Southern Blues Rock

Duane Allman’s appearance on Eric Clapton’s Layla album came a few months after the release of The Allman Brothers debut album. It featured Muddy Water’s ‘Trouble No More’, their own compositions including the wonderful ‘It’s Not My Cross To Bear’ and the sublime ‘Whipping Post’. The band’s second album included Muddy’s ‘I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man’, but was the release of the bands third album in the summer of 1971 that broke them to a wider audience, it is also one of the finest live albums of the rock era. The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East recorded in New York in March 1971 featured band originals alongside Willie McTell’s ‘Statesboro Blues’, Elmore James’ ‘Done Somebody Wrong’, and T-Bone Walker’s ‘Stormy Monday’. The twin lead guitar work of Duane Allman and Dicky Betts has been the model for just about every twin led guitar band that has followed.

Four days after the album went Gold, in October 1971, Duane Allman crashed his motorbike and died from his injuries. The bass player on At Fillmore East, Berry Oakley, was also killed in a motorbike accident a year later. The Allman’s proved to be the model for a whole string of Southern (Blues) Rock bands that followed. 38 Special, Lynyrd Skynyrd (produced by Al Kooper), Molly Hatchett and The Marshall Tucker Band all made more than a passing nod to the Blues. After that the whole Arena rock phenomenon took off and bands like REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Heart, Styx and Peter Frampton were soon selling gazillions of albums and seats, with none to many blues references.