Duane Allman

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The brothers started playing publicly in 1961, joining or forming a number of local groups. Around this time, Duane left school to focus on his guitar playing. His early band "The Escorts" opened for the Beach Boys in 1965 but disbanded, some of its members eventually forming the Allman Joys. After Gregg graduated from Seabreeze High School in 1965, the Allman Joys went on the road, performing throughout the Southeast, and eventually were based in Nashville. The Allman Joys became Hour Glass and moved to Los Angeles in early 1967. There Hour Glass recorded two albums for Liberty Records, but the band was unsatisfied. Liberty tried to market them as a pop band, ignoring the band's desire to play more blues-oriented material. Hour Glass broke up in early 1968. Duane and Gregg went back to Florida, where they played on demo sessions with the 31st of February, a folk rock outfit whose drummer was Butch Trucks. Gregg returned to California to fulfill Hour Glass obligations, while Duane jammed around Florida for months but didn't get another band going.

Duane began to learn to play slide guitar on his birthday in 1968. He was recovering from an injury to his left elbow, suffered in a fall from a horse. Gregg brought him a birthday present, the debut album by Taj Mahal, and a bottle of Coricidin pills. He left them on the front porch and rang the bell, as Duane was angry with him about the injury. "About two hours after I left, my phone rang," Gregg recalled. "'Baby brother, baby brother, get over here now!'" Duane had poured the pills out of the Coricidin bottle, washed off the label and was using it as a slide to play along with the album track "Statesboro Blues" (on the recording, the slide guitar is played by Jesse Ed Davis). "Duane had never played slide before," Gregg later said, but "he just picked it up and started burnin'. He was a natural." The song became a part of the Allman Brothers Band's repertoire, and Duane's slide guitar became crucial to their sound. Because of his use of the early-1970s-era Coricidin medicine bottle, which is no longer manufactured, replica Coricidin bottles are now popular with slide guitar players who like its glassy feel and sound.

Allman's first major recording session occurred in early 1966 at Nashville's RCA Studio "B", two years before his famed tenure at Muscle Shoals' FAME Studios. Producer Tony Moon was recording The Vogues first album after his successful "5"O'Clock World" went Top 5, and had been recorded in that same studio. He hired Allman to play on several sides, as he wanted a more rock sound. At the time, The Allman Joys were the house band at The Briar Patch in Nashville. Allman's playing on the two Hour Glass albums and an Hour Glass session in early 1968 at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, caught the ear of Rick Hall, owner of FAME. In November 1968 Hall bought Allman's contract for $10,000. Allman, tired of the studio limitation, was able to play on his first album as a sessions ace with Wilson Pickett. Allman's work on that album, Hey Jude (1968), got him hired as a full-time session musician at Muscle Shoals and brought him to the attention of other musicians, notably Eric Clapton, who later said, "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."

Allman's performance on "Hey Jude" impressed Atlantic Records producer and executive Jerry Wexler when Hall played it over the phone for him. Wexler immediately bought Allman's recording contract from Hall and wanted to use him on sessions with Atlantic R&B artists. While at Muscle Shoals, Allman played on recordings by numerous artists, including Clarence Carter, King Curtis, Aretha Franklin, Laura Nyro, Wilson Pickett, Otis Rush, Percy Sledge, Johnny Jenkins, Boz Scaggs, Delaney & Bonnie, Doris Duke and jazz flautist Herbie Mann. For his first sessions with Franklin, Allman traveled to New York where, in January 1969, he went as an audience member to the Fillmore East to see Johnny Winter and told Muscle Shoals guitarist Jimmy Johnson that in a year he'd be on that stage. That December, the Allman Brothers Band indeed played the Fillmore. Ironically, the Fillmore East performances recorded for the Allman Brothers album At Fillmore East in March 1971—often considered the high water mark for the band—were on the same bill as Johnny Winter.

When asked how the band came together Duane stated: "Very slowly, I was in Muscle Shoals and I went down to Jacksonville and was jamming with Berry and Dickey. Jaimoe came with me from Muscle Shoals, he's originally from MS. Gregg was in California and Butch was in Jacksonville where we all got together and jammed for a couple of months putting together songs and stuff. We just needed a singer and Gregg was the guy. Two weeks after Gregg got back from California we went up to New York and recorded there. We played live gigs before our first album was released in November (of 1969)."

While visiting St. Louis, Allman met Donna Roosman, who bore his second child, Galadrielle. The couple's relationship soon ended. He had an earlier relationship with Patti Chandlee which resulted in the birth of a daughter who was born deaf.

The Allman Brothers Band went on to become one of the most influential rock groups of the 1970s. George Kimball, writing in Rolling Stone in 1971, described the group as "the best damn rock and roll band this country has produced in the past five years." After months of nonstop rehearsing and gigging without Gregg, including free shows in Central City Park in Macon and Piedmont Park in Atlanta, all they needed was a singer/organist and Duane knew who he wanted. When Gregg got back from California the group settled on the name of the band and was ready to record. Their debut album, The Allman Brothers Band, was recorded in New York in September 1969 and released a few months later. In the midst of intense touring, work began in Macon and Miami (at Atlantic South–Criteria Studios), and a little bit in New York, on the band's second album, Idlewild South. Produced mostly by Tom Dowd, Idlewild South was released in August 1970 and broke new ground for them by getting into the Billboard charts.

After a concert in Miami, in August, watched by Eric Clapton and the other members of Derek and the Dominos, the two bands went back to Criteria studios in Miami, where the Dominoes were recording Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Members of both jammed, after which Allman and Clapton stayed up all night trading and showing one another favorite licks, discovering they had a deep and instinctive rapport. Allman participated in the recording of most of the album's tracks, contributing some of his best-known work. He never left the Allman Brothers Band, though, despite being offered a permanent position with Clapton. Allman never toured with Derek and the Dominos, but he did make at least two appearances with them, on December 1, 1970, at the Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa (Soulmates LP), and on the following day at Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse, New York. It is unclear whether he also appeared with them on November 20, 1970, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, in Santa Monica, California, when guitarist Delaney Bramlett performed with the band.

In an interview, Allman told listeners how to tell who played what: Eric played the Fender parts and Duane played the Gibson parts. He continued by nonchalantly noting that the Fender had a sparklier sound, while the Gibson produced more of a "full-tilt screech". Clapton wrote later in his autobiography that he and Allman were inseparable during the sessions in Florida; he talked about Allman as the "musical brother I'd never had but wished I did."

The Allman Brothers went on to record At Fillmore East in March 1971. Meanwhile, Allman continued contributing session work to other artists' albums whenever he could. According to Skydog: The Duane Allman Story, he would spontaneously drop in at recording sessions and contribute to whatever was being taped that day. He received cash payments but no recording credits, making it virtually impossible to compile a complete discography of his works.

Allman was well known for his melodic, extended and attention-holding guitar solos. During this period two of his stated influences were Miles Davis and John Coltrane. He said that he had listened intently to Davis's Kind of Blue for two years.

As Allman's distinctive electric bottleneck sound began to mature, it evolved into the musical voice of what would come to be known as Southern rock, being picked up by other slide guitarists, including his bandmate Dickey Betts (after Allman's death), Derek Trucks, Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Joe Walsh. Duane also taught a young Don Felder to play slide.

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