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45s.com -- Recording Artist Information: The Allman Brothers Band
Date Formed 1969 Location Macon, Georgia Disbanded in 1981 Music Southern Rock Charted Pop/Rock Hits 13 Period Active January 9, 1971 to 1981 Biggest Hits Ramblin Man, Midnight Rider, Crazy Love Music List and Data Search Music List Notable Information The Allman Brothers Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Original Members Gregg Allman, Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, Jai Johnny Johanson. Other Names None Other Web Sites Allman Brother's Band Listserv Hittin' the Web with The Allman Brothers Band
Yahoo! Music: Allman Brothers Band
Allman Brothers Band Recordings
Usenet - alt.fan.allman-brothers
Allman Brothers Tour & Extended Family Page
The Allman Brothers Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. The following information was obtained from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
The Allman Brothers Band was the principal architect of the Southern-rock genre, crafting a solid new direction for rock out of blues, country, and rhythm & blues. Along with the Grateful Dead and Cream, they were also responsible for developing rock as a progressive, improvisational medium, a tangent that took its cues from jazz. Jamming required a level of technical virtuosity and musical literacy that was theretofore rare in rock & roll, which had always been more of a song-oriented medium.
The Allman Brothers Band's two guitarists - Duane Allman and Dickey Betts - helped break that barrier with soaring, extended lead-guitar work. Combined with organist Gregg Allman's soulful vocals, plus the forceful, syncopated drive of a three-man rhythm section, the Allman Brothers Band was an onstage powerhouse. The group's marathon-length concerts, best captured on the classic Fillmore East (1971), have become the stuff of rock legend.
Through ups and downs that have plagued the band over the decades, including the deaths of two founding members, the Allman Brothers rank with the greatest performing entities in rock and roll history. The group was formed around the nucleus of Gregg and Duane Allman, who as teenagers had played in bands around Daytona Beach, Florida, as far back as 1961. After high school, they hit the road with the Allman Joys, where they began to develop their communion of Southern soul and British Invasion rock and roll. Evolving into the Hourglass, the brothers and bandmates recorded a pair of albums in Los Angeles for the Liberty label, one of which (Power of Love, 1968), foreshadowed the sound that would fully emerge with the Allman Brothers Band.
The Allman Brothers Band evolved from jams involving Duane, Gregg and members of the Second Coming (guitarist Dickey Betts, bassist Berry Oakley) and the 31st of February (drummer Butch Trucks). Another drummer, Jai Johanny Johanson (a.k.a. Jaimoe), was recruited from the Muscle Shoals, Alabama, studio scene, where Duane Allman had shone as a session musician throughout 1968, recording tracks for the likes of Aretha Franklin and by Wilson Pickett.
The group's first studio albums - The Allman Brothers Band (1970) and Idlewild South (1971) - contained classic songs like "Whipping Post" and "Midnight Rider" But it was in concert that the band earned its reputation. Led by Duane Allman's and Dickey Betts' blazing guitar work, the Allman Brothers Band's live shows developed a sizable legion of devoted fans. The March 1971 concerts recorded for At Fillmore East in New York caught them at their peak - one they would sadly never have the chance to equal in the same configuration, as guitarist Allman and bassist Oakley died in motorcycle accidents in 1971 and 1972, respectively.
However, the group persevered, replacing their late guitarist with a second keyboardist, Chuck Leavell, and adding bassist Lamar Williams; the group released their most successful albums, Eat a Peach (#4, 1972) and Brothers and Sisters (#1, 1973), in the wake of those losses. Betts, in particular, played a key role, singing and writing the group's biggest hit, "Ramblin' Man." After a mid-1970s hiatus, the group reformed in 1978 for two years, and then again in 1989, with the addition of Allen Woody on bass and Warren Haynes on guitar. Hardly coasting on past glories, the revitalized band has released two of its most inspired studio albums in the 1990s, Shades of Two Worlds and Where It All Begins, and they remain an incendiary performing unit.
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