“The spirits met and that was it”

The Jacksonville Jam: Part 4 of the first ABB bio

Welcome back to Long Live the ABB. I’m in a season of curating lately and have been actively adding new content to my Youtube channel.

One of those videos is including this really awesome conversation with Sean Gaillard on his Principal Liner Notes podcast.

Something tells me y’all will dig it:

Here’s something interesting¹

I’m a homer, a fanboy, so I’m always pleased when I see artists mention an Allman Brothers influence. I wrote last week about Slash’s ABB fandom. Apparently neither Eddie Van Halen nor Johnny Marr shared the affinity. Said Eddie² in 1981, “The Allman Brothers’ feel is something I never got into. I found their music too cluttered for my taste.”³

Marr, most famous as guitarist of the Smiths, was blasphemous. His oldest possession is a 45 of Paul Davidson’s obscure 1976 reggae-inspired “Midnight Rider.” Decades later, he “was horrified” to discover it was an Allman Brothers original, calling their version “terrible.”⁴

If I’d have posted these things on social media, particularly Facebook, shit woulda gone sideways real quick. There’s a particular vitriol with which folks respond to anything negative about the Allman Brothers that has always made me chuckle—until I had to start dealing with it.

Whether or not I agree with EVH or Marr is immaterial. (I don’t. They are ABBsolutely 100% wrong🍄.) I dig the shit out of both of them, their guitar playing, and their bands.⁵ Basically, I don’t hold their bad taste (kidding) against them.

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The Allman Brothers Band: A Biography Part 4

Here’s Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

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This is the page I’m commenting on today⁶

Full text of book posted here

ABB Biography in Words & Pictures

Dr. B’s Marginalia

The original text looks like this.

My comments look like this.

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Previously on Long Live the ABB

The day before Berry arrived in Muscle Shoals for Duane’s solo sessions in January of 1969, a drummer named Jai Johanny Johanson - Jaimoe, or “Frown” - introduced himself to a guitar player who had been occupying his thoughts.

Nolan dates Jaimoe’s arrival to the day before Berry’s, that’s a tiny detail but significant in how quickly things were moving for Duane in early 1969.

Jaimoe and Duane seemed destined to play together. Here’s Duane’s side, as told by songwriter Jackie Avery. Avery played Duane a demo Jaimoe played on.

“He listened to the whole thing; all he asked was, ‘Who is the drummer?’ I went back to Georgia and told [Jaimoe] I thought he should get over to Muscle Shoals, that I thought this guy was going to be something.”

Jaimoe picks up the story…

Someone send photo info/credit and I’ll update.

“A friend of mine from my home town in Pass Christian, Mississippi, Jackie Avery, went down to Muscle Shoals to do a session, ‘The Weight’ with Aretha Franklin.⁷

He come back and said, Jai, there’s a guitar player in Muscle Shoals that you have got to hear! He said, ‘I have never heard nobody play like this cat plays. B.B. King, and those cats, are masters; but this cat is so young, and he’s a white boy at that. But you close your eyes when he plays, and you swear it was a n-----r!’⁸

“He said this cat was planning on putting him a band together. But I never dreamed I’d be in that band.”

“One night I heard the thing on the radio, about one o’clock in the morning. I said, that has got to be Duane Allman. I told everybody the next morning, it was so clear in my head, what I heard. It lasted, like one of those dreams that seem so real. And are so real.

Duane heard something special in the drummer’s playing. Jaimoe found likewise in Duane’s.

They heard magic in each other’s playing before even meeting.⁹

Jaimoe—born Johnny Lee Johnson, stage name Jai Johanny Johanson, was Duane’s initial recruit. “Was I in the original band?” he said. “Shit, I was with the band when it wasn’t no band.”

In 1964, he began his professional career with the Sounds of Soul, a group th at featured future ABB bassist Lamar Williams (1972-76). A year later, Jaimoe toured with R&B singer Ted Taylor.

In 1966 he joined Otis Redding’s band. He left Redding in December 1966 and signed on with Percy Sledge, where he met Twiggs Lyndon, Sledge’s tour manager.

In 1968, Jaimoe relocated to Macon at Lyndon’s invitation to play in a studio band Phil Walden was assembling.

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