Southern rock can be linked
back to March 26, 1969, when Duane Allman, the founder and
leader of the Allman Brothers band, summoned his brother
Greg to join a band that fused blues, rock,
jazz, and country music, a combination literally
unheard of at the time. From forming the Allman
Brothers band in 1969 to his untimely death two and
a half years later, today, we're looking at the life and
tragic death of Duane Allman. But before we get started, make
sure you subscribe to the Weird History Channel,
leave a comment, and let us know what
music stories you would like to hear about next. Now, to the whipping post. Sometime in the summer of
1960, Howard Duane Allman bought his first motorcycle. According to his brother
Greg, the 14-year-old Duane became a terror of
the neighborhood with that motorcycle. He was frequently
seen and heard ripping through Daytona Beach, Florida,
where the Allman family moved two years earlier. The same summer Duane
bought his motorcycle, the 13-year-old Greg got a
summer job as a paper boy. After several months
on the job, Greg went to a Sears department
store one afternoon with the intention of
buying a pair of gloves. His attention
though was diverted by a display of guitars. Instead of gloves, Greg bought
a Teisco Silvertone guitar. Back home, Duane used
to play the guitar on the sly, which
infuriated Greg and caused the brothers to fight. But according to Greg's 2012
autobiography My Cross to Bear, there was no question that
music brought the two together. When Duane rode his
Harley into the ground, he traded in the
salvageable parts for a Silvertone of his own. Greg gave his older brother
a few basic lessons, but Duane was a quick study. And after a year of practice
and an inspirational BB King concert, the Allman boys
formed several local bands, including the Kings,
the Uniques, Y Teams, the Shufflers, the Misfits,
the Escorts, the Allman Joys, and Allman Act. In early 1967, the
Allman boys were booked for a month
long engagement in St. Louis, Missouri. It was here that
the brothers bumped into the nitty gritty dirt
band's manager, Bill McEwen. McEwen told the Allmans to
stop spinning their wheels, give it the road,
go to California, and get serious
about making music, and get a recording contract. Duane and Greg left Florida
and relocated to Los Angeles with their group. McEwen got them an audition
with Liberty Records, who then signed the band. But the record company
wanted to mold them into a bland commercial rock
band similar to Los Angeles rock bands such as Iron
Butterfly and the Byrds. Soon after signing the
Allman Brothers five piece, Liberty changed the
band's name to Hourglass. They were forced to wear
ridiculous hippie costumes and even restricted
their live gigs to preserve the band's mystique. Liberty didn't even let
Hourglass choose the songs on their self-titled debut album
and only loosened the reins on their second album after
the failure of the first. Greg Allman called Hourglass's
output a shit sandwich. Yep, that's probably where
Spinal Tap got that line from. After the demos for a
potential third album recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle
Shoals were ejected by Liberty, Duane and Greg moved
back to Florida and sort of dissolved Hourglass
without really telling anyone. When Liberty Records
threatened to sue Hourglass for breaking up, Greg
went back to Los Angeles in the fall of 1968 to record
a solo record for them, which would fulfill
the band's contract. With the disaster of
Hourglass behind them, Duane spent a few months jamming
with local Florida musicians. Nothing was really
clicking for him in regards of
forming another band. Duane was in a holding pattern. Luckily, Fame Studios
owner Rick Hall remembered Duane from
Hourglass's recent sessions, sent him a telegram to see if
he was interested in a paid gig. And in November of
1968, Duane Allman played lead guitar on Wilson
Pickett song "Hey, Jude." It was during the
sessions for that album that inspired
Pickett to give Duane his nickname Sky Dog because
he could hit the heights. Paul was also pretty impressed
with the Duane's session work. He signed Sky Dog to
a five year contract as Fame Studio's
primary guitarist where he played for Aretha
Franklin, Percy Sledge, Otis Rush, and countless others. But it was Duane's work with
Pickett that created the buzz. This is how Eric Clapton put it. "I remember hearing Wilson
Pickett's "Hey, Jude" and just being astounded by
the lead break at the end. I had to know who that was
immediately, right now." While under contract with
Rick Hall's Fame Studio, Duane slowly put a band together
consisting of drummer Jaimo Johanson, Johnny Sandlin
as the second drummer, Paul Hornsby on guitar and
keys, and bassist Berry Oakley. The group had
immediate chemistry. And Duane's vision for a
different sounding band, one with two lead
guitarist and two drummers, began taking shape. Duane was thrilled at how well
his unnamed band was gelling. But Duane was slowly
becoming frustrated with being what he called
a robot for Fame Studios producers and musicians
that came through using him as a young gun for hire. Now, depending on who's
telling the story, Duane's future was decided
by either Rick Hall of Fame Studios or Atlantic
Records vice president Jerry Wechsler. According to Jimmy Johnson,
co-founder of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, the moment Jerry
Wechsler heard Duane's solo on Pickett's "Hey, Jude" on a
lo-fi playback over the phone, he called Phil Walden, who
had been looking for an artist to manage ever since his
client Otis Redding died. After quite a successful run
managing soul and R&B acts, Walden wanted to switch
genres into rock music. So Wechsler
excitedly told Walden about Duane, who
then immediately flew to Muscle Shoals to buy
Allman's Fame Studio contract from Rick Hall. Walden and Wechsler
envisioned Duane and his band as the foundation of their
new Atlantic distributed label Capricorn Records. Now, if Rick Hall
tells the story, he says he wasn't happy with
Duane or as recording methods. According to Randy Poe's
2008 biography Sky Dog: the Duane Allman Story, he
offered Wechsler and Walden the chance to buy out Duane's
contract and the tracks his band recorded for $10,000. Given a second
chance, a new contract with Capricorn Records,
and the freedom to make whatever kind
of music he wanted, Duane returned to
Jacksonville, Florida. Duane was now in search
of the perfect band. Already jamming with
Berry Oakley on bass and Dickey Betts on lead
guitar, Jaimo on drums, Duane also recruited
Butch Trucks as his band's second drummer. And a couple weeks after
he assembled these players, the five musicians
found themselves jamming in a small
room at Oakley's home. The jam went on for
three or four hours. And when the music trailed off,
Duane looked around the room and said to no
one in particular, "Man, anyone who
ain't in this band has got to fight their way out." Now all they needed
was a singer. But Duane already had a plan. Duane called Greg
in Los Angeles, where unbeknownst to
him, his little brother was considering suicide. Greg explains the situation
in a letter he drunkenly wrote to Cameron Crowe
in 1973 while on tour promoting their most recent
album Brothers and Sisters. "I'd been building the nerve
to put a pistol to my head. Then Duane called me and
told me that he had a band. He said, 'I want you to
come down here, round it up, and send it somewhere.' I put my thumb out and caught
the first thing smoking for Jacksonville." Greg was intimidated by the
musicians Duane put together, but his big brother pressured
him into singing his guts out. It was a sink or swim
moment, and Greg delivered. It was at this rehearsal
on March 26, 1969, when the group was rehearsing
"Muddy Waters, Trouble No More" that Dwayne's vision
came together, and southern rock was conceived. Four days later, after
Greg's first rehearsal with Duane and the group,
the Allman Brothers band made their debut
on March 30, 1969, at the Jacksonville
Beach armory. Oddly enough, Greg
didn't perform with the band for this gig. Duane Allman was
only 22 years old. But after a year and
a half in Hourglass, he taught himself to become
arguably the greatest slide guitar player in the world. He invented a genre of
music that would later become southern rock. And in two and a half
years, he would be gone. Once the Allman Brothers were
signed to Capricorn Records, Duane didn't break from his
cycle of rehearsing, recording, and touring for two years. Phil Walden suggested moving
the band to Macon, Georgia, where he was in the process of
setting up Capricorn Records. The band eventually moved
into the former frat house near the local
college the band christened the Hippie Crash. Pad. It was there the
Allman Brothers band recorded their self-titled debut
between August 3 and 12 of 1969 and released it on
November 4, 1969. They then set out on a
rigorous two year tour, performing nearly 500
dates in an econoline van and later a Winnebago
nicknamed the Windbag. As a result of the band's
relentless touring schedule, their second album
Idlewild South was recorded in bits
and pieces over a period of five months in
various cities, including New York, Miami,
and Macon between February through July 1970. When sales proved to be as
slow for Idlewild South, Duane pushed the band
to perform 300 gigs in 1970, which actually earned
the band a reputation of being a phenomenal live band. This revelation gave Duane
a career making idea. The Allman Brothers third
album would be recorded live at the Fillmore East, Bill
Graham's legendary New York rock venue. And it would be here where Duane
Allman would become a legend. At Fillmore East was released as
a double album on July of 1971. And within two weeks, it
landed on the American charts. The group encountered
huge crowds at every gig
following the release. And guitarists would
seek out Duane backstage and tell him how
much he had inspired them to stop playing
safe commercial rock and play real music. Finally, enjoying
a little success after two years on the
road since their debut, the band decided to
take a short vacation, relax, and enjoy some
of their success. On October 21, 1971,
Duane took a short ride on his Harley Davidson Sportster
to Berry Oakley's two story band headquarters and
residence the group called the Big House in Macon. He was going to wish Oakley's
wife Linda a happy birthday. Shortly after leaving the
Big House at about 5:45 PM, Duane headed east out on
Macon on Hillcrest Avenue. It was at the intersection
of Hillcrest and Bartlett that Dwayne spotted a flatbed
truck crossing Hillcrest from his left to his right. The truck suddenly stopped
in the intersection, forcing Duane to swerve
sharply to the left. At this point, Duane clipped
the back of the truck's bed and was thrown from
the motorcycle. Duane's Sportster flew in
the air, landed on him, and slid between 50 and 90 feet
beyond the point of impact. The weight of the motorcycle
crushed his internal organs. According to a report by
John Lando from Rolling Stone on November 25, 1971, Dwayne's
girlfriend Dixie Meadows and Berry Oakley's sister
Candy were following him from some distance behind and
had not seen the accident. When the girls had found
Duane under his motorcycle, they stayed with him until
an ambulance arrived. He reportedly stopped breathing
twice in the ambulance but was revived both
times through mouth to mouth resuscitation. Although Duane was alive
when he arrived at the Macon medical center, his
massive injuries were too much for his body
despite three hours of surgery. Doctor Charles Burdon,
the intending surgeon, later said that any of
those injuries Duane sustained-- his collapsed chest,
his ruptured coronary artery, or severely damaged
liver-- would probably have caused his death. But the combination
of all these injuries left very little
hope upon arrival. And at the age of 24,
only two and a half years after the Allman Brothers
formed, Duane Allman was dead. Services were held three days
later on Monday, November 1, 1971, at Macon's
Memorial Chapel. Nearly 300 friends, relatives,
and admirers attended. Duane's guitar
case was propped up at the front of his
floor wreath casket, and the Allman Brothers
band gear was set up behind. At 3:00 PM, the
remaining members of the band played several
of their songs as a tribute to Duane such as "The
Keys to the Highway," which Duane had recorded
with Eric Clapton on "Layla," then did "Stormy Monday"
and "Elizabeth Reed." Greg also sang a
couple of the songs by himself while playing
Duane's antique guitar. When Greg finished,
he lowered his head and fingered the guitar's
fretboard nervously and said, "This is a very old guitar,
a very beautiful piece. It was made in 1920. And I'm very proud to have it. And I'm very proud
that you all came." Although the Allman Brothers
band stayed together until 2014 with several hiatuses and
several different musicians along the way, they were never
the same after Duane's death. Bassist Berry Oakley died in
a drunken motorcycle accident about three blocks away from
where Duane died a year and two weeks after Duane's crash. Greg testified against Scooter
Herring, his personal road manager and valet,
after Herring was charged with multiple
counts of conspiracy to distribute narcotics. Greg's testimony labeled him
as a snitch among band mates, and the Allman
Brothers band broke up. The band reformed,
but they never quite captured the spirit
they possessed when Duane was their leader. So what do you think
would have happened if Duane would have lived? Would he have been the
greatest guitarist of all time? Let us know what you think
in the comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other music stories from our Weird History.
