Allman, rock trailblazer, dies

‘Gregg tried to keep playing music until the end’

WASHINGTON, May 28, (Agencies): Gregg Allman, the powerfully bluesy and hard-jamming singer and songwriter who co-founded the Allman Brothers Band and emerged as a pioneer of Southern rock, has died at the age of 69.

Allman died peacefully at his home in Savannah, Georgia, according to a statement posted Saturday on his website.

No cause of death was immediately given, but the statement said he had “struggled with many health issues over the past several years.”

Allman, who played keyboard and guitar and sang with a rich, growling voice, was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1999 and underwent a liver transplant in 2010, Billboard reported on its website.

Allman’s older brother Duane, a co-founder of the group and legendary guitar player, died in a motorcycle accident in 1971 at the age of 24, just as the band was enjoying its first big taste of success.

The group’s music merged blues, jazz, country and rock with a meandering improvisational style that made jamming at concerts one of their trademarks.

Rolling Stone magazine said the Allman Brothers style created “a template for countless subsequent jam bands.”

The Allman Brothers Band’s Southern rock sound is also credited with inspiring later groups such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker Band.

Gregg Allman, known for his gentle manner and long blond hair parted in the center, went on to front the band on his own for decades after his brother’s death. The group was popular particularly in the 1970s.

Billboard said that since Nielsen Music began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991, the Allman Brothers Band has sold 9.3 million albums in the United States.

The group’s best-known hits include “Whipping Post,” “Midnight Rider,” “Melissa” and “Ramblin’ Man.”

A 22-minute version of “Whipping Post” was a highlight of the group’s popular 1971 live album “At Fillmore East.”

Allman struggled for years with heroin addiction and substance abuse and went into rehab several times before getting clean in the 1990s.

As a member of the band he was

Baker Island

his love of sailing his boat to in Maine.

“Chief loved making his family laugh. He loved Maine more than anything — where we hiked as a family, swam, played tennis and rode in his broken-down boat inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. And in 2012, also along with the rest of the band, Allman received a Grammy award for lifetime achievement.

“I have lost a dear friend and the world has lost a brilliant pioneer in music,” Allman’s longtime manager and friend Michael Lehman was quoted as saying in US media reports.

“He was a kind and gentle soul with the best laugh I ever heard. His love for his family and bandmates was passionate as was the love he had for his extraordinary fans.”

As Allman neared the end of his life, he tried to maintain some privacy about what was coming.

“He kept it very private because he wanted to continue to play music until he couldn’t,” said Michael Lehman, the rock star’s manager.

Arrangements

Funeral arrangements had not been finalized Saturday. But Lehman said Allman would be buried alongside his late brother, founding Allman Brothers guitarist Duane Allman, at Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, where the band got its start nearly five decades ago. “That’s in his wishes,” Lehman said. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Allman was raised in Florida by a single mother. Allman idolized his older brother, Duane, eventually joining a series of bands with him. Together they formed the nucleus of The Allman Brothers Band.

The original band featured extended jams, tight guitar harmonies by Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, rhythms from a pair of drummers and the smoky, blues-inflected voice of Gregg Allman. Songs such as “Whipping Post,” “Ramblin’ Man” and “Midnight Rider” helped define what came to be known as Southern rock and opened the doors for such stars as Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker 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, the group featured Betts, drummers Jai

to the beautiful islands just off Northeast Harbor,” Brzezinski wrote on Instagram.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a top advisor to president Jimmy Carter during the tumultuous late 1970s, when the administration was tested by the Iranian hostage Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson and Butch Trucks and bassist Berry Oakley.

Their self-titled debut album came out in 1969, but it was their live album “At Fillmore East” in 1971 that catapulted the band to stardom. Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in October 1971, just months after recording the Fillmore shows. Another motorcycle accident the following year claimed Oakley’s life.

In a 2012 interview with The Associated Press, Gregg Allman said Duane remained on his mind every day. Once in a while, he could even feel his presence.

“I can tell when he’s there, man,” Allman said. “I’m not going to get all cosmic on you. But listen, he’s there.”

The 1970s brought more turmoil: Allman was compelled to testify in a drug case against a former road manager for the band and his marriage to the actress and singer Cher was shortlived even by show business standards.

In 1975, Cher and Allman married three days after she divorced her husband and singing partner, Sonny Bono. Cher requested a divorce just nine days after their Las Vegas wedding, although she dismissed the suit a month later.

Together they released a widely panned duets album under the name “Allman and Woman.” They had one child together, Elijah Blue, and Cher filed for legal separation in 1977.

Reaction to the death of Southern rock music legend Gregg Allman at age 69:

“I’ve tried.Words are impossible gui gui forever, chooch” — Allman’s exwife Cher, via Twitter.

“My southern-rock heart is breaking. He showed me his tattoos... his voice... his voice .... his soul.” — musician Melissa Etheridge, via Twitter.

“Gregg Allman had a feeling for the blues very few ever have hard to believe that magnificent voice is stilled forever” — country legend Charlie Daniels.

“I am truly honored to have been fortunate enough to have written many songs with him and equally honored to have traveled the world with him. ... I’ve lost too many lately (friends) lately and this one is gonna be hard to get past. There is some comfort in knowing that millions of people all over the world feel the same way.” — Warren Haynes, guitarist for The Allman Brothers Band and Gov’t Mule, in a lengthy Facebook post.

Afghanistan

crisis, the Soviet invasion of and other global crises.

A native of Poland, Brzezinski’s family left Europe during the rise of fascism and settled in Canada. He worked as a professor at Columbia University before joining the State Department in 1966. He developed a relationship with Carter, then governor of Georgia, that led to his cabinet post after Carter won the White House in 1976.

Brzezinski had long remained an active voice in foreign policy circles. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was a frequent commentator for ABC News and PBS. (RTRS)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark:

Artists from Belgium, Ukraine and Serbia have won the Niels Bugge Cartoon Award focusing this year on communication.

Jury chairman Lars Refn says Pieter De Jaegher won 3,000 euros ($3,340) on Saturday for his man sitting under an open umbrella while it rains letters, a nod to Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte.

Ukraine’s Germany-born runner-up Alexandr Pshenyanikov won 2,000 euros for a drawing of a suicide bomber holding a city map and asking for directions on a street corner. Vladan Nikolic from Serbia placed third.

Refn says cartoons are “close to a universal way of communication.” (AP)