Conversation is Jazz
And a look at Gregg's Southern Blood
I’ve told y’all I’ve been dabbling in video creation lately. Here’s my latest, a discussion about one of the core arguments in Play All Night.1
I intended it as a thirty second intro to this video, which contains a clever (for me) edit of the famous “Play all night!” call from “You Don’t Love Me” on At Fillmore East.
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I started riffing and just kept going.
A note on process.
Creating video content is something people have been encouraging me to do for awhile. I was long reluctant, and it’s taken some getting used to. I don’t necessarily dig being a solo artist.
Writing is a solitary enough endeavor as it is. And conversation is jazz to me. I love the give-and-take of good people talking about something they are passionate about.
I s’pose video is just like this blog2—where I’m writing for myself and sharing it with you.
This past January I hired Jake
as a coach. Jake had me get started on Tiktok, a pretty low-stakes way for me to get used to the format.3 Then about midway through our work together, he had me start posting these videos across my other networks: Facebook / Instagram / Threads / Youtube.I’ve also mined my archives on Youtube4 and created a bunch of “shorts” using AI. (That’s the source of the video above.)
I have learned some basic5 editing skills, and created three videos using audio of three different interviews, all saved at youtube.com/@LongLiveTheABB6
Gregg Allman: Southern Blood
I have a weird relationship with Gregory’s solo stuff.
I love it, but it’s so different from the ABB (which scratches my musical itch perfectly) that it sometimes takes a while for me to absorb it.
This was true of his older albums now considered classics—Laid Back, the Gregg Allman Tour—and the solo efforts that came out after I became a fan: Searchin’ for Simplicity (1997), Low Country Blues (2013), and Southern Blood (2017).
It took me awhile—all of ‘em did—but Laid Back is now one of my ABBsolute go-to’s. One I like to put on while falling asleep. It’s a gorgeous album, a more “modern” version of another itinerant Southern bluesman, the great Robert Johnson.
There’s a haunting quality to Laid Back that is always there with the Allman Brothers Band, just not as nakedly so.
As is customary, Southern Blood took a few listens to sink in. But at some point it just GRABBED ME and, aside from “Blind Bats & Swamp Rats”7—it’s a nearly flawless record.
Southern Blood is quite the career bookend.
An elegy, if you will.
Every Gregg Allman solo album gets compared to Laid Back. And for good reason: It’s his single greatest artistic statement as a solo artist.
It presaged what might’ve been had Liberty Records figured out what to do with him and/or had Gregg not gone back to Jacksonville in March 1969 to join up with Duane and crew.
Laid Back is part of the canon, not just of the ABB, but of a bevy of music from folk-inspired male singer/songwriters cranking out shit like this in the late 60s/early 70s: Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, etc.
What Gregory had that those dudes didn’t was an amazing band to return to.8 One where he was part of a much greater whole. And he never devoted enough time to his solo muse to get close to Laid Back again.
Until Southern Blood.
No, Southern Blood isn’t Laid Back part II. It’s more complex than that.
Laid Back was the work of an artist who had just reached the highest highs after his brother Duane (his role model) and his bandmate Berry Oakley died . Had Gregg, et al. quit after Eat a Peach or Gregg quit making music with Laid Back, that’d have been enough to put them in the all-time pantheon.
But it didn’t end there.
Gregg made solo records sporadically—8 records in a 44 year span. Some were very good, some way overproduced, some bordered on cliché9, but all showed this side of Gregg that he couldn’t show with the ABB. A quiet, contemplative side.
Gregg’s swan song
Recorded in March 2016 in Muscle Shoals, Southern Blood was released September 2017, four months after Gregg’s death.
And at the tail end of his life, as he knew he was dying, Gregg Allman produced a gem of a goodbye, at FAME Studios, where it all began for him and for Duane. FAME was where:
Hour Glass made their killer demos in April 1968 that told Duane that LA/Liberty wasn’t gonna work.
Duane first made his mark as a studio guitarist.
Duane, Jaimoe, and Berry first jammed on his aborted solo project.
Southern Blood is an amazing bookend to Gregg’s career. It is the work of a mature, confident artist staring into the unknown.
His road band was the perfect foil for him. The band’s execution ensured Gregg went out on a high note, as he deserved.
Southern Blood is a perfect goodbye.
Liner Notes
Some thoughts on the tracks that comprise Southern Blood.
Liner notes are reserved for paid subscribers.
Side A:
“My Only True Friend” - It’s fitting that Gregg’s only original on this album—a cowrite with Scott Sharrard—is an ode to the road life.
“Once I Was” - Gregg had long cited Tim Buckley as an influence. You can hear him playing this track on acoustic on the Gatlinburg Sessions from April 1971.10
“Going Going Gone” - A quick glance at Gregg’s catalog and it appears this is the first Dylan song Gregg ever covered. Not sure why I find that surprising, but I do.
“Black Muddy River” - Kudos to whoever brought this Garcia/Hunter tune to the sessions. Gregg’s vocals fit this song like a glove.
“I Love the Life I Live” - A Willie Dixon-penned track Muddy Waters released as a single in 1957. It continues a long line of Gregg covering Muddy, which goes all the way back to the ABB’s “Trouble No More.”11
Side B:
“Willin’” - Lowell George’s killer road song was just aching for a Gregg Allman interpretation and Gregg delivered.
“Blind Bats and Swamp Rats” - I’ve never understood the choice to record this Jackie Avery original, which never really goes anywhere. I’d much prefer “Gilded Splinters”—a much better song, one Gregg had long been singing with the ABB. Bonus: it’s also a Johnny Jenkins track Duane played on.
“Out of Left Field” - An original from the great Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn, Percy Sledge first recorded it in 1967. Buddy Miller’s harmony vocals are particularly outstanding, as is horn arrangement. My favorite song on the record.
“Love Like Kerosene” - A Scott Sharrard funky blues original that featured in Gregg’s solo sets the last few years of his life.
“Song for Adam” - Like “These Days” on Laid Back, Gregg again makes a Jackson Browne original his own. This song also captured a truly heartrending moment. As producer Don Was writes in the liner notes of the album:
The moment that gets me every time is the ending of “Song for Adam.” Gregg always loved this song because it reminded him of Duane. When he gets to “he stopped singing in the middle of his song,” you can hear him choke up. We decided to stop for the day, and Gregg never got the chance to actually sing those next two lines. Leaving them open seemed like a poignant and poetic way for him to make his exit.
Random Notes
Producer Don Was was the bass player and musical director on the magnificent All My Friends: Celebrating the Songs & Voice of Gregg Allman tribute from 2014.
Marc Quiñones, Allman Brothers Band percussionist from 1992-2014, appears, as does Jay Collins, who also played in Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band.12
Southern Blood is the only album Gregg recorded with his road band.
I believe this is the first of Gregg’s records he didn’t record his own harmonies. Buddy Miller does a really good job in his place.
Jackson Browne added harmony on “Song for Adam.”
An acoustic version of “Song for Adam” combined with Jackson Browne’s “Shadow Dream Song” appeared on the short-lived Gregg Allman: An Anthology collection.
“Shadow Dream Song” also appeared on Gregg and Cher’s Allman and Woman.
Lagniappes
The video for “I Love the Life I Live” includes some rare footage of the Allman Brothers Band at Piedmont Park in Atlanta.
Spotify’s version of Southern Blood includes two live bonus tracks. I was there for the recording of one of them: “Love Like Kerosene.” It was the final time I saw Gregg perform, April 1, 201613 and to date the only official live recording I’ve been a part of.
Photo by yours truly 4/1/16 Tower Theatre, Upper Darby, PA
A Message of Resilience
Often, it’s my friends (including many of you) who inspire a post. Sometimes it’s their response to something I’ve put out into the world; others, it’s something you’ve told me directly.
The vast majority of occasions, it’s just me paying attention.
Such is the case today.
I’d been percolating on Southern Blood for awhile but hadn’t put fingers to keyboard. I knew today was the day when my dude Sawyer, a dear friend and fellow traveler, posted he had consoled himself with this record recently.
Laid Back and Southern Blood carry an undercurrent of pain along with an even more forceful determination in the face of adversity. When it all comes down to it, that’s the lesson the blues teach us.
And Gregg Allman was foremost a bluesman.
It’s official. I’m calling it a blog. I don’t care that Substack calls it a newsletter, people understand “blog” as something unique to publishing content online.
I have less than 125 Tiktok followers to date. For comparison, Facebook is 24,000+.
Which are considerable, it turns out youtube.com/@LongLiveTheABB
Rudimentary even.
Here’s the most recent: Talkin’ Duane in my Hometown / The Allman Brothers Band, Florida, and the South.
Why not “Gilded Splinters”—a much better song, one Gregg had long been singing with the ABB, and also a Johnny Jenkins track Duane also played on?!
I could parse here. Stills had CSN and Young had Crazy Horse, but neither of those were of the caliber of the Allman Brothers Band.
I’ve never ranked Gregg’s solo records, but I have written some about a “best-of Gregg Allman” list I encountered
This is a really great moment on that tape, you’ll hear Duane help Gregg out with the chord change (“E-minor,” he keeps saying) and then they harmonize some.
The first song Gregg sang upon arriving to join the Allman Brothers Band.
It’s fascinating to me how Gregg, Butch, Jaimoe, and Dickey seem to “share” musicians in their solo projects. It’s almost like they have a type 🍄.
Thanks for the Southern Blood recommendation. Not something I've spent a lot of time on.
Laid Back is just fantastic. Gregg really shattering the mold on that one, coming into his own a great lyricist. I can still listen to All My Friends over and over.
RIP Dickie Betts. Another ABB legend lost.