Play All Night Playlist Project Chapter 9: The Journey Begins
You don’t, can’t, “listen” to the Allman Brothers, you feel it, hear it, move with it, absorb it. Miller Francis Jr.
Welcome to Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture. This issue presents the 13th edition into the Play All Night Playlist Project.
“Chapter 9: The Journey Begins (May through December 1969) focuses on the first year of the Allman Brothers Band’s career. The playlist includes the debut album and a one-disc live set from a series of February 1970 Fillmore East shows opening for the Grateful Dead.
Here are all past entries in the Playlist Project:
An Experimental Blues Rock Music Feast
Some really choice primary sources survive of the band’s first public appearances as the Allman Brothers Band in Georgia. This includes a flyer, a ticket stub (below), and radio advertisement for their first shows in Macon (May 2-3, 1969) and a cover story on their May 11, 1969 Piedmont Park performance in The Great Speckled Bird, Atlanta’s alternative newspaper.1
I’ll tackle these chronologically, first with the Macon show at the College Discotheque, 652 Mulberry Street.2
Phil Walden3 called the Allman Brothers Band
the most inventive experimental blues rock group in existence today…performing live in an Experimental Blues Rock Music Feast.
Audiences should prepare
to be musically educated as you experience the Allman Brothers.
The radio ad ended with a wink.
experimental
music feast
inventive
experience
musically educated
Keep these words/phrases in mind as you listen to the playlists. They are incredibly accurate descriptions of the music of the Allman Brothers Band and really do represent Duane and his band’s vision for music and Phil Walden & company’s attempts to promote it.
You don’t, can’t, listen to the Allman Brothers, you feel it, hear it, move with it, absorb it.
The promotions failed to rally much interest in the show, with less than 40 folks in attendance.4 Everything changed one week later when the Allman Brothers Band trekked to Atlanta to play Piedmont Park.
The following week, Duane appeared on the cover of The Great Speckled Bird, Atlanta’s alternative newspaper. Miller Francis Jr. wrote the story of the ABB’s May 11, 1969 in Atlanta.5
Francis was first to document the magic of the original Allman Brothers Band in print.
And he was effusive in his praise.
There are times when it's easy to think that the rock and roll musician is the most militant, subversive, effective, whole, together, powerful force for radical change on this planet; other times you know it's true.
A two-page photo spread accompanied the story. It began:
THE ALLMAN BROTHERS play a form of what some might want to call ‘hard blues’ but that term merely relates their music to what we already recognize and accept as valid; it says nothing of their real achievements.
The ABB didn’t merely imitate Black music, they created something wholly new from the influence:
What informs their creation is not Black music but the experience of young white tribesmen in experiencing Black music. After all, Ray Charles, and what he means, is a crucial part of the lives of this new generation of non-Blacks.
Thus Black music can be approached creatively by our musicians if the jumping off place is our experience of that music rather than the music itself.
NB: This is something Jaimoe said I got particularly right in Play All Night—that unlike a lot of white musicians who “mimicked everyone they thought was so great,” the ABB “allowed themselves to come through” in the music.6
Col. Bruce Hampton, frontman of the Hampton Grease Band7 was there as well.
They were on fire. The intent of the essence were there. It was just pure as hell. You could feel the purity in the fire in the intensity: nobody was playing checkers or talking business. This was music for music's sake.
Are You Experienced?
Francis heard and, more importantly experienced exactly what Duane and his mates wanted him to hear:
You don't, can't, "listen" to the Allman Brothers; you feel it, hear it, move with it, absorb it, you "let it out and let it in" (the Beatles) and enter into an experience through which you are changed. You catch a glimpse of the kind of world we are becoming and you know more than ever the horrendous load of bullshit we'll have to drop off on the way in order to give birth to that kind of world.
LINER NOTES
These are the sounds and inspiration the ABB tried to capture in their music. Their debut album certainly augured well for the band, even if they were an exponentially better band live than in the studio
The Allman Brothers Band (1969)
Bear’s Sonic Journals: Live at Fillmore East, February 1970 (first released 1997)
That the Allman Brothers’ music translated poorly in the studio and therefore in the marketplace remained a frustration for the band, its label, and fans—until At Fillmore East broke the band into the mainstream in 1971. Until then, the ABB trod a more traditional path, of studio albums and relentless touring. The group spent the first nine months of that journey sharpening their sound and building a reputation as a “don’t miss” live act. In August 1969 they recorded their debut album, The Allman Brothers Band. It failed to dent the charts. EXCERPT FROM PLAY ALL NIGHT! DUANE ALLMAN AND THE JOURNEY TO FILLMORE EAST
There’s very little music available from the first year of the Allman Brothers Band. This is what I know of:
April 1969 demos at Capricorn Studios (included in Chapter 8’s playlist)
The Allman Brothers Band (recorded August 3-12, 1969)
The demos are raw and the bootleg show is of rough quality. No outtakes survive from the debut album. There are some poorer quality bootlegs from January 1970, but Bear’s Fillmore East recordings are really the first earliest quality live ABB that circulates.
The Allman Brothers Band
The stats
Seven songs, clocking in at a little more than 33 minutes
Two covers, “Don’t Want You No More” and “Trouble No More”
Seven originals, all by Gregg
He brought “Dreams” and “It’s Not My Cross to Bear” with him
He wrote “Whipping Post” “Blackhearted Woman” (and possibly “Every
Hungry Woman”) in Jacksonville
Recorded August 3-12, 1969 at Atlantic Studios, NYC
The tracks
Don't Want You No More>It's Not My Cross To Bear
The Spencer Davis Group’s “Don’t Want You No More,” a song Dickey and Berry played with the Second Coming, kicks off the record. The ABB’s instrumental take is less than 2 1/2 minutes long and segues directly into Gregg’s “Cross to Bear”—a song he’d written while in L.A. estranged from Duane. The DWYNM/CTB combo fell out of rotation early in the band’s career and was revived for good in the Chuck/Lamar era.
Black Hearted Woman
An original Gregg wrote at the Gray House in Jacksonville shortly after arriving to join the Allman Brothers Band. The intro is in a pretty unique time signature: 7/8, before the band returns to the more traditional 4/4. There’s no evidence beyond the obvious (my ears) that the band drew inspiration for this from the Grateful Dead’s “That’s It for the Other One.”
Trouble No More
This Muddy Waters track was the first song Gregg sang when he joined Duane and the band in Jacksonville. The band’s arrangement is unique—upping the tempo, adding instrumental breaks, and expanding Muddy’s 12-bar blues into a 15-bars. The ABB would release a live version on Eat a Peach.
Every Hungry Woman
Another Gregg original, though I don’t know if he wrote it in Jacksonville, this one from the woman’s perspective. It was the B-side of the “Blackhearted Woman” single, which I’ve always found an odd choice given how similar the songs sound.
Dreams
Along with “Cross to Bear,” the first of Gregg’s originals to make the band’s repertoire. The song’s world-weary lyrics belie Gregg’s youth and Duane’s solo feels simultaneously urgent and restrained, building the energy back to the second verse, when Gregg finds redemption: “Pull myself together, put on a new face. Climb down off the hilltop, get back in the race.” If you ask me, that’s a life mantra.
Whipping Post
Gregg famously wrote this in the middle of the night on an ironing board with matches at the Gray House in Jacksonville. I’ve never been a huge fan of the studio version but then again, I’ve never lived in a world without the 23 minute version from At Fillmore East.8
Bear’s Sonic Journals: Live at Fillmore East, February 1970
The stats
This is a pastiche of several shows legendary Dead sound engineer and LSD chemist Owsley “Bear” Stanley recorded of the ABB opening for the Dead at Fillmore East on February 11, 13-14, 1970.
The set runs 71 minutes and includes 3 originals, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” “Whipping Post” “Mountain Jam”
The band only played two songs from their debut album (1969), “Trouble No More” and “Whipping Post”
They were working on “Hoochie Coochie Man” “Liz Reed” and “Statesboro Blues”9 for Idlewild South (1970)
“Mountain Jam” would show up on Eat a Peach (1972)
“Outskirts of Town” first saw release on the Dreams box set (1989).
The tracks
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (2/14)
Throughout this run, the group experimented with Dickey’s instrumental at the beginning of their sets. While the song certainly does announce that the group came to play, it also leaves the audience in stunned silence.10
Hoochie Coochie Man (2/14)
This is where the ABB’s arranging prowess really comes through. This song is completely different than Muddy Waters’s laconic original. “We believe in starting off really mellow,” Berry quips as the band unleashes a furious cover that is uniquely their own.
Statesboro Blues (2/11)
After playing in standard tuning, Duane tunes to open E to play slide.11 The crowd is dead silent and it takes Duane a full minute to get himself situated, which leads to some pretty fun stage banter. “Eventually we will play,” Berry says. By 1971, the band moved all of the slide songs to the beginning of the set.
Trouble No More (2/11)
The ABB just nails this cut. As they should, it’s the song they’ve been playing together the longest. The second Muddy Waters cover in the set, this one completely different than the menacing “Hoochie Coochie Man.”
I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (2/13-14)
This one’s culled from two different takes on consecutive nights. Duane cites Ray Charles as the song’s inspiration. By 1971 “Outskirts of Town” was off the setlist permanently, with “Stormy Monday” replacing it as the set’s slow blues.12
Whipping Post (2/14)
At 8:11, the band had already expanded the track three minutes longer than the version on their debut album. By the end of the year, live versions of the song would top the twenty-minute mark.
Mountain Jam (2/14 and 2/13)
Every version of “Mountain Jam” is an ABBsolute treasure and this patched-together take is no exception. I love Gregg’s deadpan “a little jam” as they get ramped up on the final night of their three-night run with the Dead. The back half is psychedelic as shit, going in all sorts of directions (and those bird calls at 24mins!).
Random Notes
It’s always been interesting to me that the first solo on an Allman Brothers Band record was not a guitar solo but was instead Gregg Allman on Hammond B3.
Listen closely to Dickey in the lull between “Outskirts” and “Whipping Post”—I hear a tiny hint of “Blue Sky” in the works.
I make my only appearance in ABB liner notes on Bear’s Sonic Journals: Live at Fillmore East, February 1970. I was the source of the photos they used.13
Who’s Chico Hamilton that Duane welcomes to the Fillmore?
BONUS CONTENT
Here are some photos of the ABB at Fillmore East in February 1970. They were a gift from photographer Ira Zadikow, who’s since lost his originals.
Until next time. Thanks, as always, for reading.
I accessed it at the Georgia State University Archives: https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/GSB/id/848/.
The site is marked with a historical marker.
And it was most assuredly Phil Walden who came up with all of this—this is pretty much exactly how he described the ABB’s music.
Including my friend Bob Johnson, who shot the cover photo of Play All Night and provided several interior shots as well.
Cover date is incorrect. The issue published May 19, 1969, not April.
I’ll never get tired of posting this clip. It’s the highest compliment I could have received for Play All Night.
A longtime fixture on the Georgia music scene, Hampton was a good friend of Duane Allman’s. In the late 80s/early 90s, Bruce led the Aquarium Rescue Unit, which featured future Allman Brother Oteil Burbridge on bass and guitarist Jimmy Herring—who’s now with Widespread Panic, but was also Derek Trucks’s guitar partner in both Frogwings and the ABB in Summer 2000.
They’d finally get “Statesboro” right on At Fillmore East
Don’t miss Duane calling out Dickey’s authorship, something he did often.
Dickey would eventually give Duane his 61 Les Paul/SG to keep in open E https://www.duaneallman.info/dickeybettssg.htm.
They revived the arrangement for “Jelly Jelly” on Brothers and Sisters.
Photographer Ira Zadikow gave them to me many years back. He’s since lost his originals.