Chapter 1
Before The Allman Brothers Band
Gregg Allman (born 8 December 1947) and his older brother Duane (20 November 1946) were both born in Nashville. In 1949, they moved to Virginia, where their father Willis was killed in a robbery that December. The family returned to Nashville, and from 1955 - with their mother Geraldine studying to qualify as an accountant - the brothers were sent to be educated at Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee: 30 miles east of 'Music City'. 'Having my older brother with me was the only thing that saved me', Gregg wrote in his memoir.
The family moved to 100 Van Avenue, Daytona Beach, Florida in 1959. Geraldine lived there until her death in 2015.
Gregg told Rolling Stone in 1979:
I didn't start playing music till we moved to Daytona Beach. I started on guitar in the summer of 1960, and Duane picked it up by the fall. I taught him the basics, and he really took a yen to it, quit school. that's all he ever did . many nights I'd wake up and there he'd be, just pickin' away. We listened to Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, Ray Charles, B.B. King. I guess Little Milton was about my favourite. We went, let's just say, across the tracks. Our mother called it somethin' else. We had to ease over there. and for about 97 cents, you could buy these old albums. I've still got a few of 'em.
Originally, Duane would borrow Gregg's Silvertone guitar, for which he saved hard, and bought from the local Sears store, as Gregg recalled: 'He looks at my guitar and says, 'Now what you got there, baby brother?'. I go, 'Now all right, Duane, that's mine'. He would slip into my room and play it. I swear to God, we had more fights over that guitar than you'd believe'.
Soon, Duane had a guitar of his own. He told Crawdaddy:
The guitar saved me from so much grief. I was a hoodlum ... then that old guitar came along and I had something to do. When I get pissed off, I just sit down and beat the fire out of some old Jimmy Reed shit instead of going out and drinking and fighting and falling down and going crazy. It would take me all the way, man, and put me on a good note.
'Then not only was there peace in the family', Gregg wrote, 'but we started playing together. I had shown him how to play at the beginning, then he started showing me some licks, and we would just help each other out - that's how we learned'.
Gregg subsequently developed a powerful, distinctive and very soulful singing voice. Their ambitions were heightened during a summer trip back to Nashville to visit their grandparents, as Gregg recalled:
One night, my mother dropped me and my brother off at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium, and we spent a buck and a quarter to sit in the cheap seats. Jackie Wilson was the headliner. Cheap seats or no cheap seats, it was amazing. Next to Jackie was Otis Redding, and Otis just took it, man. He got the whole place singing, and moving faster and faster. My brother was just mesmerized - he was frozen, and he looked stuffed, like a taxidermist had gotten through with him. Nothing on his body moved during the whole concert. That music was in his heart, and it was in mine too. Then we got to playing it, and we realized how important it really was.
They quickly upgraded to electric guitars, courtesy of their doting mother. Gregg was given a Fender Musicmaster, and Duane a cherry-red 1959 Gibson Les Paul Junior. Between them, they played in several short-term bands in Daytona in 1961/1962, including The Kings, The Uniques and The Shufflers - performing wherever they could, including at Y-Teen events at the local YMCA. Duane's school band The Misfits formed back at Castle Heights Military Academy in late-summer 1961. Bass player Mike Johnstone told author Randy Poe: 'We rehearsed down at the auditorium there at the school, and played school dances. We did what I call black rock & roll - the early R&B things: Bobby 'Blue' Bland and Ray Charles and James Brown. I remember we played 'Stormy Monday'. I was coming out of surf music - that was my deal. I got started listening to Chet Atkins, which led me to The Ventures. Duane was into that too, but he was more into B.B. King'.
The Misfits were to add Gregg the following year and perform gigs locally ... until Duane was expelled from school in late 1963. Gregg was also asked to leave soon after, and they returned to Daytona Beach.
No longer in school, Duane and Gregg formed their first serious professional band, The Escorts. The instrumental lineup followed that of the newly-famous Beatles - two guitars, with bass (local musician Van Harrison) and drums (Maynard Portwood). An early recording session - intended as a showcase for prospective live bookings - included covers of The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Searchers and The Righteous Brothers. They also performed songs by Roy Orbison, The Impressions, The Yardbirds, The Troggs and others. Gregg Allman:
We did a whole bunch of old R&B love songs - stuff like 'Pretty Woman', 'I've Been Trying', 'Hi-Heel Sneakers' and 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling', which we butchered. 'Are You Sincere', by Lenny Welch, was one of my brother's choices, and we did 'This Boy' by The Beatles because we had to play enough Beatles songs. We did some instrumentals as well, including 'Memphis' and our version of the theme from Goldfinger. We'd also do 'Wild Thing', which got us real close to getting fired several times. Most clubs just wanted us to be a jukebox onstage, and we were a great one.
The Escorts' biggest break was in spring 1965 when they opened for The Beach Boys in Daytona Beach. This band was renamed The Allman Joys in summer 1965, now with Bob Keller on bass. A new demo tape signalled a move away from the British Invasion towards the American music of The Nashville Teens, Buck Owens, Lonnie Mack, Sir Douglas Quintet and Bobby 'Blue' Bland. Gregg wrote in his memoir: 'We were doing 'Turn On Your Love Light', because we had heard Bobby 'Blue' Bland do it. And man, you talk about an original talent - there will be - and can be - only one Bobby 'Blue' Bland'.
In writer/director Cameron Crowe's 1989 book The Day The Music Died, Tom Petty (in 1965 an underage upstart living in Jacksonville) remembers hoisting himself up on a cement wall to see a frat dance where the Allman Joys appeared: 'Duane just stood there, off to the side, ripping through these great leads, and there was his baby-faced little brother, who opened his mouth and sounded like Joe Tex'.
The Allmans moved to Los Angeles in mid-1966, with Portwood and Keller replaced by Bill Connell and Mike Alexander. They later recorded in Nashville at a studio called Bradley's Barn: including an incendiary version of Willie Dixon's 'Spoonful', which was released as a single. Several other tracks surfaced years later on the album Early Allman. Six can be heard on the 2013 retrospective Skydog. 'We made it clear that we never wanted those released', Gregg said. 'They were terrible songs, just awful'.
Around this time or possibly earlier, Gregg and Duane first met future Allman Brothers Band drummer Claude Hudson 'Butch' Trucks, when Trucks' band the Bitter Ind (for 'individual') crossed paths with The Allman Joys on the Florida club circuit. As Gregg later wrote, 'Musicians find musicians, and I met every one of them in Daytona - black, white, and everything in between'. Butch Trucks told Rolling Stone in June 2009:
(Duane) was this incredibly charismatic, almost messianic type of personality. He was more than a bandleader, he was a guy who could really change you. There are very, very few people you meet like that in your lifetime. If I hadn't met him, I'd be teaching school, I don't doubt that. I can still remember the day he reached in and flicked a switch in me that changed me from being a really nervous introverted drummer, to playing with confidence. Most people don't really have it in them to let it all hang out. That's why most people aren't professional musicians. They asked Mark Twain what it took to be successful, and he said, 'That's easy: all you have to be is ignorant and cocky'. You have to not be afraid, and at the time, I was very afraid. So we were jamming one day, and it wasn't going anywhere, and Duane turned around and stared me in the eye and played this lick. It was like a challenge, like, 'Come on, motherfucker!'. I backed off, and he did it again, and again, and after a while I got mad and I started hitting the drums like I was slapping him on the side of the head. And I forgot about the nervousness and that I was afraid, and the jam got going, and he pointed a finger at me and said, 'There you go'. And a light bulb went off. I made a decision then: 'I can play'.
Trucks' bandmates were bassist David Brown and guitarist Scott Boyer. All three attended high school and Florida State University together. Boyer told Randy Poe: 'I'd been playing coffee houses and stuff like that. I knew all these Bob Dylan songs. It was around then that The Byrds came in, and The Lovin' Spoonful. So David approached me with the idea of the three of us getting together and...
