Play All Night Playlist Project: Chapter 6 Duane in Muscle Shoals
“I brought myself back to earth and came to life again.” Duane Allman
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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.
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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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