True crime podcasts gain popularity

Suffice to say, Mr. Reed found a remarkable story, just not the one he expected.

For those who prefer their true crime fascinations in more bite-sized pieces, there’s “Criminal,” which launched from Radiotopia and PRX in 2014. Each twice-weekly episode is a short-form examination of “stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.”

Episode 25, for example, weaves history, sociology and psychology to spotlight “The Portrait.” In 1929 North Carolina, a family of nine posed for a holiday picture. On Christmas day, the head of the household shotgunned all but his oldest child to death before killing himself.

What eventually followed was a circus of sightseers to the Lawson family tobacco farm, where they were charged admission. Folklorist Sarah Bryan weighs in on the cultural aspects of the crime, including the rise in popularity of “murder ballads” in the 1930s.

“It’s a show called ‘Criminal,’ but I would say it’s a show about the human experience,” said Phoebe Judge, host and co-creator. “Not all these stories are sad and tragic and sensationalistic. Some of these can be very funny.”

To wit, they did a more recent episode, “420,” about the strange origin of that term in marijuana history.

“Our interest is in trying tolook at the broadest definition of what crime is, so it’s exciting to see where those boundaries lie,” Ms. Judge said. “When you think of ‘true crime’ you think it’s going to be ‘x, y, z,’ and our hope is you can throw that completelyby the wayside.”

It’s no coincidence that many of the biggest true crime successes have public radio lineage. Audio storytelling, strengthened by reputable journalism, is a long-standing tradition.

In the case of “S-Town,” Mr. Reed became part of the story, befriending the man who urged him to visit Woodstock, Ala., in the first place. Mr. Reed and a group of fact-checkers, however, have scrupulously gone back over details in the podcast.

But what happens when a true crime podcast states, upfront, that there’s a bias to the storytelling? “Convicted” is presented by Brooke Gittings, a former therapist who is a research assistant for the attorney representing a Baltimore man, Richard Nicolas.

In 1996, Nicolas was driving his 2-year-old daughter home from a movie when she was shot and killed. He was convicted of the crime. Ms. Gittings, who also created the “Actual Innocence” podcast, about those wrongly jailed, says in the first episode of “Convicted” that “I am not a reporter and I’mnot an attorney.”

“I’m human, too, and to deliver a story without any bias I believe, would be next to impossible.”

Her listeners don’t seem to mind: “Convicted” is still a top 20 podcast on the iTunes charts.

“Maybe some view themselves more as entertainment platforms, and that’s OK, too,” said Ms. Judge, whose team spends 12 hours editing each 20- to 25minute segment. “But I think it’s important to be transparent about what you are doing.”

“‘Criminal,’” she said, “constantly turns down story [ideas] because we cannot find actual facts or witnesses to back it up.”

After realizing “Criminal” would be at the intersection of public radio and “Law & Order,” Ms. Judge added, “The idea was, we would never run out of stories. And that’s how it happened [to us] three years ago.” music from a guy named Jimmy Smith, and I thought, ‘What in the world is making that sound?’ And it turned out to be a Hammond B-3 organ. … It all just seemed to fall in line for me, like, if that hadn’t happened, then this wouldn’t have happened, and if that hadn’t happened, these three things wouldn’t have happened. My whole life has been like that, almost like it’s been planned.”

From his first concerts in Pittsburgh, in 1971, to the final one, in April 2016 in Munhall, he was behind that Hammond organ, his golden voice (and his fingers) channeling those ghosts. Promoter Rich Engler knew Mr. Allman for decades, having promoted many of those concerts over the years.

During that 2012 solo visit at the Byham, Mr. Engler got to spend a lot of time with him and brought a tear to the legend’s eye with a story about his brother. About 1966 or ’67, Mr. Engler was in the band Grains of Sand, which took a trip down to Florida to try to get some gigs. They ended up in Daytona Beach, where he met a girl who helped get them a club gig. The next afternoon, they were rehearsing in the club, toying with the riff of the Blues Magoos’ song “We Ain’t Got Nothing Yet.”

“So there’s a guy in the club,” Mr. Engler says, “and he comes over says, ‘Hey, man, you want me to show how to do that riff?’ We say ‘sure,’ and he comes over and does it. And I said, ‘Hey, you want to play with us?’ ” That’show one of the greatest rock guitarists ever, Duane Allman, came to be in the Grains of Sand for one day. Theyasked if he wanted to hit the road with the band, but he laughed that a Southern boy could never live in Pittsburgh. Plus, he said, he was ina band with his brother.

As Mr. Engler recalls, Duane said, “I love my brother, but he and I used to have some fierce fistfights. And me and my brother just had a major knock-down, drag-out fight. My band was called the Allman Joys. I told that [S.O.B.] I never wanted to see him again, but I love him.”

“That brought Gregg to tears,” Mr. Engler says.

“I told him that Duane said he could never leave because, sooner or later, he was going to get back with you and form another band. And that turned out to be the Allman Brothers.” With Duane on guitar and Gregg on Hammond and vocals, the Allman Brothers came to define Southern rock in a way that was never repeated. The brilliance spanned from hard blues throwdowns like “Whipping Post” to breezier rockers like “Midnight Rider” and “Ramblin’ Man” to gorgeous jazz-rock instrumentals like “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” Their first stop in Pittsburgh was at the Syria Mosque in Oakland in January 1971, touring behind “Idlewild South,” a second Allmans album made right around the same time Duane had joined Eric Clapton in Derekand the Dominos.

In July, the Allman Brothers showed their full bluesrock power on “At the Fillmore East,” one of the best live albums of all time. They returned to the Syria Mosque at the end of a tour on Oct. 15, 1971. Fourteen days later, Duane died in a motorcycle crash in Macon, Ga. It was his third to last show with the Allman Brothers. Gregg recalled in that 2012 interview, “I taught him how to play. I showed him the original map back in 1960 and he took it from there. He quit school a year later, in his sophomore year. I mean, every lick I ever learned was with him.”

We don’t have to tell you that that wasn’t the end of the Allman Brothers Band. The album they had been working on, the two-record set “Eat a Peach,” was a major success in 1972, with almost every song now a classic. The same goes for the follow-up, “Brothers and Sisters,” released in August 1973, the same month the ABB came here to headline Three Rivers Stadium, which they did again in July 1974. That was the heyday for the Allman Brothers, which endured numerous personnel changes through years but continued to thrive, returning year after year to headline the Civic Arena or Star LakeAmphitheater.

Jim Donovan, the former drummer for Rusted Root, which toured with the Allmans for two summers in the ’90s, says the frontman was “quiet yet kindly and humble offstage. When he sang, I always felt like he was telling the truth. After watching them for so many nights what struck me most was his gift of helping the listener feel connected with the songs. Even though he had played them thousands of times, he was reliably passionate .... And the audience loved him for it. I know I did.”

Rusted Root singer Michael Glabicki posted on Facebook Saturday: “It was so inspiring to watch Gregg completely embody the music each and every night!!! Such a vast soul.”

Mr. Engler recalls that there was a period in the ’80s and ’90s when “[Gregg] was just so gone, completely in his own world.” The promoter says he’d seen a lot of crazy things in show riders, but when he saw the Allman Brothers requesting 20 cases of beer, that raised the bar. “I said, ‘There’s like six guys in the band! You guys will be so [messed] up!’ Their manager, a guy named Bucky Odom, told me, ‘Who the [expletive] are you to tell us what we can drink and what we can’t drink? Let us decide that.’ ” A lot of that beer he provided would be loaded onto the truckfor future use.

Mr.Allman, a candidate for rock star death polls for decades, endured, even through the liver transplant he received related to hepatitis C in 2010 and, in more recent years, lung surgery and drug rehab,among other ailments.

Since the dissolution of the Allman Brothers Band in 2014, he continued to tour as a solo artist, sounding very much like the same Gregg Allman, partly on the strength of the 2011 album “Low Country Blues.”

He leaves behind the album “Southern Blood” that will be released in the fall. During that 2012 interview, I asked him about the release that year of his memoir, “My Cross to Bear.”

“All it was supposed to be was a journal that I kept,” he said. “I started it in about 1981. I figured if I get to be an 80-year-old on a rocking chair on the porch, I can thumb through the pages and relive it.”

Askedwhether it was hard to deal, emotionally, with reliving the Allmans’ story, he said, “Not too bad, because I leaned on the happy stuff, the funny stuff. Those other books that came out on us, ‘Midnight Rider’ and ‘Skydog,’ that’s just about six dudes going around the country sowing their wild oats. Well, [b.s.]! There was a lot more to it than that. I tried to keep on the real good, happy stuff, because, of course, we had some hardships, deaths in the family, deaths in the band. But we also had a blast, man, you understand. I wouldn’t trade this life for nothing.”