A real, true people’s band
Part 8 of an annotated read of Tom Nolan's 1976 Allman Brothers Band biography
Welcome back to Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture. Glad to have you here.
Today’s post focuses on one of the coolest marketing concepts in music history: The People’s Band.
PLAYLIST
5 songs, one Youtube short, and documentary (click on image to open Youtube).1
READING/WATCHING/LISTENING/JAMMING
READING: Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (2001).
Wald places Robert Johnson in the larger context of American popular music, Black music in particular. He doesn’t disparage Johnson, only corrects what he considers a misunderstanding about Johnson’s elevated status in blues history. Wald is a great writer, with insights as provocative as his titles.2
Here’s an example of a chapter conclusion that fits directly with my understanding of the path of Duane and his bandmates to find and connect with audiences.
The fact is that all entertainers try to please their audiences, and the successful ones are expert at figuring out what an audience wants. The great blues singers were pros, not primitives….
While most had very limited formal schooling, they were often well traveled, had performed for a wide range of people in widely varied situations, and were smart, sophisticated men and women. Many were adept at “reading” their listeners—and revivalist blues fans, whether scholarly or not, are a pretty easy audience to read. 3
WATCHING: Two Trains Runnin’ (2016)
Set during Freedom Summer 1964, this documentary tells the story of two separate groups of white blues enthusiasts who traveled to Mississippi in search of Son House and Skip James. It’s a fascinating look at the crossroads of racial justice and cultural preservation in the South during the Civil Rights Movement.
The film streams here: Two Trains Runnin’
Seriously y’all, this is well worth an hour of your time. Really compelling story.
LISTENING: North Mississippi Allstars Set Sail (2022)
Finally got around to giving this Grammy nominated gem—featuring Lamar Williams, Jr.4 on vocals—a deep listen. I love the whole record, particularly for its joyful spirit. The track that’s really got me is the last one, “Authentic.”
On the American tree of musical roots
Each branch bears a different fruit
Music runs in the blood of our family
In music and love is what i believe
In music and love is what i believe
All you hateful people
Take yo self back home
All you kind hearted people
You're not alone 5
I’m Bob Beatty and I approve this message.
Dig it:
JAMMING Interview with ABB bassist David Goldflies
Here’s a preview, a bit on working with Dickey Betts. (My date in the video is wrong, David wasn’t with Dickey until 1977.)
On to today’s post, Part 8 of my annotated read of the Allman Brothers Band: A Biography.
Here’s parts 1-7:
Part 1 - Annotations aka “Marginalia”
Part 2 - I saw him do things with a guitar I’d never seen done before, or since
Part 3 - He did not look like your ordinary Muscle Shoals regular
Part 4 - The spirits met and that was it
Part 6 - You think we got a band now, wait ‘til my little brother gets here
Part 7 - Maybe the only thing that saved us was everybody was scared of us
Page I’m commenting on today6
I’ve posted the full text here
Reminder: Marginalia
I’ve pasted the book’s text in this font
My commentary (marginalia) is in this font.
Previously on Long Live the ABB…
[The Allman Brothers Band (debut album)]
Anyone expecting to hear “Duane Allman & Co.” was quickly divested of that misapprehension; Duane’s spare, meditative solo on “Dreams I’II Never See” stands out on an album where individual work is for the main sublimated in a group effort. “Whipping Post” ends the album on an affirmative plane and hints at things to come.
This is a very “live-sounding” album, recorded in one week’s time, and the production by Adrian Barber seems not to have been especially suited to a group whose debut might have been given a bit more polish. Still, it served to get that “first album” out of the way, and, raw as it is, there’s nothing to be ashamed of on The Allman Brothers Band.
No one was ever happy with the production or sound of the first album. “We didn’t spend enough time on it,” Gregg said. “We didn’t refine it enough. We were better than that.”
And Nolan’s right about all of this: the band was a BAND. Only on “Dreams” did Duane stand out from the group. “Whipping Post” was a fitting end to the record, as it would be two years later, and nearly 18 minutes longer, on At Fillmore East. His observations stand the test of time.
Here’s where the book picks back up.
Following the release of their album, the ABB played extensively in Florida and other Southern states, concentrating at first on clubs that had hired Hour Glass and the Second Coming.
Twiggs Lyndon remembers, “Berry and I would sit down and call these people up, ask to work for 50, 80% of the door; no guarantees. We worked a job in Cocoa Beach, Florida; we had a 60/40 deal, and our 60% of the door was $52.50.”
Details on the band’s earliest gigs are scant. They earned their image as the People’s Band (more below) the hard way: playing their asses off. The group performed countless times, paid and free. No one really kept track of this until Willie Perkins arrived in May 1970.
The Cocoa Beach gig could’ve been April 1, 1969–less than a week after their founding. That’s when Duaneallman.info, my go-to site for this sort of detail, shows the band played On the Beach in Cocoa Beach.7 It’s probably not the June 28, 1969 show listed here. The ABB are supporting Pacific Gas & Electric rather than putting on their own show.
Strange how being hungry keeps a band together. When you don’t have any money, there’s nothing to do except play. It’s the only entertainment you have. If there was a rehearsal they played until they were physically worn out; then went home, and played with acoustics into the night.
Nolan really captures the zeitgeist well here. I can picture every bit of it in my mind’s eye.
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