Play All Night Playlist Project: Chapter 6 Duane in Muscle Shoals
“I brought myself back to earth and came to life again.” Duane Allman
Greetings y’all. Thank you for reading Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern Music, History, and Culture.
A warm welcome to my new subscribers. Free subscribers can count on a post at least once a week. I write for myself as much as for y’all, so my schedule is a bit in flux from time to time.
And, of course, a SHOUT OUT to my paying subscribers. I see you, and respect the hell out of you for valuing my writing enough to support it.
RIP Robbie Robertson
Robbie’s death August 8 really caught me off guard. He always seemed so vibrant.1 In addition to a regular rotation of the Band’s music over the past week, I rewatched Once Were Brothers, Robbie’s documentary about his time with the group. It’s well worth your time.
Robbie Robertson is among my favorite guitar players of all-time. I love his stinging solos, particularly on The Last Waltz, which every reader of Long Live the ABB surely watches each Thanksgiving in honor of one of the greatest rock concerts in history.
I feel super fortunate that I saw Robbie in November 2019 at one of the Last Waltz touring shows. It was one of the best concerts I saw all year.2
On to the 10th Installment of the Play All Night Playlist Project
Here are the links to the Chapter 6 playlist, 12 songs, less than 45 minutes, all from Duane’s time in Muscle Shoals.
The others are here, covering from the Preface through Chapter 4:
“I brought myself back to earth and came to life again.”Duane Allman
Some of the most fun I had while writing Play All Night was choosing the quotes to go with each chapter. It’s a detail I paid a lot of attention to because I appreciate when other writers use it as a rhetorical device.
Truth be told, I picked the habit up in museum work. The sources I worked with were rich with quotes that could define an exhibition, a text panel, a photo caption, a public program.
My time as an editor helped hone my eye for pull quotes, article titles, sub- heads, and captions.
I like it when the quotes perfectly sum up the entire chapter. And this is one of those cases.
I brought myself back to earth and came to life again.
The smiles here say it all. The photos were taken maybe a month apart.
The first is Duane in May 1969 at Muscle Shoals Sound (home of the Swampers), recording Boz Scaggs’s self-titled album. The one with the TREMENDOUS solo on “Loan Me a Dime.”3
This one’s from April 1969 at the ABB’s first recording session for Phil Walden.
Duane’s time in Muscle Shoals
Duane wasn’t in the Shoals for long, but damn did he make an impact. “Hey Jude” is where it all came together for him, and earned him the right to put the Allman Brothers Band together.
Duane regrouped in the Shoals after a chaotic eighteen months based in Los Angeles with Hour Glass4 The slower pace agreed with him, and it was the only time since he took the road in 1965 that he was not a touring musician.
He quickly established a name for himself as a top-notch studio guitarist and earned the backing to start his next project. Stilted early attempts at a solo album reminded him how much he missed being a part of a band. The studio also reminded him how much he missed playing live.
He commuted back and forth from Florida throughout fall 1968, moving to the Shoals permanently in January 1969. By late February/early March, he left for the Sunshine State in search of bandmates who could play the sounds he had in his head.
He founded the ABB within a few weeks of his arrival: March 26, 1969
Tracklist and Commentary
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Wilson Pickett “Hey Jude” This the one that started it all. The song fades out while things are just popping. Every time I listen to it I wish it didn’t. Duane convinced Wilson Pickett to record the song while the rest of the band was on a dinner break. Duane and Pickett stayed behind because eating with Black folks and hippies invited trouble in northwest Alabama in 1968.
Clarence Carter “The Road of Love” Carter had already released “The Road of Love” as a single in 1967. I’ve never found any record of why Rick Hall added Duane’s overdubbed slide solo the following year but it made the track list of The Dynamic Clarence Carter. It’s Duane’s first slide solo to appear on record. Don’t miss Carter’s “I like what I’m listening to right now” during Duane’s solo.5
Aretha Franklin “It Ain’t Fair” “The Weight” I used these (recorded in NYC, not Muscle Shoals) because they offer two sides of Duane’s studio work for Atlantic. “It Ain’t Fair” features Duane on traditional, fretted guitar. It is one of my favorite solos of his from this era. Full of power and passion, but restrained, giving Aretha full command of the spotlight. That’s King Curtis on sax.
Aretha’s cover of the Band’s “The Weight” has Duane with the slinky slide tone he became most famous for. This cut hit #19 in March 1969.
When I heard their version, I was thrilled that she sang the hell out of it and had Duane Allman on slide guitar. A dream come true. Aretha doesn’t scream, squall, or yell, she SINGS — from the heavens with grace and style. Robbie Robertson
King Curtis “Games People Play” “The Weight” These tracks reflect standard practice of issuing singles of current singles: instrumental arrangements of Joe South’s “Games People Play” and a version of “The Weight” that is remarkably similar to Aretha Franklin’s version. It is a fresh Duane solo. Curtis became one of Duane’s best friends outside the ABB and their collaborations continued until Curtis’s death, sadly only a few months before Duane’s.
Arthur Conley “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”
Spencer Wiggins “I Never Loved a Woman”
Laura Lee “It Ain’t What You Got”
Just a small selection of the R&B stars Duane backed in Muscle Shoals. I could go in all kinds of directions here, but chose some personal favorites. Check out Duane’s his emphatic slide run on Conley’s Beatles’ cover.6
Aretha’s “I Never Loved a Man” is one of the best tracks of the Southern soul era. There’s a lot of energy on this version from Spencer Wiggins and another great slide solo from Duane.
Lee’s “It Ain’t What You Got” remained unreleased until 1972, a year after Duane’s death. This is a funky track and Duane laid down a really great solo.
Otis Rush “Reap What You Sow”
This one appears on Duane Allman: An Anthology Volume II.7 Duane holds his own with Magic Sam, a West Side Chicago guitar legend on an album that was pretty universally panned upon release but has grown in stature over the years. Mike Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites produced the sessions in Muscle Shoals.8
Duane Allman “Goin’ Down Slow” “Happily Married Man”
“Goin’ Down Slow” appeared on the playlist for the book’s introduction. It’s a Howlin’ Wolf song that Duane sings with passion, but it’s a strained vocal, particularly compared to brother Gregg, from whom he was estranged at the time.
“Happily Married Man” is a tongue-in-cheek rave-up about the pleasures of life on the road. Full bore rock & roll.
Some thoughts
In northwest Alabama, Duane realized what he valued most in music—creating it in the moment with simpatico players—required a full band. He also accepted he was not cut out to be a traditional front man.
Duane’s heart never really seems into these solo sessions. This really comes through in the vocal department. As Hour Glass bandmate Paul Hornsby said, “Duane just wasn’t a singer. He could have been but I think it bored him. He wanted to play guitar.” Besides, Duane already had a singer in mind: Gregg, who was still in Los Angeles.
The difference in vocalists is readily apparent when you listen to the demos the Allman Brothers Band made in Macon in April 1969, after only about a week or so together. As an example, here’s “Dreams”—one of the first of Gregg’s originals the band worked up.
A Duane-led power trio never happened, but that was Rick Hall’s initial idea for Duane’s career. As Dickey said, “Duane was too warm and personal for that. He needed a lot of other guys to get that full sound he wanted.”
They never turned on the tapes…
Jaimoe moved in with Duane sometime in early 1969. Berry Oakley regularly visited and together they created a partnership that forever altered the trajectory of American music overall.
Jaimoe remembered that their music baffled and intimidated FAME’s other musicians, all first-call session players. “They’d just come in, sit around the wall and look at us. You’d try to get them to jam and they’d say, ‘No, not with you.’” The duo “scared the hell out of people,” he said. “Nobody would touch a goddamned instrument.”
They were in a recording studio, yet there’s no record of the music that Jaimoe once likened to he heard Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Allman Brothers Band here we come!
Thanks for reading, y’all. Please tell others.
And that magnificent head of hair!
In a few short months, concerts stopped for all of us for what seemed like an eternity to me.
Scaggs moved to Macon for a time and his wife Carmella became involved with Dickey Betts, who was also married at the time. “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” is written for Carmella.
Incidentally, Jaimoe quit Carter’s band to move to Macon and join Phil Walden’s as-yet-unassembled studio rhythm section.
Jaimoe was in Conley’s band in the mid-60s.
Shout out to my dude TY!
They surely talked shop. I can’t be the only nerd dying to know what about.
Otis Rush, Sam Samudio (Memphis cat), John Hammond, Ronnie Hawkins records all feature top performance sesh playing. Are you familiar w/ Darkness Soul Survivors?
https://youtu.be/qc9a61pwRzo