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Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an American rock and blues guitarist and the founder and original leader of the Allman Brothers Band, for which he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Allman began playing the guitar at age 14. He formed the Allman Brothers Band with his brother Gregg Allman in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969. The group achieved its greatest success in the early 1970s. Allman is best remembered for his brief but influential tenure in the band and in particular for his expressive slide guitar playing and inventive improvisational skills. A sought-after session musician both before and during his tenure with the band, Duane Allman performed with King Curtis, Aretha Franklin, Herbie Mann, Wilson Pickett, and Boz Scaggs. He also contributed to the only studio album by Derek and the Dominos, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970).
Allman died following a motorcycle crash on October 29, 1971, at the age of 24.
In 2003, he was ranked number 2 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, second only to Jimi Hendrix. In 2011, he was ranked number 9 and in 2023 he was ranked 10th. His guitar tone (achieved with a Gibson Les Paul and two 50-watt bass Marshall amplifiers) was named one of the greatest of all time by Guitar Player.
On December 26, 1949, when the family was living near Norfolk, Virginia, where he was stationed, Willis Allman was murdered during an armed robbery by Michael Robert "Buddy" Green (1923–2024), an Army veteran that Allman and another recruiting officer had befriended earlier that day. Green was captured, convicted, sentenced and paroled in 1972.Freeman, Scott, Midnight Riders: The Story of the Allman Brothers Band, Little, Brown & Company, 1995, p. 5. So that she could retrain as an accountant, Geraldine "Mama A" Allman sent Duane and Gregg to Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee, which they both disliked intensely.Freeman, 1995, pp. 5–6. In 1957, the family moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, where the boys attended Seabreeze High School.
The boys returned to Nashville to spend summers with their grandmother, and there Gregg learned guitar basics from a neighbor. In 1960, he had saved enough money to buy his first guitar, a Japanese-made Teisco Silvertone, while Duane acquired a Harley 165 motorbike. Despite Duane being left-handed, he played the guitar right-handed. Duane began to take an interest in the guitar, and the boys would sometimes fight over it, until Duane wrecked the motorbike and traded it for a Silvertone of his own. His mother eventually bought Duane a Gibson Les Paul Junior.Freeman, 1995, p. 8.
It was also in Nashville that the boys became musically inspired by a rhythm-and-blues concert where they saw blues guitarist B.B. King perform. Duane told Gregg, "We got to get into this." Duane learned to play very quickly and soon became the better guitarist of the two.
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.
/ref> two years before his famed tenure at Muscle Shoals' FAME Studios. Producer Tony Moon was recording The Vogues' first album after his song "5 O'Clock World" had reached the 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 would be on that stage. That December, the Allman Brothers Band indeed played the Fillmore.From an interview with Muscle Shoals staff guitarist Jimmy Johnson: "I remember a specific incident when we were in New York, doing Aretha. It was Duane's first time there to do sessions – this was around late '68, maybe the first of the year. He says, 'Hey, let's run over to the Fillmore East to hear this new guy.' Johnny Winter was playing his premiere performance in New York, and the publicity was unreal. We got up in the balcony, and at that point, Duane had never really expressed that he wanted to go back to live performing. But that night it just go too much for him. I'll never forget what he said – this was about midway through: 'Johnny is really good but I can cut him.' Of course, I knew what he meant. Johnny was great – this ain't belittlin' Johnny – but I think he was giving Duane the confidence that he could make it because he knew he could play, he could cut it. He looked over at me. 'Jimmy,' he said. 'Do you see that stage down there? Next year by this time I'm going to be down there.' I looked at him and kind of did one of them double-takes, and I said, 'You know, I think you will.' And he was. I get chills when I think of that night." Coincidentally, 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.Poe, 2008, p. 175
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.
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 bands 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 when guitarist Delaney Bramlett performed with the band.Roberty, Marc, The Eric Clapton Album, Viking Studio Books, 1994,
In an interview, Allman told listeners how to tell who played what: Clapton played the Fender parts and Allman the Gibson parts. He continued by noting that the Fender had a sparklier sound, while the Gibson produced more of a "full-tilt screech".Jas Obrecht, "Duane Allman Remembered", Guitar Player, October 1981 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."Clapton, The Autobiography, 128.
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.Robert Palmer, liner notes for Kind of Blue, Columbia CK64935, 1997
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.
He was alive when he arrived at a hospital, but despite immediate medical treatment, he died several hours later from massive internal injuries. Allman's death occurred shortly after the release and initial success of At Fillmore East.
Allman Brothers Band bassist Berry Oakley died less than 13 months later, also at the age of 24, in a similar motorcycle crash with a city bus, three blocks from the site of Allman's fatal accident. Oakley was buried beside Allman in Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia.
The variety of Allman's session work and Allman Brothers Band bandleading can be heard to good effect on two posthumous Capricorn releases, An Anthology (1972) and An Anthology Volume II (1974). There are also several archival releases of live Allman Brothers Band performances from what the band calls "Duane's era".
Shortly after Allman's death, Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd dedicated the song "Free Bird" to Allman's memory. Van Zant would sometimes allude to this in concert; in the band's 1976 performance of "Free Bird" in Knebworth, England, Van Zant said to pianist Billy Powell, "Play it for Duane Allman." The song was written well before Allman died and was not written with him in mind. (Allen Collins wrote the song after his then girlfriend asked him the question "if I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?")
In 1973, four boys who were Hinds Junior College students living in Vicksburg, Mississippi carved the very large letters "REMEMBER DUANE ALLMAN" into a vertical excavation face beside Interstate Highway 20 between Vicksburg and the school's campus in Raymond on the route they travelled together while commuting between their homes and campus. A photograph was published in Rolling Stone magazine and in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll; the carving lasted for over 10 years.
In 1998, the Georgia State Legislature passed a resolution designating a stretch of State Highway 19, U.S. Route 41, within Macon, as Duane Allman Boulevard in his honor. The route, which passes near The Allman Brothers Band Museum (at "The Big House", where the band once lived) and the H&H Restaurant, where the band members often dined, crosses the Raymond Berry Oakley III Bridge.
Country singer Travis Tritt, in the song "Put Some Drive in Your Country" on his debut album, sings "Now I still love old country / I ain't tryin' to put it down / But damn I miss Duane Allman / I wish he was still around."
Skydog, a seven-CD box set tracing the virtuosity of Allman on the guitar, was released in 2013 with the help of his daughter, Galadrielle Allman. A March 16 interview with her on NPR's Weekend Edition by Scott Simon runs over eight minutes, includes many details, and is highlighted with clips of his playing,Weekend Edition Saturday, Duane Allman: Guitar Playing That 'Gets Inside of You', NPR, March 16, 2013, interview of Galadrielle Allman by Scott Simon including links to an audio file prepared for the broadcast.
Duane Allman was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 as a member of the Allman Brothers Band.
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