Play All Night Playlist Project Chapter 10: The ABB Builds its Reputation
"They were their own best advertisement. Each gig added a few more destroyed heads to their following."
Welcome to Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern music, history, and culture. This issue presents the 14th edition of the Play All Night Playlist Project.
Chapter 10: The ABB Builds its Reputation (December 1969 through September 1970)
Chapter 10 of Play All Night! highlights the band’s second year: from its December 1969 debut at Fillmore East through the release of Idlewild South, their second record, in September 1970.
The playlist consists of Idlewild South and three live recordings: April 4, 1970 at Ludlow Garage in Cincinnati; June 3 and June 5, 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival; and December 13, 1970 American University.
Past entries in the Playlist Project:
Play All Night Playlist Project
·Index of the Play All Night Playlist Project. I’ll be updating this page as I post new content.
The Context
Just as they had the previous year, the Allman Brothers Band spent nearly 300 days on the road in 1970 playing an estimated 200 to 250 shows. In between gigs, the band recorded their sophomore album, Idlewild South.
In December 1969, the band met promoter Bill Graham, who ran two of the most famous venues in rock: San Francisco’s Fillmore West and the Fillmore East in New York’s East Village.
Graham’s support and belief in Duane and the Allman Brothers Band is legendary and he helped the band break into the next tier of stardom. The promoter’s ability to sell tickets to Allman Brothers shows on both coasts proved the band’s value as a live act.
Idlewild South
Capricorn released Idlewild South on September 23, 1970. The band launched the record with a set at Fillmore East, one of the very few times Duane Allman is captured on video.1
Like its predecessor, the album is more song- than jam-oriented. Idlewild South is lighter than The Allman Brothers Band, reflecting the desire to make a record with more widespread appeal to the marketplace. “It’s a crisper recorded sound, a surer attack, and a tighter band,” Tom Nolan writes. “The music is more textured; sections of delicate picking fit logically into a strong blues-rock framework.”
The album debuted at #77 and peaked at #38, spending 22 weeks on the Billboard Top 200. But sales weren’t enough to satisfy Jerry Wexler, Phil Walden’s partner in Capricorn Records. Though Walden had sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into the band, the group wasn’t breaking through.
“I doubted myself,” he recalled. “It seemed like I had just been wrong and that they were never going to catch on. People just didn’t grasp what the Allmans were all about—musically or any other way.”
But the band had nurtured a devoted grassroots audience.
“They kept touring, establishing themselves city by city as the best live band around and building a base.”
Wrote Ben Edmonds:
“They were their own best advertisement. Each gig added a few more destroyed heads to their following.”
A live album was the obvious solution
Backstage at the Warehouse on New Year’s Eve 1970, Duane hinted at what the band planned:
“We’re going to do a live album here. The next time we play, we’re going to record it. We were supposed to do it tonight but our producer got hung up and couldn’t get down.2 Man that would have been really nice. I really wish we could have done it tonight, it’s gonna be good.”
Liner Notes
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