Gregg Allman

As with many Allman Brothers fans, I’ve been a fan since the 1970s. I vaguely remember seeing Derek and the Dominos during college (I assume Duane Allman was present), not knowing much about them at the time. It was Friday, October 30, 1970 in the SUNY Albany gym (thank you internet!). Little did I know how great Duane and that short lived band would be or how enamored I’d become with the Allman Brothers Band.

I remember one time taking the subway to, what seemed to me a remote park in the Bronx, to see the Allman Brothers and another time borrowing a car and traveling an hour to another college campus to see them. I remember how worn out my vinyl copy of Live at the Fillmore East got and how devastated I was when my stereo got stolen with one record of the double album still on the turntable at the time. It wouldn’t have been so bad except I couldn’t find another copy of that exact same record.

I was a late bloomer to the annual Allman Brothers event at the Beacon, but was lucky enough to have seen some great concerts there. Unfortunately, the passionate guitar of Duane Allman and the melodic guitar of Dicky Betts were absent in the current configuration. Both Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes were too atonal, too self absorbed for me, although I continued to go year after year.

I was surprised, however, how much I enjoyed Gregg on his own. The horn section, absent at ABB concerts, added a much appreciated change to many of the reworked Allman Brothers songs as well as Gregg’s own tunes. I’ve seen him several times on his own, the most notable was around New Years many years ago in the West Hampton Performing Arts Center, a more intimate venue. I was scheduled to see him at City Winery last November but those concerts got postponed until next July and ultimately they were cancelled.

The one thing that amazes me from the obituaries I’ve read is the lack of mention of his Searching For Simplicity album. I personally think it’s his best. It’s the kind of blues that allow you to wallow in your own, if you happen to be in that frame of mind. You can sing and feel as low as you want. However, if you’re in a good mood, you can sing and understand another man’s blues while not wallowing in your own. For a time, it was a CD that was always in my car while another copy was at home. If you haven’t listened to it, I highly suggest it.

Before you suggest that I’m idolizing the man, I will readily admit that his autobiography, My Cross to Bear, was very much less than stellar and didn’t come close to Please Be With Me, his niece Galadrielle Allman’s tribute to her father, Duane, and in his interview at the time the book was published with Stephen Colbert, he came off as a buffoon. But, the man could sing and he could play the guitar and he could draw in audiences.

The good ones are dropping like flies, it seems…Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks, B.B. King, J. Geils, Chuck Berry, Leon Russell. People who had an impact on Rock N Roll.  And while I realize that at my age I should expect the musicians of my age to start dying off, it is with great sadness when I hear of another one biting the dust. The only salvation is that, hopefully, that concert in the great beyond is going to be one hell of a show.