Released August 1975, Win, Lose, or Draw, the Allman Brothers Band’s 6th album, turned out to be their worst to-date. The first ABB album with a single skip, much less 4!
Bonus post for paid members of Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads
The October 1975 Circus magazine featured a 4,000 word cover story from Jim Pettigrew. This is a feel-good story for sure; the band was in ABBsolute turmoil in 1975.
Art Harris’s August 1975 Rolling Stone story “The Allmans: Waiting for Gregg” documents the simmering issues in much more detail.
Below is a transcript of the article and my commentary.
Mixing in Macon with the Allman Brothers
by Jim Pettigrew, Circus October 1975
As we stumbled from the Chevy camper truck, the bell tower of St. Joseph’s Parish Catholic Church was tolling six a.m. It was February 1971 and the Macon, Georgia, weather was rivaling anything London can muster: foggy, wet, and colder than the proverbial witch’s tit in the brass cup.
We were returning from a now-forgotten gig in Montgomery, Alabama, and the band would dissolve the next day, the members going their separate ways to obscurity or success. The band was Sundown, a Macon act deeply into the r&b/gospel/rock thing of the day; when they were on, they could cook like a boiler room, but the too-often vagaries of rock had their way. The show the night before had stunk. The next day the sextet would break up, and their one Ampex LP would sink farther into oblivion. As lead-vocalist Court Pickett (who later hit with Sailcat) hauled his bone-weary frame from the cab, the bells sounded more like the peal of Doom than anything else. In the auto in front was the 18-year old keyboardist, Chuck Leavell; he had chosen to travel ahead, to avoid the cheap whiskey, rock ‘n roll tall tales, and even cheaper food.
Sundown flamed out while the band was in the studio with Duane and Gregg’s old bandmate Paul Hornsby producing. Some of the players on the band’s sole album include drummer Bill Stewart (Capricorn Rhythm Section), bassist Charlie Hayward (soon to join Charlie Daniels Band), and Chuck Leavell, who’d join the ABB in late 1972.
Late summer 1975, and a new father of two weeks, Chuck Leavell (he married Rose Lane, Capricorn veep Frank Fenter’s assistant, two years ago) hides away in an elegantly outfitted Macon catacomb to talk.
Clad in blue jeans, horizontal striped shirt and boots, the Allman Brothers Band pianist props his feet up on an adjoining couch and reflects on the sessions for ABB’s newest Capricorn release, Win, Lose, or Draw.
“Man, I just love to work in the studio. In there, you have such a wide range of freedom and versatility available. And to be in the studio with Johnny Sandlin producing and working with people like the Brothers Band—it is a total gas.
Pause for a second… Did he just call the Allman Brothers Band the Brothers Band? I had heard this and thought it was a typo until the very next sentence:
“As you know, it’s been quite awhile since the last Brothers Band album—even though we cut Gregg’s LP and Dickey’s album—so naturally there was some settling down to do. But you know, we went in and cut the Muddy Waters blues thing right off. We were in and—Bang!—there it was. The other songs, like Gregg’s title tune—it’s about being in jail—and Dickey’s instrumental, were more complicated. They took longer to work up. But, man, when they did, things fell into place and Pheew! . . .”
Chuck’s being very diplomatic. The Win, Lose, or Draw sessions were anything but a gas, and far from a “total gas.” Things were tense. And that comes through in the record.
