Midnight Rider
Gregg Allman, whose Southern rock sound influenced generations of musicians, dies at 69.
SAVANNAH, GA.— Music legend Gregg Allman, whose bluesy vocals and soulful touch on the Hammond B-3 organ helped propel the Allman Brothers Band to superstardom and spawn Southern rock, died Saturday, a publicist said. He was 69.
Allman died Saturday at his home in Savannah, Ga., publicist Ken Weinstein said.
Allman had cancelled some of his 2016 tour dates, announcing last Aug. 5 that he was “under his doctor’s care at the Mayo Clinic” due to “serious health issues.” Later that year, he cancelled more dates, citing a throat injury. And in March 2017, he cancelled performances for the rest of the year.
The band’s lead singer and keyboardist, Allman was one of the principal architects of a taut, improvisatory fusion of blues, jazz, country and rock that — streamlined by inheritors like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker Band — became the Southern rock of the 1970s.
The group, which originally featured Allman’s older brother Duane on lead and slide guitar, was also a precursor to a generation of popular jam bands, such as Widespread Panic and Phish.
Allman’s percussive Hammond B-3 organ playing helped anchor the Allman Brothers’ rhythm section and provided a chuffing counterpoint to the often heated musical interplay between his brother and the band’s other lead guitarist, Dickey Betts.
His vocals, by turns squalling and brooding, took their cue from the anguished emoting of down-home blues singers such as Elmore James, as well as more sophisticated ones such as Bobby Bland. Foremost among Allman’s influences as a vocalist, though, was the Mississippiborn blues and soul singer and guitarist known as Little Milton.
The band’s main songwriter early on, Allman contributed expansive, emotionally fraught compositions like “Dreams” and “Whipping Post” to the Allman Brothers’ repertoire. Both songs became staples of their epic live shows; a cathartic 22-minute version of “Whipping Post” was a highlight of their acclaimed 1971 live album, At Fillmore East.
Born in Nashville, the rock star known for his long blond hair was raised in Florida by a single mother after his father was shot to death. Allman idolized Duane, eventually joining a series of bands with him. Together they formed the nucleus of the Allman Brothers Band.
In his 2012 memoir, My Cross to Bear, Allman described how Duane was a central figure in his life in the years after their father was murdered by a man he met in a bar. Although Gregg was the first to pick up a guitar, it was Duane who excelled at it. So Gregg later switched to the organ.
They failed to crack success until they formed the Allman Brothers Band in 1969. Based in Macon, Ga., the group featured Betts, drummers Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson and Butch Trucks and bassist Berry Oak- ley. Their self-titled debut album came out in 1969, but it was their seminal live album At Fillmore East in 1971 that catapulted the band to stardom.
Duane Allman had quickly ascended to the pantheon of guitar heroes, but he was killed in a motorcycle accident in October 1971. Another motorcycle accident the following year claimed Oakley’s life. The 1970s brought more highly publicized turmoil: Allman was compelled to testify in a drug case against a former road manager for the band and his marriage to actress and singer Cher was short-lived, even by show-business standards.
Allman also enjoyed an enduring, if intermittent, career as a solo artist. His recordings under his own name were typically more subdued, more akin to soulful singer-songwriter rock, than his molten performances with the Allmans.
The Allman Brothers Band likewise split up in the 1980s and then reformed several times over the years. In his memoir, Allman said he spent years overindulging in drugs and alcohol before getting sober in the mid-1990s. He said that after getting sober, he felt “brand new” at the age of 50.
However, he ended up with hepatitis C that severely damaged his liver. He underwent a liver transplant in 2010.
After the surgery, he turned to music to help him recover and released his first solo album in 14 years, Low Country Blues in 2011. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for best blues album. His final studio album, Southern Blood, produced by Don Was, is scheduled to be released this year.
“I think it’s because you’re doing something you love,” Allman said in a 2011 interview with The Associated Press. “I think it just creates a diversion from the pain itself. You’ve been swallowed up by something you love, you know, and you’re just totally engulfed.”
The band was honoured with a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2012. With files from The New York Times