Welcome to another edition of Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern Music, History, and Culture.
October 2023 has been full of pretty significant milestones for me.1 Most notably to subscribers of Long Live the ABB, October 18 was the one-year publication anniversary of my fourth, and most significant book, Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.
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I posted the following on all of my social media accounts2, including here on Notes (you are on Notes, right?)
I received some kind responses and wanted to say thanks to each of you for joining me on this journey. To be entirely honest, I would be doing this if you weren’t here, but it makes it more fun knowing folks are interested.
What’s in a logo?
I’ve long been fascinated by the visual element of rock music. It started with me pouring over albums. I’d soak in everything, from the lyrics, liner notes, photographs, whatever little information I could glean about the magical sounds coming out of the speakers. No detail was too small.
I discovered something else in those album covers: a true appreciation/full-blown fascination with graphic design. It extended to football and baseball cards, team logos and uniforms, fonts, magazines, and photography in general.
The Allman Brothers Band have a wealth of this kind of material I can interpret it, which gives me endless fodder for posts such as this one.
The People’s Band
I shared a bit here about the ABB’s first flyer for a show in Macon. Bubble lettering was en vogue; it reflected whimsy and psychedelia of the counterculture. The “logo” (which isn’t a logo, I know) signals this is a band that represents their audience. (So does the copy, btw.)
Of course, Phil Waden and company wanted to capitalize on that and sought to build an image of the group as the “People’s Band”—a concept I explored pretty in-depth in Play All Night.
This was also Duane and the band’s vision from the start. They weren’t going to dress up in fancy clothes a-la Hour Glass, or seek hits on AM radio.
The People’s Band hit the road in May 1969 and never really looked back, logging more than 200 shows and 300 days a year on the road.
This was their image at the time.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Music Hall of Fame Collection
This Stephen Paley shot5 is from the Bond mausoleum at Rose Hill Cemetery.6 A slightly different photo appears in color on the back cover of The Allman Brothers Band.7
But I’m not going to focus on that album cover (which itself gives a really killer vibe that reflects my point). Instead, I want you to look at the ABB’s wordmark at the bottom. Though different from the hand-lettering on that first poster, it sure reflects its spirit.
The first time I saw this particular logo was this photo from 1969/70(?). It’s on a banner and taped to Gregg’s B-3. (Typically logos are found on bass drum heads, but the ABB drummers weren’t doing that yet.)
Unknown (to me) location/photographer. Let me know if you have details.
These two images are the only usages of this particular logo that come to mind.
Psychedelic font
By 1970, artist Flouronoy Holmes of the Atlanta-based Wondergraphics, created the ABB’s iconic mushroom logo. He included “the Allman Brothers Band” in a style adapted from the psychedelic font Wes Wilson created for posters for Bill Graham’s original Fillmore Auditorium.8
Shirt from my collection modeled after the original ABB t-shirt.
Holmes and his Wondergraphics partner W. David Powell used the same lettering for the band’s name on the cover of Eat a Peach (1972).
Logos didn’t always appear on album covers
Capricorn/Atlantic used a pretty generic/unimaginative font for The Allman Brothers Band (1969) with the band in everyday clothes, standing near on the portico of what seems to be an old Southern mansion (it was).
Idlewild South (1970)featured a modern, sans serif font9, all lowercase (with a studio portrait of the band that I’ve never thought was particularly flattering).
For At Fillmore East (1971), theywent back to the People’s Band image: the band name and album title stenciled in white spray paint on a road case and stacked in the upper left-hand corner of the image:
THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND AT FILLMORE EAST
(You can tell it was hand-painted because it’s what I call “perfectly uneven.” Chalk another up for the People’s Band 🍄.)
None of these wordmarks appeared on anything other than the album covers.
Brothers and Sisters
Judy Reeves Petty came up with the cover concept for Brothers and Sisters. The elegant cursive-like font seems like a formal invitation to a record that is much more joyous than the circumstances in which it was made.
It didn’t even end up on the merch for the tour, which used a block font that combines the look of Civil War recruitment posters with Lost Cause imagery of a plume-hatted cavalier, sword in hand, mounted, bursting through a cannonball-sized hole in a rebel flag.10
First things first, the cover Win, Lose, or Draw didn’t have the ABB’s name on it anywhere. There’s lots confusing about the cover design, but leaving off the name of the biggest band in the country was a particularly egregious mistake.
Capricorn realized it and began shipping albums out with this sticker.
Bought this just for the sticker, wrinkled shrinkwrap and everything.
Unlike the mushroom or the Eat a Peach cover, this is the first ABB logo to appear on its own. The rock merch business was just getting rolling around this time and Phil Walden was among those at the forefront of that movement. This script wordmark showed up on posters, iron-on transfers, belt buckles, all kinds of mid-70s rock ephemera. 11
Then came Enlightened Rogues
My guess is you’re pretty familiar with this logo. The band has used it regularly since 1979. (Stay tuned, more below.)
It was the design of artist John Kehe:
I wanted to create a bold “comeback album” jacket, a strong, memorable image for the band, who’d had more than its share of hardship within the group….
I worked off the title, imagining a classy saloon window with Allman Bros. lettered on it. Right around the corner from me was a stained glass studio called Sunshine Glass Works, so I was able to go in and design the window around the logo I had developed. I then had a giant decal made and we shot it all as one piece.12
Here’s the original Enlightened Rogues stained glass window.
One year later, the ABB created yet another wordmark
They used this one for two records: Reach for the Sky and Brothers of the Road. This logo also appeared on merchandise and tour t-shirts.
The ABB went out with a whimper in 1982. Everyone, including the band, considers Reach for the Sky and Brothers of the Road their nadir.
The Dreams box set
Kehe’s stacked ABB logo returned for the release of the groundbreaking Dreams set in 1989, which precipitated a reunion that lasted 25 years.
The group has been using it ever since, with one slight, but significant modification: “Band” is the same size as “Allman Brothers”—emphasizing, once again, the importance of the concept to endurance of Duane’s vision.
The group wasn’t the Allman Brothers…as many folks called them, it was always the Allman Brothers Band. This one word was important for the group as it reestablished its identity for its first new album in almost a decade.
Neither Duane nor Gregg was pleased the group was named for them in the first place. And Duane’s death forever altered its most obvious meaning. But the “Allman Brothers” name always meant more than “band led by brothers Duane and Gregg Allman” in the first place.
Calling them the Allman Brothers missed the point altogether, Gregg said to Creem:
“I’d rather be known as the ABB, because people always call us the Allman Brothers and we’re not. We are the Allman Brothers Band.”
Hear, hear!
What about Capricorn’s bankruptcy?
The stacked ABB logo John Kehe created for Enlightened Rogues has remained prominent ever since its return for good in 1989. It’s appeared on album covers, posters, t-shirts, all kinds of swag.
Turns out, John Kehe was never paid for his work.
Fortunately he’s not bitter about it at all. In fact, he’s grateful for his legacy. As am I.
Late 1978—I hadn’t been paid by Capricorn in eight months. There was always some excuse—new systems, controller quit, yadda yadda. Then suddenly the label went bankrupt, leaving me holding the bag-$28,00013 worth. I had been Capricorn’s main designer—as a freelancer—for several years at that point. I couldn’t absorb that kind of loss, so it forced me to leave freelancing behind and take a job. My only satisfaction is that the logo lived on.
Thanks for reading. #longlivetheABB
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The biggest is my wife and I met 30 years ago—it’s also (not coincidentally) the last time I ever smoked a cigarette. Two of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Which reminds me, The Allman Brothers Band Classic Memorabilia, 1969-76 by Willie Perkins and Jack Weston is a great book about the ABB. Different than any others.
