It's been nearly 40 years since the release of the Allman Brothers Band classic live double album, "At Fillmore East". It is one of the best live rock/blues albums ever, if not the best. The recordings were done over two nights, March 12-13 1971. By then the ABB had played relatively often at the Fillmore and had a devoted following.
The band, the original lineup, consisted of Duane Allman: lead, acoustic & slide guitar; Gregg Allman: organ, piano & vocals; Dickey Betts: lead guitar; Berry Oakley: bass & vocals; Butch Trucks: drums; Jai Johanny Johanson: percussion.
It's kind of a shame that the Allman Brothers Band has been categorized as "Southern Rock" a genre which includes the likes of no talent Molly Hatchet, macho-misogynist bar brawlers Lynrd Skynrd, and neanderthal Charlie Daniels among others.
The level of improvisation attained by the ABB with the original lineup has perhaps never been equaled in rock jams by any group. The driving force of the band was Duane Allman, there has never been a more musical, melodic guitar player than Duane. Like Jimi Hendrix, he was irreplaceable.
The Allman Brothers Band formed in spring of 1969 in Jacksonville, Florida. They then moved to Macon, Georgia, home of their label, Capricorn Records. The band at first was not making any money, on warm summer nights they would walk across the street from their apartment to Rose Hill Cemetary:
http://www.theuncool.com/...
Rose Hill is where the band – the Allman Brothers Band – went in the lean scuffling days, back when they all lived in a two-room, $50-a-month apartment.
Sometimes they’d eat psilocybin for inspiration.
Sometimes a lonely, bluesy wail would rise out of that old graveyard: a song like Dicky Betts’ “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”
It was a grassy, quiet place to be alone together and to talk about music, and love, and finite thoughts. In later years, Duane Allman would be buried there and the band would play a deeply felt set at the funeral in his memory. Bassist Berry Oakley, too, would die, ominously almost a year to the day after Duane. Eerily, the circumstances of the accident would – even the place where it happened – recapitulate the tragedy of Duane Allman. And Berry Oakley would be buried at Rose Hill.
Dickey talks more of "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed".
“I wrote that song for a certain person,” Dicky says, “but didn’t know what to call it. There was a tombstone nearby that read IN MEMORY OF ELIZABETH REED, so that’s what I called the tune. Some writer once asked me how I wrote the song and Duane said, ‘Aww, he fucked some girl across a tombstone and that’s what it’s about’ Don’t’ you know that got printed in an instant. You can imagine how the girl I wrote it for felt after that.”
The legendary March 12-13 concerts were not filmed, but six months earlier the ABB did have cameras present at at Fillmore East show in September 1970.
......another one from September, 1970
For many of us the Allman Bothers Band of 1969-71 will always have a special place in our hearts. They took rock-blues to a level that shared a depth, vision and emotion with the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and a few other artist/pioneers.
Here's to ya, ABB...and remember, ya gotta hit the note !!
Please feel free to add your own vids, of current ABB, other artists doing versions etc.