I shared the “All My Friends” backstory on social media and had a great response. I thought I’d add a little more context and send it along to y’all.
“All My Friends” was Scott Boyer’s song about the Shedd House, Cowboy’s headquarters in Cochran, Georgia, which also served as backdrop for this ABBSolute banger set of photos of the original band rehearsing live in summer 1971.
The images evoke a time & place: the American South in the 1970s1
Like Duane & the ABB, Cowboy signed with Capricorn Records. Boyer recalls the band relocating Georgia from Florida.
“We had to find someplace to live, so we rented this old farmhouse outside this little town called Cochran, about 30 miles south of Macon.
It was a great place. A three bedroom house but each room was like 50’x50’ so we had a bed in every corner of every bedroom and everyone had their own little area, curtains and whatever blocking you off from everybody else.
The Shedd House is torn down now. I’ve no idea where I got these photos.
A few months after we moved in, some friends from Gainesville came up to see us, and maybe a month or so after them some people we knew from Tallahassee came up to see us. After that some people Tommy [Talton] knew from Orlando came up to see us. Then some people from Jacksonville came up to see us.
And none of these people ever left.
So pretty soon we had 50 hippies living in a three-bedroom farmhouse outside this little town. It was a very conservative little area.
And the landlady came out after six months and knocked on the door and said, ‘What do you guys think you’re doing? None of my neighbors will talk to me. They’re all mad at me for renting you the house. You guys got to get out of here.’
And we moved into Macon proper and had to tell everyone else they had to go back to Orlando or Gainesville or wherever.
That was the basis for writing [‘All My Friends’].”
Duane & Cowboy
Duane was a big fan of Cowboy and directly responsible for them being signed to Capricorn. In 1968, he and Gregg had even briefly joined Boyer’s 31st of February, which included drummer Butch Trucks.3
“[We] had all run across each other in the earlier days of music in Florida,” Talton said. “So, when he was passing through Jacksonville, he stopped by to say hello and see what we were up to. After playing some with us and listening to our new tunes, he went back to Macon and told Phil Walden about us.”4
“I don’t know what Duane told Walden,” Talton continued, “but without Phil ever hearing or seeing us, we got publishing, recording, and management contracts in the mail…. Phil respected Duane and his opinion on music. Apparently it was enough for him that Duane said, ‘Man, these cats are doing something you might want to get involved in.’”5
Boyer and Talton of Cowboy spoke reverently about Duane
Talton: “There was never any, ‘I’m above you’ feeling from him, or ‘I’ve got some secret.’ He just loved music and he would want to show you something if he thought it was cool. It was like, ‘Dig this, man. If you go from here to here instead of doing it the way we always have, you could do the same chord progression by changing this or that.’ He’d share it with you as opposed to many musicians getting an attitude of like, ‘I’ve got this way of doing something that I’ve learned and I’m not going to show it to anybody because I want to be the only guy who does it.’”
Boyer: “Duane was a very humble guy in that he looked to find something good in every other musician he played with. He wanted to add to what you did. He never—in a musical situation—put himself above anybody else.”6
Talton: “The sensitive, loving part of him, maybe he felt funny about letting it out in front of too many people. When he was playing, that's how he did it. That's probably one of the reasons he played so well. He held it back all the way up until it picked up a guitar, and then that's when it came out.”7
Duane, Gregg, and “All My Friends”
Cowboy recorded “All My Friends” for 5’ll Getcha Ten, released in 1971. Producer Johnny Sandlin had Duane attempt a solo on the tune. It didn’t go well.
Sandlin: “‘All My Friends’ was written with 7/4 time signatures in parts of the song. One of those 7/4 segments was where I wanted Duane to play a short guitar or slide solo, but the timing of the song just threw him that day. It's a good song, but the solo parts were difficult to play. The band learned it and had it down tight, but for anyone coming in, well, you play songs either in 4 or you play in 3 but rarely in 7, especially in pop music. It was just odd.
First Duane tried a solo, but he couldn't get it down. He got really angry and threw his guitar across the room and said, ‘If you wanted a steel player, you should have hired one. I don't ever want to hear that song again,’ or something like that interspersed with some colorful language. I think he was just angry at himself because the time signature was so unnatural.
Sandlin also tried solos from Talton and Muscle Shoals great Eddie Hinton before Scott Boyer’s solo that made the album. “None of the players—and they were all good guitarists,” Sandlin remembered, “could play it with that time signature to where it flowed. Eddie and Tommy were pretty damn good, and Duane was the best there was.”8
In 1973, Gregg recorded “All My Friends” in a different time signature for Laid Back. (Talton and Boyer were part of the sessions.)
Here’s Boyer, “I wrote it in a dropbeat time-signature and recorded it with Cowboy that way. A few years later Gregg came up and said, ‘Duane always loved that song and I’d love to record it but you’ve got to let me record it in time because I’ll never figure out that seven-four stuff.’ And I said, ‘You can record it any time signature you want.’”9
Scott Boyer and Tommy Talton of Cowboy were Capricorn records stalwarts. They served in Gregg’s band Laid Back (1973) and the tour that resulted in The Gregg Allman Tour (1974). Boyer remembers it as one of the band’s most memorable moments. “When Johnny Sandlin put the band Cowboy together with Gregg to record the Laid Back album, that’s probably the most memorable moment. We all knew that album was going to get a lot of airplay and a lot of album sales, so we worked extremely hard to do the best job we could. We must’ve done okay, because I got a couple of nice checks.”10
On July 4, 1976, Jimmy Carter spoke to the press wearing a t-shirt for the Win, Lose, or Draw tour. It’s a pretty iconic UPI image that I adapted and am making available on tees. Get yers here: https://carter.longlivetheabb.com/
Thanks for reading y’all.
Until next time…
🍄Long Live the ABB: When you care enough to send the very best 🍄
Great piece! Wonderful to see more Duane pics. I've always loved his dobro playing on Please Be With Me. Thanks again Dr. Bob!!