Devon Allman looks a lot like his uncle Duane.  Within the last year Devon Allman has lost both his mother and father.  I’ve been there – I know it’s tough.  What was Berry Duane thinking about when he saw the grave of the father he never knew?  Derek Trucks lost both his uncle Butch Trucks and Gregg within four months.  It's been a tough year, and it's not even halfway over.

Duane & Dickey Betts, David Spero, Berry Duane Oakley [top]

[Courtesy of Rj Howson, with permission from David Spero]

Duane and Dickey Betts [Courtesy of Rj Howson, with permission from David Spero]

I’ll give Gregg the last word.  From Gregg's memoir, My Cross to Bear:

"When it's all said and done, I'll go to my grave and my brother will greet me saying, 'Nice work, little brother – you did all right.  I must have said this a million times, but if I died today, I've had me a blast. I wouldn't trade [my life] for nobody's, but I don't know if I'd do it again. If somebody offered me a second round, I think I'd have to pass on it."

Gregg Allman - RIP

I was following the Borussia Dortmund/Eintracht Frankfurt match for the 2017 German Cup.  I was also listening to the new stereo mix of the Beatles’ A Day in the Life when I saw this from writer Alan Paul on my Facebook page:

“With a heavy heart, I have to tell you that Gregg Allman has passed. Not much more to say now. Peace and love to his family and the whole extended community.”

Of all the passings of rock royalty over the last eighteen months [Lemmy Kilmister, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, John Wetton, and just recently Chris Cornell], this one hurts the most.  Damn… The people I have listened to for most of my life are leaving.  For some of those people, time stopped.  They died young, some due to lifestyles of reckless abandon [like Janis, Jimi, and Jim Morrison], others because fate had another plan for them – circumstances beyond their control [like Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Lennon].  Their youth is frozen in time – they didn’t get old, and they never will.  Those that did survive are now passing the scene with such frequency that this blog has become an obituary column.  Time is catching up with the musical heroes of our youth.  And as it does, time is giving us reminders like this that it’ll catch up to us too someday, and probably sooner than we would like.

I was 19 years old, it was my freshman year in college.  The girl I wanted to marry all those years ago told me she had other plans and they didn’t include me.  People often seek out music for solace, and so it was [and still is] for me.  The music of the Beatles wasn’t enough to help ease the pain.  And then out of nowhere, I heard it on the radio.  It was the blues.  It wasn’t just any blues – it was the Allman Brothers Band.  The song was One Way Out from Eat a Peach.  That was the hook.  The first album [of many] that I bought was called Beginnings.  It was a repackaging of their first two albums into one, affordable set - The Allman Brothers Band [1969] and Idlewild South [1970].  Songs from these albums burrowed into my subconscious – Whipping Post, Dreams, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, Please Call Home, Midnight Rider.  Melissa [from Eat a Peach] is on my list of favorite songs, right behind the Beatles’ Help! and Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.  From the time I heard these songs made in his twenties, until the music he made in his sixties, Gregg Allman became my favorite singer.  I named my first son after him [and Eric Clapton], not for his off-stage behavior, but for his talent.  His voice moved me like no other, not even Paul Rodgers or John Lennon.

The Allman Brothers were a unique outfit.  They had two lead guitar players [Duane Allman and Dickey Betts], two drummers [Jaimoe and Butch Trucks], a bass player who played like a third guitarist [Berry Oakley], and a young singer in Gregg Allman who also played the Hammond B-3 organ.  As a world-weary singer who sounded like he was way beyond his early twenties, it was as if the proverbial hellhounds were always on his trail.  The Allman Brothers Band are credited with inventing a musical genre – Southern rock.  They didn’t like that tag because they were much more than that.  Gram Parson often talked about combining several kinds of music into a blend he called Cosmic American Music.  He talked about such a music, and was somewhat successful in making it, but his music was always pointed toward country music.  The music described by Gram Parsons was the music the Allman Brothers made.  They combined R&B, soul, gospel, blues, country, jazz and rock into something that was uniquely theirs, even more so than what their contemporaries the Grateful Dead did.  Some musicologists have referred to the Allman Brothers Band as a “jam band”.  Gregg Allman didn’t like the tag.  He said, “we’re not a jam band, but we are a band that jams”.  There is a difference.  Well-written songs were just the starting point for the Brothers to do their musical explorations into the stratosphere

Forty-five years after they came together, the Allman Brothers Band played their last show in New York, October 28, 2014.  The show started the evening of the 28^th, but ended in the wee hours of October 29^th, the 43^rd anniversary of the death of Gregg’s brother, Duane.  It was fitting that it ended this way.  The circle was truly unbroken [the underlying theme of those last six shows].  The last song the band played was the also the first song they played as a band in March 1969.  It was the old Muddy Waters classic, Trouble No More.  Before the band played that last song, Gregg addressed the audience at the Beacon Theatre:

“A few years ago, just a few years ago, I was called to come and meet these guys in Jacksonville, Florida.  And it was kinda like, a little stiff in the room until one of them handed me a lyric sheet and said “Sing!”  And this was about 3:30 in the afternoon in Jacksonville, Florida, March 26th, 1969.  Never did we have any idea that it would come to this.  We give you a heartfelt ‘thank you.’  And now we’re gonna end on the first song we ever played, that broke the ice.” 

I have no doubt that the person who told him to sing was Brother Duane. 

Of all the musicians that have come and gone since my first concert [The Who in 1982], Gregg Allman is the musician whom I have seen live the most.  I saw him six times with the Allman Brothers Band between 1989 and 1995, and four times as a solo performer between 1987 and 2012.  Carol and I saw him open for Stevie Ray Vaughan in Colorado in 1987 the week we got married.  After years of neglect, Gregg finally had radio exposure with I’m No Angel.  We didn't know the Allman Brothers Band would reunite just two years later [I don't think they did either].  Seeing Gregg live for the first time was the next best thing [we saw Dickey Betts a year earlier].  The last time we saw him in 2012, it was Greg and Mark’s first concert.  He was supporting his then-new Low Country Blues, an excellent tribute to his blues forbearers of which I recommend highly.

Gregg had been in bad health in recent years.  He had Hepatitis C, which he said he got from a dirty tattoo needle many years ago.  His Hepatitis led to liver cancer, which subsequently resulted in a liver transplant.  It was never the same for him after that.  He had given up the drugs and the booze, and even quit smoking.  He missed Allman Brothers shows in March 2014 due to bronchitis.  Afterward, he had lung surgery.  He began to cancel shows, then began to cancel entire tours.  About two or three weeks ago it was rumored that he was in hospice care.  He denied the rumors in the press, but in light of his passing today I guess the rumors were true.  As I began to write this, I found a Facebook post from Dickey Betts’ manager.  Gregg and Dickey had a blowout in 2000 [actually I think it was between Dickey and Butch Trucks, but I digress slightly], but according to David Spero he said Dickey and Gregg spoke to each other recently and “put all the bad blood behind”.  He also related that when he told Dickey of Gregg’s death “he got very quiet and after a moment”…and “was very saddened by the news” [I didn’t hear of any such thing after Butch Trucks killed himself, hence my conclusion about the 2000 feud].  I [and I am sure many fellow Peacheads] am glad that Gregg and Dickey were at peace with each other.

Warren Haynes, longtime on-stage foil for Gregg Allman and the leading light of Gov’t Mule, wrote the following today:

“RIP Gregg Allman - I am at a loss for words. I was moved by Gregg’s voice when I first heard the Allman Brothers Band in 1969. I was nine years old. I had not even picked up a guitar yet but thanks to my two older brothers I had been exposed to a lot of great soul music with the best singers in the world. But this was something different. This music was making a deep emotional connection with me even though it was too complex for me to really understand. Somehow, though, it had this "common man” quality that allowed that music to connect with people on so many different levels without analyzing the ingredients that went into it-soul, blues, rock, country, jazz-all mixed together in a way no one had ever done before. And on top of it all was this beautiful voice that could be soothing, terrifying, mellow, angry, and amazingly natural and soulful all at the same time-and instantly captivating. It drew me in. It drew us all in.

Over the next few years I would begin to play guitar as every one of my music loving friends became Allman Brothers’ freaks. That music spoke to anyone who heard it but in the South it resonated with us. It spoke volumes. It brought a voice to people like myself in the midst of some confusing, ever-changing times. Here was this group of Southern hippies with an integrated band coming out of the Deepest South with equally deep music on the heels of some extremely deep changes. We didn’t realize how heavy that was at the time but we sure realized how heavy the music was. Every guitar player in every Southern town was listening to the Live at Fillmore East record and worshipping at the altar of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. But the icing on the cake was always Gregg’s voice. That’s what separated the ABB from being a band that only connected with music freaks. Women whom previously had only listened to the radio would tolerate the long jams to get to the parts where Gregg melted their souls with that angelic voice. It turned casual music fans into fanatical fans who were discovering a new multi-dimensional music that a few years prior wasn’t even in existence. And it was all due to Gregg’s voice-and the songs.

He wrote these amazing songs that were as natural as his voice was. The words and melodies felt so perfectly unpretentious and, when delivered by him, made an emotional connection that only happens when music is genuine and honest. I learned an enormous amount about singing and songwriting from him-most of it before we ever met.

I am truly honored to have been fortunate enough to have written many songs with him and equally honored to have traveled the world with him while making the best music the world has ever known. I will never, ever take that for granted. And on top of all that-he was my dear friend.

My fondest memories will always be of Gregg, myself, and Allen Woody sharing a tour bus together-listening to great music and laughing our asses off mile after mile. Traveling- like life- is so much better when you’ve got friends to share the experience with. I’ve lost too many lately and this one is gonna be hard to get past. There is some comfort in knowing that millions of people all over the world feel the same way.

I love you Gregory – WH”

RIP Gregg. You’re with Duane and Mama A again.

Gregg and Duane Allman - together again

The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East

My Facebook friends and I are having a discussion about live albums and which one is better.  Some excellent albums have come into the conversation.  Little Feat’s Waiting for Columbus [a most worthy live document] is part of the discussion.  The Three Pickers [featuring Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, and Ricky Skaggs] has been mentioned.  I haven’t heard it, but I will someday.  Live bluegrass music is always a treat, and I expect nothing less from this release.    Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live was thrown into the mix, as were the Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72, the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out and Eric Clapton’s Unplugged.  Right now is that time of year when the Allman Brothers Band are playing their annual March Madness run at the Beacon Theatre in New York.  Many years ago in March 1971, when Duane Allman and Berry Oakley still walked this earth, the original Allman Brothers Band cut what I consider the finest live album ever made - The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East.

For the record, the name of the album is The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East. There is no “Live” anywhere in the title.  At Fillmore East is my favorite Allman Brothers album, bar none. Gram Parsons often talked about combing different kinds of music into a hybrid, what he called “Cosmic American Music.”  One needs to look no further than At Fillmore East for a prime example of Cosmic American Music.  The Allman Brothers Band combined elements of blues, jazz, soul, country and rock and made something unique.  Producer Tom Dowd describes At Fillmore East as a big-band jazz record, and he’s not very far off the mark. This whole record is an exercise in improvisation that never fails to astound. After the first two studio discs, Duane wanted to cut the third album live. The stage was the Allman Brothers’ natural environment. According to Tom Dowd:

“Most rock bands are formula bands. The Allman Brothers would play an eight-, a twelve-, a twenty- or thirty-bar formula and then it’s like jazz, complete free form and everybody goes for himself. And they have enough empathy and enough musicianship among them that Jaimoe could be playing in 5/4, Butch could be playing in 6/8, and Dickey could be playing 4/4, and they all go in different directions and it would swing. And when they get through this solo and that solo and this section, they’d nod and BOOM they’re back to square one. They’d all go back to their parts right away in line again. It’s magnificent!”

They didn’t like recording studios – these guys were all hardened road cases. They all lived for the stage. Almost all live albums from other acts/bands are recordings of songs that have already been released in studio form. Never ones to do things the conventional way, the Allman Brothers cut five songs that their audience who had never been to their shows had heard before. The set starts out with that most iconic song of the Allman Brothers canon, Statesboro Blues. For Allman Brothers fans everywhere, every note, every nuance of Duane’s slide playing is seared into their memory [and mine]. Dickey’s solo is no slouch either. Next was another “new” song, an old Elmore James song called Done Somebody Wrong. More slide virtuosity from Duane, then the old T-Bone Walker song Stormy Monday. Instead of giving the instrumentalists a chance to show off their chops, this song is Gregg’s to show off why he’s the finest white blues singer in America [perhaps anywhere, but then again I’m biased].

With the blues out of the way on Side 1, the real fun begins. Side 2 has one song – the 19-minute You Don’t Love Me. Everybody gets their licks in here. Side 3 begins with a short, 5-minute instrumental to which all band members contributed – Hot ‘Lanta. Then comes my favorite version of In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. When Rolling Stone reviewed Idlewild South, they said Elizabeth Reed was "the blueprint of a concert warhorse, capturing the Allmans at their most adventurous." As good as the studio version of Elizabeth Reed is, this live version is simply exhilarating.  On At Fillmore East, Elizabeth Reed becomes otherworldly at just over 13 minutes. Noted critic Robert Palmer wrote of the Allman Brothers “that if the musicians hadn't quite scaled Coltrane-like heights, they had come as close as any rock band was likely to get.” Duane was listening to a lot of John Coltrane and Miles Davis at the time. His solo in the second half of the song is incendiary. It is proof that not only was Duane a fine slide guitar player, he was also pretty damn good at playing without a slide as well.

Side 4 is also one song – Whipping Post. The original studio version is about 5 1/2 minutes long. This version is 23! Duane introduced the song – “Berry starts her off” – then a fan yells out “Whipping Post.” Duane responds “you guessed it,” and off they go…The verses, choruses, and solos go into 6/4 time, then the interludes after the vocal part go back to 11/4. Dickey Betts in particular gets to shine. Whereas Duane got the more memorable solos on Dreams and Elizabeth Reed, Dickey steps out on this version of Whipping Post. You can even hear the beginnings of Dickey’s instrumental Les Brers in A Minor. After Dickey gets through shredding, the band goes almost dead silent except for Duane’s guitar. After the apocalyptic climax you can hear Butch Trucks play the tympani to introduce the next monolithic jam, Mountain Jam. But that’s all you hear. Then the record fades…

The Allman Brothers recorded more than those 7 songs during their four shows at the Fillmore East. They also recorded One Way Out, Trouble No More [both of which were included on Eat a Peach], Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ [included on the 1972 Duane Allman Anthology], Mountain Jam [also on Eat a Peach], and Drunken Hearted Boy with Elvin Bishop [which finally surfaced on the 1989 Dreams box set]. A few years ago Polygram released a “deluxe” version of At Fillmore East that includes both the original set and the songs I just listed here. Here’s the running order from the Deluxe Edition:

Statesboro Blues / Trouble No More / Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ / Done Somebody Wrong / Stormy Monday / One Way Out* / In Memory of Elizabeth Reed / You Don’t Love Me / Midnight Rider*

Hot ‘Lanta / Whipping Post / Mountain Jam / Drunken Hearted Boy

The extra songs Trouble No More, Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ and One Way Out are master classes from Duane Allman in bottleneck guitar playing.   On Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’ [complete with some on-stage feedback], Duane is just off the scale.  Dickey Betts shows that he is no slouch either, especially on One Way Out. Dickey Betts steps out and plays the lead parts, including the amazing first solo. You can tell the difference between Dickey and Duane – Duane plays the slide. There is a fuck-up on it as well, courtesy of Berry Oakley. He came out of the drum break one beat too early, but Butch Trucks played an extra beat to make up for it and quickly got everyone back on the same page. I love it when mistakes are left in…it makes the musicians seem more human. Whipping Post segues directly into Mountain Jam, so there is no fade at the end of Whipping Post as was on the original release.  On Eat a Peach, Mountain Jam served more as an epitaph for Duane Allman, but restored here in its proper context, one can enjoy the performance more rather than having to think about this being one of the last things we’d ever hear from Duane Allman.  The Deluxe Edition has a running time of 133 min, 59 seconds.  Ticket prices back in 1971 were in the single digits, so those who saw these shows definitely got their money’s worth and a whole lot more.

At this point in the Allman Brothers history, their setlists didn’t vary too much from day to day, so what is presented in the Deluxe Edition is a good representation of an Allman Brothers show.  They front loaded their sets with the blues, then came the fun and games with the long songs and improvisation.  The band played One Way Out during the March 1971 shows, but Tom Dowd thought the version they played on June 27, 1971 was definitive, hence the decision to wait until Eat a Peach to release it.  The version of Midnight Rider presented here was also recorded in June 1971 – I don’t know if they played it in March.

In 1992 Polygram release The Fillmore Concerts.  The band played four sets March 12 and 13, 1971 [The first show – 8pm.  The second show – 11:30pm.  There were no labor union curfews in those days.].  The first set they played on March 12^th they included horn players, which drove Tom Dowd nuts because he hadn’t planned to record horns.  Thom Doucette played the harp on some of the songs – that was planned, but the extra horns weren’t.  He thought the tapes from that first show were “unusable,” but one song [Hot ‘Lanta] that included sax player Rudolph “Juicy” Carter found its way onto The Fillmore Concerts.  It sounds pretty good.  Duane’s solo is a bit more manic than what came out on the original release, so I wonder if the remainder of that particular show was really “unusable.”  Anyway, the band ditched the horns for the remaining three shows, and what was released was compiled from those three shows.  Stormy Monday had been edited to a shorter length for the original release.  On The Fillmore Concerts, Thom Doucette’s harmonica solo is restored.

The cover of At Fillmore East has its own story.  The shots were actually taken in Macon, Georgia by Jim Marshall.  The cover used for The Fillmore Concerts shows the band unsmiling, like they’re bored.  Then Duane saw a drug dealer friend of his, ran over to him, bought some cocaine, and rushed back to get into the picture for the next shot.    Duane [complete with shit eating grin] is sitting there with something [his drugs] cupped in his hands in his lap, while the rest of the bands is cracking up laughing.  That was the shot that made the cover.  On the back of the album the roadies are pictured as well.  To the band, the roadies were just as important as the band, hence their presence on the back cover.  Their road manager Twiggs Lyndon has his picture on the wall because he couldn’t be there for the shoot - he was in jail for killing someone who refused to pay the band after a show in Buffalo in 1970.

At Fillmore East certified gold on October 15, 1971.  It was the Allman Brothers’ first gold record.  Duane Allman was dead two weeks later.  It was like Moses went to the mountain top to see the Promised Land, but he couldn’t go there.  After thousands of miles of roadwork, and after playing an almost non-stop grind of 200+ shows a year for three years, Duane Allman at last got a small taste of the fruits of his labors.  Duane saw the success, but he didn’t live to enjoy it.

If you are going to own one and only one Allman Brothers Band album, the deluxe version of At Fillmore East is the one to have.  A Desert Island disc for me!