When Musical Worlds Collide

A reminder of the many ways the circle remains unbroken

Welcome back to another edition of Long Live the ABB: observations from the crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture through the lens of the Allman Brothers Band. Before I get to this week’s topic, let me get some housekeeping out of the way.

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Susan Tedeschi and Ziggy Marley 7/8/23.

On to the unbroken circle…

I’m fascinated by artists’ repertoires, particularly when it comes to covers. Covers reflect a band’s influences and manifest themselves in a variety of ways.

There’s a lot to love about this Instagram clip of Tedeschi Trucks Band with Ziggy Marley, working up a version of the Wailers’ “Rastaman Chant” a few days ago.

Here's the direct link. I’ve also embedded it below:

Ziggy Marley

Ziggy Marley on Instagram: “On tour, a rare behind the scene look into how it all comes together Backstage with @derekandsusan working out “Rastaman Chant” before I join them on stage during their set @hartfordhealthcareamp in Bridgeport, CT. #ziggymarley #tedeschitrucksband #bobmarley”

July 10, 2023

A few things come to mind immediately

The collaboration itself is pretty boss. Ziggy Marley is a legit talent who’s remained a vibrant reggae performer since he was a teen. He’s also Bob f*cking Marley’s son.

Then you’ve got the Tedeschi Trucks Intergalactic Orchestra¹ the greatest band on planet earth IMNSHO. Here they rehearsing Ziggy’s sit-in later that evening. (TTB regularly posts videos of their pre-show rehearsals, a ritual that really seems to prime the band well for the upcoming show.)

The song choice is great. As an instrumental, “Rastaman Chant” has been in Derek’s repertoire since the Derek Trucks Band days. TTB had just started to cover the song with vocals. It’s from Burnin’, the final album of the original Wailers.²

The rhythm. I love to watch how music moves people. And it’s particularly cool for me to see how musicians groove to music they’re playing. This video has that in abundance.

Watch Ziggy tapping his leg along with the beat as he and Susan work out their vocal harmonies.

Watch Derek grooving along in the background, holding it down with the drums.

And I’m not the only one who sees something special happening. Here’s TTB’s Gabe Dixon on Instagram:

And it continued onstage. Here’s the performance that night, with all 12 members of TTB. Look at Susan put down her guitar and start dancing along. This is a GROOVE.

It’s also a meeting of musical worlds for me

I go pretty far back with “Rasta Man Chant” (as it’s spelled on Burnin’). My best friend Rodney’s hipped me to the record in high school. It’s my second-favorite Marley record of all time after Live! ³

The song is the album’s finale, adapted from a traditional Rastafarian hymn sung on top of a steady 4/4 rhythm. As photographer Esther Anderson recounts:

[Bongo Mackie] is the dread with the goat in the centerfold of Burnin’. Mackie was living in a big Rasta compound with all these children. I was so amazed at all the red, gold and green there. This was a time when none of the Wailers had dreadlocks yet.

I took Bob there the next day with Countryman to photograph them together. In the evening, Mackie started to play these akete drums, and they reminded me of a time I had gone to Africa with Millie Small and Brando was there. The big university in Accra gave a private thousand-drum concert for us, and Bongo Mackie’s drums reminded me of these. ⁴

When I heard him sing “One bright morning when my work is over,” I told Bob, “You must wear red, gold and green and grow your locks and open your show with the drums.”⁵

Finding magic in a song

Truth be told, I never really *got* “Rastaman Chant” until Derek Trucks Band started performing it in 1999. It was a good enough song on a great record, but it never really penetrated my soul.

Until the day it did.

I remember exactly when and where it happened: Saturday, January 15, 2000, Alligator Alley in Sunrise, Florida.⁶

As the band (and crowd) settled down after a rollicking “Yield Not” with a decided “Turn on Your Love Light” feel, Derek started playing a familiar melody, King Curtis’s “Soul Serenade.”

It’s a wonderful song by any measure, recorded dozens of times by artists ranging from Aretha Franklin to David Sanborn.⁷

“Soul Serenade” is particularly revered in ABB circles due to Duane Allman’s poignant tribute to Curtis on a live version of “You Don’t Love Me” that first appeared on the 1989 Dreams box set.

Seriously, give it a listen if you haven’t recently. (You’re welcome.)

Listen to Duane speak of his friend King Curtis, who was killed a few weeks earlier, a death that shook Duane up as he and Curtis (and Delaney Bramlett) were extremely close.

You can hear Duane thinking out loud how he’s going to pay tribute to his friend. As he noodles teases song’s opening notes, he announces, “I know where we’ll do it.”

Several minutes into the song, Duane quotes “Soul Serenade.”⁸ Just as on At Fillmore East, the band dropped out behind him. Duane played the first couple of licks and the crowd recognizes. The band does as well and picks up the chord change. It’s a really wonderful moment in Duane’s recorded history.

The Derek Trucks Band’s “Soul Serenade>Rastaman Chant” segue on January 15, 2000 remains, to this day, some of the best music I have ever heard live.

It also literally lifted my spirit as I felt a pull in my chest heavenward. It’s neither the first nor the last time that has happened for me. It’s, as the Susan Tedeschi song goes, “The Feeling the Music Brings.”

Here’s “Rastaman Chant” > “Soul Serenade” on archive.org. (Ignore the track labels, they’re all wrong.)

Bringing it all back home

As a South Floridian, reggae is like a birthright. It is the soundtrack of my life. But while reggae grooves regularly found themselves in the music I listened to⁹, it wasn’t until the Derek Trucks Band first covered “Rastaman Chant” and joined Gov’t Mule in working up an instrumental version of “Lively Up Yourself,” that a band I loved covered reggae with an original arrangement.

Arrangements matter. As Duane Allman himself learned in Hour Glass, without a distinct spin—an original song or a new arrangement, an artist is simply copying.

It’s that original arrangement like “Soul Serenade>Rastaman Chant” (the title track from dTb’s 2003 album) that sets artists apart. The interpretation of another’s work, making something new out of someone else’s music is a hallmark of the ABB’s approach.

The Allman Brothers Band was full of groundbreaking interpreters. Gregg Allman was a master of it throughout his solo career. Dickey and Berry taught Duane and Gregg to “go sideways”¹⁰ and Dickey continued to work up great arrangements late in his career (don’t sleep on “Tangled Up in Blue”). Butch Trucks’s BHLT, Frogwings, the Freight Train, and Les Brers all showed his willingness to take chances with music. A jazz man, Jaimoe is well-versed in musical adaptation as is evident in his work with Sea Level and Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band.

This is a lesson Duane learned the hard way, one I document in the first 6 chapters of Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.

Adding Jaimoe, Dickey, Berry, and Butch provided the exact right mix for Duane and Gregg. Together, the original six Allman Brothers Band members put together a formula that subsequent generations have followed, Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes chief among them.

One final note

This one goes out to my younger brother Brian, who died of an overdose early in the pandemic. Brian was a true “Marley man”¹¹ and when he died, I found a lot of solace in Marley’s music. Burnin’ was a huge part of my listening as it’s a perfect blend of deep spirituality and revolutionary militance that fit the spirit of the times well.

Thanks again for reading. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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1. Shout-out to the Tour Mystic for this intro.

2. Once Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh departed, the band would forever be Bob Marley and the Wailers.

3. There’s those live albums again, gonna have to write something up on that obsession. 🍄

4. The drumming is called Nyabinghi, named after a legendary East African woman known as the “mother of abundance.”

5. Roger Steffans, ‘So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley’ (2017). Marley did exactly what Anderson suggested . He grew his dreadlocks, very publicly converted to Rastafarianism, and opened sets in 1973 with “Rasta Man Chant.”

6. I was able to pinpoint 1999-2001, but did have to look up the date/venue. It was the third of four dTb shows in a row for me. It was one of Kofi Burbridge’s first tours with the band and Bill McKay’s last. Susan Tedeschi traveled with the band and sat in each night. Uncle Butch Trucks sat in one night later in West Palm Beach. Though I was able to pinpoint it in my mind to 1999-2001, I did have to look up the date and venue.

7. Shout out to Tim Hoover, author of Soul Serenade: King Curtis and His Immortal Saxophone.

8. “You Don’t Love Me” has two of them, once when Duane passes off to Dickey, and a final at the song’s end.

9. Zeppelin, the Stones, even Paul Simon, among others.

10. Dickey’s words.

11. Ya tu sabes. Sending lots of love to the other Marley men in my life, my dude Dean and my homeboy Biggie.