ABB Builds its Reputation
Play All Night Playlist Project #14: Chapter 10
“They were their own best advertisement. Each gig added a few more destroyed heads to their following.”
[Edit of a previously paywalled post December 2024]
Welcome to Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture.
This issue presents the 14th edition of the Play All Night Playlist Project, covering Chapter 10 of the book.
Here’s the full list
Discovering new music is one of the best parts of reading music books but it can also be daunting.
My answer was playlists.
This one goes with Chapter 10: the ABB builds its reputation
Chapter 10 of Play All Night! highlights the band’s second year: from its December 1969 debut at Fillmore East through the release of Idlewild South, their second record, in September 1970.
The playlist consists of Idlewild South and three live recordings: April 4, 1970 at Ludlow Garage in Cincinnati; June 3 and June 5, 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival; and December 13, 1970 American University.
🍑 Spotify playlist
🍑 Youtube playlist
The Context
Just as they had the previous year, the Allman Brothers Band spent nearly 300 days on the road in 1970 playing upwards of 250 shows. In between gigs, the band recorded their sophomore album, Idlewild South.
In December 1969, the group met promoter Bill Graham, who ran two of the most famous venues in rock: San Francisco’s Fillmore West and the Fillmore East in New York’s East Village.
Graham’s support and belief in Duane and the Allman Brothers Band is legendary and he helped the band break into the next tier of stardom. The promoter’s ability to sell tickets to Allman Brothers shows on both coasts proved the band’s value as a live act.
Idlewild South
Capricorn released Idlewild South on September 23, 1970. The band launched the record with a set at Fillmore East, one of the very few times Duane Allman is captured on video.1
Here’s “Whipping Post” from that set:
Like The Allman Brothers Band, the album is more song- than jam-oriented. Idlewild South is lighter than its predecessor, reflecting the desire to make a record with more widespread appeal to the marketplace. “It’s a crisper recorded sound, a surer attack, and a tighter band,” Tom Nolan writes. “The music is more textured; sections of delicate picking fit logically into a strong blues-rock framework.”
The album debuted at #77 and peaked at #38, spending 22 weeks on the Billboard Top 200. But sales weren’t enough to satisfy Jerry Wexler, Phil Walden’s partner in Capricorn Records. Though Walden had sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into the band, the group wasn’t breaking through.
“I doubted myself,” Walden recalled. “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 the band had nurtured a devoted grassroots audience.
“They kept touring, establishing themselves city by city as the best live band around and building a base.”
Wrote Ben Edmonds:
“They were their own best advertisement. Each gig added a few more destroyed heads to their following.”
A live album was the obvious solution
Backstage at the Warehouse on New Year’s Eve 1970, Duane hinted at what the band planned:
“We’re going to do a live album here. The next time we play, we’re going to record it. We were supposed to do it tonight but our producer got hung up and couldn’t get down.2 Man that would have been really nice. I really wish we could have done it tonight, it’s gonna be good.”
Liner Notes
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While playlists are free for all subscribers, liner notes are typically reserved for paid subscribers. This post is one of several exceptions to that policy.
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The Stats
The playlist comprises one studio album and four live shows from 1970.
🍑 Spotify playlist 🍑
🍑 Youtube playlist 🍑
Idlewild South
7 tracks (6 originals) and a relatively brief run time of 30:57
The album leads with “Revival,” a Dickey song featuring Gregg on vocals.
Dickey’s other songwriting contribution, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” was the first he offered to the band.
Gregg had four originals: “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’” “Midnight Rider” “Please Call Home” and “Leave My Blues at Home”
The record’s sole cover, a revved up version of “Hoochie Coochie Man” by Muddy Waters, is also Berry Oakley’s only lead vocal.
The ABB’s second album was their first time working with producer Tom Dowd (at Criteria Studios in Miami).3
The 1970 shows are:
4/4/70 Ludlow Garage
7/3 and 7/5/70 Atlanta Pop Festival
12/13/70 American University (partial)
Unlike 1971, when the ABB’s set tightened up in preparation for recording At Fillmore East (and then essentially performing their soon-to-be hit album all summer), 1970’s setlists varied pretty wildly.
7 originals and 7 covers (# played over 4 sets)
Originals:
Gregg: “Dreams” (2) “Every Hungry Woman” (2) “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’” (3) “Leave My Blues at Home” (1) and “Whipping Post” (3)
Dickey “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” (3)4
“Mountain Jam” (3) I credit to the entire band and an original, though it’s technically a co-write with Donovan.
Covers
“Trouble No More” (3) / “Dimples” (1) / “Outskirts of Town” (1) / “Hoochie Coochie Man” (2) / “Statesboro Blues” (4) / “Stormy Monday” (2) / “You Don’t Love Me” (1)
“Done Somebody Wrong” is the only song from At Fillmore East that’s not represented here.
“Dimples”—a John Lee Hooker original—is Duane’s only ABB vocal. “We don’t do this song very much, but I feel like singing,” he announced before the band rips into a song he had been playing since the Hour Glass days.
“Outskirts of Town” originally dates to the 1930s. The ABB learned their version from Ray Charles.5 It was the band’s go-to slow blues until “Stormy Monday” took its place in the set for good in mid-1970.6
Statesboro Blues
“Statesboro” is the only song the band plays at all four shows and it’s really interesting to hear its development as the band toys with the arrangement.
The versions on Ludlow Garage and from July 3 at Atlanta Pop both have an extended instrumental outro lasting several minutes.
There’s no outro on July 5 at Atlanta Pop nor December at American University. This was the arrangement they used on At Fillmore East three months later.
Also by July, “Statesboro” had moved to the very beginning of the set. (It was second on Ludlow and the February 1970 Fillmore set I wrote about earlier.)
This served two purposes.
First, it brought considerable energy to the proceedings. The ABB kicked off countless shows with “Statesboro” over the years.
The second was more practical. Duane preferred slide in open E tuning but played most songs in standard tuning. By beginning sets with the slide tunes, it limited the delay in re-tuning.7
Recording at the Fillmore wasn’t preordained
This was a discovery I made as I researched Play All Night!—the band wanted to record at the Warehouse in New Orleans, the site of some ABBsolutely legendary ABB gigs.
In a second December 1970 interview, Duane talked about the band’s plans for the next album.
“[We’ll record] partly live at the Warehouse, part in the studio in Miami. We've got an eight-track that's nice, and we're going to the mountains for two weeks to write, bringing an eight-track with us up there and do some of it there, yeah, we might get something out of that.8
We've got some tapes already from the Atlanta Pop Festival and Love Valley which was all recorded and if that's any good we'll use that.”
A couple of things stand out:
The band decided their next album would include live tracks as they wrapped up Idlewild South.
This is twice in a month Duane mentions recording at the Warehouse.
Though they didn’t record the set officially, an audience bootleg of the Warehouse show from 12/31/70 has long circulated.9
The band would release a partial live/partial studio album in 1972, Eat a Peach.
Where are the tapes from Love Valley?
Love Valley
The official name of the Love Valley festival is “The Love Valley Thing,” and it has a really interesting backstory.
The northwestern North Carolina town was the brainchild of Andy Barker, who founded it in 1954. It had an Old West motif straight out of Hollywood westerns, with a saloon, general store, hitching posts, and rodeos. Cars were generally forbidden.
Barker launched the festival for his 22-year-old daughter Tonda, who he forbade from attending Woodstock the previous summer.10
Like at Atlanta Pop earlier in the month, their fellow Southerners greeted the Allman Brothers Band as hometown heroes at Love Valley. The festival began a long relationship between the band and the town.
“Love Valley became kind of a focal point for the Allman Brothers Band,” Butch Trucks said.
As Willie Perkins remembers, “We ‘lay dead’—as the band would say—on two difference occasions summer 1970: once when they broke down and another time when a gig was cancelled.
We all just started hanging out there. Love Valley was where we lived and hung out when we weren’t working. Dickey built a house there. That’s where he was living with Sandy Blue Sky when he wrote ‘Blue Sky.’”11
Random Notes
The Atlanta Pop Festival shows were the largest audiences the original band ever played in front of—attendance estimates range from 250-500,000 people.
1970 is also the year most of the video of Duane is from. In addition to the Fillmore East footage, there’s video from the ABB’s sets 7/3 and 7/5 at Atlanta Pop and Love Valley 7/17 and 7/19.
Though “Outskirts of Town” dropped from the set, the ABB used its chord changes for “Jelly Jelly” on Brothers and Sisters.
Longtime ABB manager Bert Holman served on the concert committee that put on the ABB show at American University
NEW SWAG
🍄Long Live the ABB merch store at merch.longlivetheABB.com
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Langiappes
Nice collection of Love Valley photos from UPI photographer Ed Buzzell.
Here’s a Winter-themed playlist I created a few years back. Very few overt Christmas songs here, just tracks about the winter season. Your mileage may vary, just skip what you don’t like.
Thank you for your reading.
Until next time.
Sound problems plagued the first part of the set, with Gregg’s microphone nearly inaudible on “Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’” and “Dreams.”
I’ve always found it telling that Dowd was not scheduled to be in NYC for the At Fillmore East sessions, which I unpacked a bit here: At Fillmore East as an Artistic Statement.
A visit to Criteria inspired this post: Joys of Research Rabbit Holes.
“Liz Reed” doesn’t appear on the 12/13/70 release, though I’m certain they played it that night because they played it every night.
Give it a listen and tell me Gregg wasn’t inspired by Ray’s B3 solo.
One of my favorite versions is this rehearsal from shortly after Lamar Williams joined on bass.
Open E tunes the guitar to an E chord: EBEG#Be. Dickey later gave Duane an SG to keep in open E.
Interview source. That writing session circulates as April 1971 Gatlinburg sessions. Among other things, it includes early versions of “Blue Sky” (sans lyrics). Tapes of some EPIC shows circulate, including 9/16/71 Warehouse, which you simply MUST check out if you’ve not lately.
The “Dreams” and the “Mountain Jam” from that show are two of my favorite live moments from the original band.
Source of Butch’s quote. Dickey had no phone where he lived, leading Willie Perkins to joke he was the only road manager from the 70s using “Pony Express”—see Willie Perkins, No Saints, No Saviors (2005).