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Beatstreet

Best selections from a pioneering group

The Allman Brothers Band: Chronicles

(The Allman Brothers Band, Idlewild South and At the Fillmore East)

Universal, Triple CD set,

Rs. 1185

It was around 1969 and music pundits on the American East Coast were convinced that unless Bob Dylan pulled out of rock and returned to his folk roots soon, the world was definitely going to end.

Simultaneously, West Coast audiences were convinced that unless U.S. Marines pulled out of Vietnam and returned onstage immediately, the Grateful Dead's live jam was never going to end. In the midst of these weighty deliberations, the South injected a healthy dose of Jack Daniels, hard driving blues boogie, two guitar leads, earthy lyrical content and perhaps some more Jack Daniels.

Intriguing LP

More than two decades ago, I spotted an intriguing double-LP at a record store. The cover sported a (black-and-white) picture of five (white) long hairs and a (black) short hair with a voodoo necklace, all thrilled to bits about something. On the back cover I took cognisance of a couple of well-known blues song titles, a picture of the stage crew (nursing tall cans of Budweiser), and a drumming credit to "Butch Trucks". Now, in my book, any drummer named Butch Trucks merits long, patient and repeated hearings, so I snapped up the album. Entitled The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East, it turned out to be one of the very best rock albums I've heard. The LP continues to be a prized possession.

Brothers Duane and Gregg Allman were from Daytona, Florida, and gigged with groups variously entitled "The Escorts", "The Allman Joys" and "Hourglass". Lack of recording success led them to team up with an outfit named 31st of February (bringing in aforementioned Butch Trucks as drummer), and later with Second Coming (bringing in guitarist Dickey Betts and bassist Berry Oakley). Meanwhile, Duane also did sessions guitar work for soulsters Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and Percy Sledge. (Incidentally, the slide guitar part on Eric Clapton's famous love ballad "Layla" is by Duane Allman.) A far-sighted musical entrepreneur called Phil Walden (who had managed Otis Redding) bought out their current contract with Fame Records and hired drummer Jaimoe Johanny Johanson (aforementioned black short-hair) to complete the Allman Brothers Band as the debut act for his new Capricorn label.

The current compilation consists of their first three Capricorn releases from 1969, 1970, and 1971 respectively. In my view, they constitute the high points of their career. Shortly after the release of the third (Fillmore East) album in 1972, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident. Fortunately, the band has soldiered on for nearly three decades thereafter, morphing into various avatars (one of them including keyboardist Chuck Leavell), and notching up some big hits (e.g. the 1973 Dickey Betts compositions "Rambling Man" and the instrumental "Jessica" from the first post-Duane album Brothers and Sisters). Building around the rich southern tradition of the blues, the Allman Brothers pioneered a distinct rock style that all subsequent southern acts imbibed and thrived on. One of Lynryd Skynryd's most soulful tracks "Free Bird" is a tribute to Duane Allman.

Fillmore East is an unalloyed treat, especially re-workings of Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues", the Elmore James classic "Done Somebody Wrong", the twenty-and-odd minute workouts "You Don't Love Me" and Gregg Allman's composition "Whipping Post". The Dickey Betts composition "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" first appeared on Idlewild South, and a better and longer take is on Fillmore East.

Though I personally regard the freewheeling improvisational chemistry of the live jams on Fillmore East to be the USP of this package, all three CD's contain gems. Standouts on Idlewild South include "Midnight Rider", and their take on Willie Dixon's blues standard "Hoochie Coochie Man". A short five-minute version of "Whipping Post" ends the first CD, which also contains more nuggets like "Black Hearted Woman", "Trouble No More", and "Don't Want You No More" (of which you might have heard a version by Steve Winwood's Spencer Davis Group).

Progression

The three albums mark a progression from blues on The Allman Brothers Band to a more country-flavoured style on Idlewild South and finally to a blues-base-with-jazz-improvisation formula on Fillmore East. Though most fans swear by the Allmans' heavy guitar attack, do check out the excellent organ playing by Gregg Allman (e.g., his interplay with Duane's slide on "Dreams"), and the locomotive-like rhythm section (Oakley, Trucks and Johanson) that propels the band throughout. Harmonica man Thom Douchette guests on some tracks and further sharpens the blues component.

If you chance upon a case containing three bottles of vintage '69 port on a store shelf, you don't walk past it. You empty out your wallet, grab it instantaneously and savour the contents for months and years to come. Exactly the same procedure is advised for Chronicles.

VISHWAMBHAR PATI

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