At Fillmore East at 55: The Allman Brothers Band's landmark album as an artistic statement
Fifty-five years ago (March 13, 1971), the Allman Brothers Band took the stage at Fillmore East for the third night in a row and completed the sessions for At Fillmore East, their landmark third album. (Edit of an earlier post.)
The bulk of the album derives from the shows recorded today: Statesboro Blues and In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (3/13, early show); You Don’t Love Me (first ~7 minutes: 3/13 early show); Stormy Monday; Hot ‘Lanta; Whipping Post (3/13, late show).
🍄 Original 78-minute, 7-song album released in 1971
Statesboro Blues
Done Somebody Wrong
Stormy Monday
You Don’t Love Me
Hot ‘Lanta
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
Whipping Post
🍄 At Fillmore East, Play All Night! edition
I’m partial to this, which is what I listened to as I wrote Play All Night throughout 2020 and 2021.
It’s the original 7-song album with “Mountain Jam” tacked on to the end of “Whipping Post”1 and “Little Martha.”2
At Fillmore East in context
Play All Night! details why At Fillmore East was so crucial to the Allman Brothers Band. Bottom line, it was the band’s make-or-break 3rd album. They were several hundred thousand dollars in debt to their record label and manager, who couldn’t recoup their losses because their first two albums sold less than 150,000 combined units.
They toured relentlessly, earning a reputation as a must-see band. They knew they played better in front of an audience. Recording live was their only option.
The decision to record live was a huge gamble because of how unusual it was to have a major hit with a live album. No artist from the rock underground had done so.
The Venue
Bill Graham’s Fillmore East was at 6th Street and 2nd Avenue in the heart of New York City’s East Village. A narrow lobby at 105 2nd Avenue opened into a 2,600-seat room built in 1925-6 as a Yiddish theater in the Medieval Revival style.
Graham opened Fillmore East on March 8, 1968. A little more than three years later, on June 27, 1971, the Allman Brothers played the venue’s final show. The building changed hands several times over the years. From 1980-88 it was the famous gay nightclub The Saint.
The building fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1996. There was an exhibit inside the original lobby, which was a bank the last few years but is now closed. Its historical marker (now missing) made no mention of the ABB’s most important album.3
The Bill
The Allman Brothers were the scheduled middle act on a bill that included Elvin Bishop opening and Johnny Winter And closing. By the second night, they were the closing act.
There are a lot of serendipitous moments with this album.
For example, Elvin Bishop played on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s recording of “Spoonful,” which Duane copped for the Allman Joy’s first single (Dial Records, 1966).4
Tom Dowd, their producer, wasn’t supposed to be in town, but a snowstorm in Paris brought him home from Africa early(!). Grateful for that on a number of fronts, his brilliant engineering on the live sessions, but also convincing Duane to abandon the Juicy Carter experiment.
But it’s the Johnny Winter connection that really stands out to me.
Winter served as Duane’s foil and observers had long compared the two white, southern, slide guitarists. It puzzles me that Liberty Records handled national distribution for Winter’s first album at the same time Duane struggled mightily to get the label to pay attention to his interpretation of the blues. (They also had Canned Heat!)
In January 1969, shortly before he formed the Allman Brothers Band, Duane told fellow Muscle Shoals guitarist Jimmy Johnson (of the Swampers),
“Johnny is really good, but I can cut him. You see that stage down there? Next year by this time, I’m going to be down there.”
Duane made good on his boast the following December.
The Allman Brothers opened for Blood, Sweat, and Tears December 29. It was the beginning of an enduring friendship between the band and Bill Graham5, including playing the venue’s closing sets (listen to Graham speak about that gig).
Winter sat in with the Allman Brothers Band a few times over the years including at the March 1970 Winter’s End Festival in Bithlo, Florida (above). His appearance on “Mountain Jam” at the 2nd Atlanta Pop Festival in July 1970 has been officially released.
Each band was to play 5 shows over three nights:
Thursday, March 11 (8pm only) and Friday, March 12 and Saturday March 13, 1971 (8pm and 1130pm)
The Allman Brothers recorded four shows: Friday and Saturday, March 12 & 13.6
Here’s the ABB on Friday 3/11, early show
Johnny Winter demanded to switch places.
“The Allman Brothers tore into the early show like it was a Friday night late show,” Alan Arkush recalled. The energy stunned Winter. “He just couldn’t top them.”
“Johnny is gonna be opening for the Allman Brothers from now on because we can’t have that happen again,” said his manager.
Winter played the middle slot for rest of the run.7
The lineup change gave the ABB the time and liberty to do what it did best, improvise and expand songs as the muse struck.
Graham’s bills afforded only about 60 minutes max. to the middle act, not enough time for a band that topped an hour with four songs on At Fillmore East: “You Don’t Love Me” (19:06), “Whipping Post” (22:40), “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” (12:46), and “Stormy Monday” (8:31).
The Set
I’ll focus on just the At Fillmore East tracks here and do a deep dive on the full sessions at a later date.8
Statesboro Blues (3/13, early show). The song that inspired Duane to learn slide was in the ABB repertoire from the beginning. The ABB play a reworked arrangement of Taj Mahal’s take on Blind Willie McTell’s original, a version they’d been tweaking since their earliest days.
Done Somebody Wrong (3/12, late show). Duane introduces this song as “An old, true story.” A quick look shows that these shows are the first time “DSW” appears on tape. Their second take is what made the album.
Stormy Monday (3/13, late show). The ABB nailed their only take of this blues standard, one they weren’t playing all that often at this point in their career.
You Don’t Love Me (first ~7 minutes: 3/13 early show; last ~12 mins: 3/12 late show). YDLM joined the repertoire in July 1970 and by this point, the band stretched it out to nearly 20 minutes. (At 16:17-18 is the famous “Play all night!”)
Hot ‘Lanta (3/13, late show). An instrumental credited to the entire band, the group debuted it in early 1971.
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (3/13, early show). It goes against my every instinct to call anything perfection, but this is perfection in musical form. One of two previously released songs.
Whipping Post (3/13, late show). The second previously released song, and ditto above. The Allman Brothers Band at their ABBsolute finest.
Song Statistics:
The album has three originals, “Hot ‘Lanta” (credited to the whole band), “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” (Dickey Betts), and “Whipping Post” (Gregg Allman).
All four covers are blues songs. “Statesboro” Blind Willie McTell by way of Taj Mahal; Elmore James’s “DSW;” “Stormy Monday” T-Bone Walker by way of Bobby Bland; and “YDLM” from Junior Wells (with Buddy Guy) Hoodoo Man Blues.
The oldest in the repertoire is “Statesboro Blues,” which the band had tried to record as recently as a year before on Idlewild South. “Done Somebody Wrong” is the newest. Unless I’m mistaken, it had its debut at Fillmore East.
Two tracks, “Liz Reed” and “Whipping Post,” had appeared on previous albums. The other five tracks are new.
Though the band never recorded a studio version, “Hot ‘Lanta” was the only song that made the setlist of the solo efforts of each surviving bandmember.
General Thoughts
First, I wrote an entire book about this album, so I’ll direct you to Play All Night! for more information.
Here are some thoughts as you listen:
Every single solo is improvised.
Every.single.note. And not one is corrected in post-production. If you want to hear what I mean, check out The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings to see how the tracks evolved over the weekend.
At Fillmore East is not a concert.
Like most live albums it is a carefully curated document pulled from various performances over the weekend.
There is not a single overdub on the record.
There are, however, two edits: Thom Doucette’s harmonica solo was cut from “Stormy Monday” and “You Don’t Love Me” is a splice of two versions.
The Fade-Outs
At Fillmore East is non-traditional in that it is not mixed as if the record is a concert.
Each track fades out before a new song plays.
The fade-outs have long baffled me because I know of no other live rock album that’s like this. Records released in this time period all sound like a concert. I’ll name some pretty famous live records from the ABB’s contemporaries:
Grateful Dead - Live/Dead 1969
Jefferson Airplane - Bless Its Pointed Little Head 1969
Jimi Hendrix - Band of Gypsys 1970
The Doors - Absolutely Live 1970
The Rolling Stones - Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out 1970
The Who - Live at Leeds 1970
Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs and Englishmen 1971
Every record above comprises multiple concerts, and every record sounds like a single show. For those of us who couldn’t get to a Rolling Stones show on the 1969 tour, Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out is the next best thing to being there. That’s true about every other album on this list.
So why the fade-outs?
Best I can come up with9 is that the band wanted the songs treated as individual songs, such as on a studio record, rather than as part of a hypothetical “concert.”
Everything was riding on the success of At Fillmore East. This was the group’s definitive artistic statement. One they made on their own terms, which is true to form for the Allman Brothers Band.
It paid off, and the album went gold October 25, 1971. Sadly, four days later, Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident. He didn’t live to see the success of his crowning artistic achievement.
Final Thoughts
I really dig the between-song banter. Every song but “Hot ‘Lanta” has something either before or after the song. It reflects the band’s good nature. Duane calls out other artists—Elmore James, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and T-Bone Walker—and introduces “Liz Reed” as “Dickey Betts’s song.” Berry exclaims “Brother Gregg Allman sings the blues!” after “Stormy Monday.” As Duane says “Berry starts ‘er off,” listen closely and you’ll hear 5 people yell out “Whipping Post.”
I love Fillmore East stage manager Michael Ahren’s deadpan intro, ”Okay, the Allman Brothers Band” that kicks off the album. The band is about to play its 5th show of the run and they come out FIRING.
My first experience with this album was on a cassette I got far too early in my life—you can read about it here .
The Fillmore Concerts, a 1992 release that recreated a full 1971 Allman Brothers show.
It is magnificent for that very reason and also because it put “Whipping Post” and “Mountain Jam” together for the first time in the cd era.
Despite what The Fillmore Concerts (1992) liner notes say, Tom Dowd DID NOT splice two different versions of “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” together. Per Kirk West, the ABB’s long-time archivist/Tour Mystic, also a co-producer on the set, Dowd conflated two separate mixes as two separate tracks.10
The ABB continued to fade tracks in/out on live albums through the 1990s, finally dropping the habit with 2000’s Peakin’ at the Beacon and 2004’s One Way Out.
As God and Duane intended. Also an indulgence of the CD era.
A nod to the band’s tradition of playing “Little Martha” over the PA after shows. MORE Little Martha history.
The historical marker at 105 2nd Ave in NYC has recently gone missing. Methinks its time to right a wrong and add the Allman Brothers to the new plaque.
No recordings survive of the March 11 shows. Best I can tell, they were either weren’t recorded or they were taped over as Berry mentions they taped four shows from the Warehouse stage the following week.
I’m a huge fan of Johnny Winter’s work, but he’s not the first artist the ABB blew off the stage. In this case, I’m thankful his management recognized it.
Yes, I’ve thought about this A LOT over the years.
This confirms. I’ve listened uber-closely to this cut and never discerned anything different in the notes/playing from the original version released in 1971.
Even though I have read your book several times, I still love reading the excerpts that you post. Long live the ABB!