The People's Band
“It all comes back to going out there, having the will to do it, and going forward. Playing for the American public." Bunky Odum
Welcome to Long Live the ABB: Conversation from the Crossroads of Southern Music, History, and Culture.
One of my favorite discoveries in researching Play All Night was the concept of the Allman Brothers Band as “the People’s Band.” It wasn’t a widely used term—way more unofficial than official. But it definitely captures the sprit of the way the Allman Brothers Band went about its business.
They were there to play music and reach people.
This is first of my takes on this concept in an excerpt from Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East.
(And two playlists to accompany your reading.)
The People’s Band
On May 11, 1969, the Allman Brothers Band played the first of several free shows at Piedmont Park in Atlanta. Miller Francis Jr., covering it for the Great Speckled Bird,1 called the gig “fantastically together.”
Attendees told of a band that created exciting, cohesive music with a spirit of improvisation and freedom.
“They set up about 2 o’clock and proceeded to blow everybody’s mind within eye and ear range for the next several hours. The general opinion going through the crowd was that these guys could stand up against the best—Hendrix, Cream, etc.”
Steve Wise called it “incredible music [that] shows how irrelevant, silly most verbiage is. Including this.” Philip Lane recalled the concert as “a physical and spiritual experience, six guys all playing as one giant organism.”
“Pure as hell” is how Bruce Hampton remembered that day.
“You could feel the purity in the fire in the intensity: nobody was playing checkers or talking business. This was music for music’s sake.”
Pure as hell
Working from Macon, the Allman Brothers Band began a relentless touring schedule that kept them on the road for nearly three hundred days a year for the next two-and-a-half years. On May 30–31, 1969, they made their first trip north to play a music-industry showcase at Don Law’s Boston Tea Party. The Allman Brothers opened for the Velvet Underground, whose gritty urban rock was a poor match with the Allmans’ bluesy, improvisational approach.
The band made a tepid impression. “Most of the agents didn’t really understand what the band was trying to do,” Walden recalled. Consensus was that the Allman Brothers needed to emphasize entertainment over their workaday stage presence and improvisation.
“Everyone had all manner of suggestions,” said Jon Landau. “One suggested that ‘the good looking boy’ [Gregg] get out from behind the organ and do the lead singer thing. I agreed, and also suggested that they needed more of a stage act. Someone else chimed in with the thought that they should turn down the volume.”
“Dress up those guys a bit,” someone advised.
“If you wanna go to a fashion show I suggest you go to the garment district,” Duane replied. “But if you want to hear rock ’n’ roll music, you shouldn’t be too concerned about what we’re wearing.”
Duane had already learned this lesson. He gave little credence to music-industry critiques, particularly those that suggested how to present his music. With Walden’s support, he did things his own way.
The showcase’s host, promoter Don Law, found the ABB “exciting and exhilarating and magical.” He booked them for a return engagement opening for Dr. John on June 19–21.
Unable to afford the round trip to Macon, the band squatted in an abandoned building in Boston, setting up and playing a free show for the locals just as they had in Jacksonville, Macon, and Atlanta.
Dickey said, “We were elated with our sound, so we just started to travel around the country playing for free.”
Working, said Capricorn’s Bunky Odum, “was the secret to their success. This band played in almost every town that had a hall. They’d play anywhere, and if they were passing through a town on a Sunday, their day off, they’d play in a park if they could get electricity.”
“If you wanna go to a fashion show, I suggest you go to the garment district. You shouldn’t be too concerned about what we’re wearing.”
The free shows were Oakley’s idea, an expression of the values of the counterculture
It was an expansion of the jams he had hosted in Jacksonville that led to the creation of the Allman Brothers Band. The success of the concept shows another aspect of Oakley’s leadership of the ABB.
He was more than just Duane’s ideal bass partner; he was also his chief accomplice.
Said Jaimoe, “Berry was as much the leader of this band as Duane was—the brains behind the Allman Brothers Band.”
Dickey remembered Oakley’s “sharp sense of the big picture.” Berry “knew enough about how to do business, and he knew how to deal with people. He was the social dynamics guy. He wanted our band to relate to the people honestly. He was always making sure that the merchandise was worth what they were charging, and he was always going in and arguing about not letting the ticket prices get too high, so that our people can still afford to come see us.”
Free shows demonstrated the band’s kinship with and commitment to audience. The shows broke down barriers between the artist and listeners. And they were Oakley’s brainchild from the beginning.
“Berry had a sense that it was more than music,” Betts said. “He wanted to bring everybody together.” Gregg said Berry “was a real motivated guy. If there wasn’t some stuff happening, he’d start it.”
As far as the audience was concerned, the band’s willingness to play for free meant more than just a free concert.
The musicians were giving something away, sure, but their playing inspired listeners’ own individual expression. In this environment, music took on a deeper meaning.
“Music was the most fluid, subversive, and powerfully influential catalyst helping the counterculture to spread and coalesce.”
After the ABB’s first Piedmont Park gig Francis reflected, “There are times when it’s easy to think that the rock and roll musician is the most militant, subversive, effective, whole, together, powerful force for radical change on this planet, other times you know it’s true.”
E. Bommba Jr. declared music to be “the greatest radicalizing force in our culture.” Bands playing “the newest and most groundbreaking music” drew the counterculture to Piedmont Park Bill Mankin said. “Music was the most fluid, subversive, and powerfully influential catalyst helping the counterculture to spread and coalesce. It alone seemed to have the power to act as a common, galvanizing thread, weaving together disparate individuals, groups, interests, and intentions.”
From the band’s perspective, Betts said, “Our music was always about playing, getting to know the audience to the point that we’re communicating. With us, it was our whole thing, identifying with the people that came to see us. And in doing so much roadwork, we did exactly that. We found out who they were, and we found out who we were.”
Once again, the Grateful Dead served as exemplars. The hippies who emerged from the Summer of Love in 1967 were at the forefront of a cultural movement of youth rebellion against authority with everything from sexual mores to drugs to civil rights and the Vietnam War.
The post–World War II baby boom had exploded the American youth population whose sheer numbers changed American culture. Rock music was a catalyst, the Grateful Dead were among the movement’s flagship bands. Young people rallied around the Dead not because they carried an expressly political message but because they connected with audiences culturally as peers.
“Our music was always about playing, getting to know the audience to the point that we’re communicating. It was our whole thing, identifying with the people.”
By late 1968 the hippie subculture had infiltrated the conservative South as southern youth grew out their hair and began to more openly push against the economic, social, and political culture of the region. As they did, they sought their own distinct music.
Just as the Grateful Dead were in San Francisco, the Allman Brothers were at the forefront of the South’s countercultural movement. The group’s connection to its home was its cultural touchstone for the region, its people, and its music.
And Berry Oakley and Duane Allman led the charge.
“We were doing it for the people, and we were doing it for us, because we loved to play.” Gregg Allman
No one kept track of how many free shows the Allman Brothers Band played in its early years, but several moments stand out. The ABB frequented Piedmont Park through at least September 1970. Photographs (above)2 and a partial recording exist of a show on January 26, 1970, at University of California–Riverside, where the band spent an afternoon “playing soulful rock on the grassy knoll near the bell tower.” Bruce Harvie recalled that the band set up its gear and “proceed[ed] to blow for 3 hours or so” for a small, appreciative audience.3 The New Orleans Express published photographs of a free concert on August 23, 1970, at a regular Sunday gathering in Audubon Park.4
Free shows offered the group opportunities to rehearse and to build ABB’s live reputation.
“Back then we weren’t as polished as we are now,” Gregg said, “we weren’t as good as we are now, we weren’t as tight as we are now, and we didn’t have the songs that we have now. But, by God, we were there, and we were doing it for free. We were doing it for the people, and we were doing it for us, because we loved to play.”
Excerpt From Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East (University Press of Florida, 2022)
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Shout-out to the Georgia State University Digital Collections. They have the most complete GSB archive there is. And it’s searchable.
I included two in Play All Night.
Turns out Harvie is playing guitar in the background of the Jaimoe photo on p152 of Play All Night. (By the way, I know you already have a copy in your library…why not buy one for a friend?)
Killer photos/fan memories of 9/23/70 Audubon Park, NOLA.
The Allman Bros will always make me think of my father. I didn't come to them through him, but when he found out I loved them, it was a reconnection between us when we needed it most. We're very different men. But we both get lost in that incredible sound.
I also can't ever hear the words Macon, Georgia (I was born 100 miles west in Columbus) without thinking of Duane's solo on Wilson's Hey Jude cover. And the fact that Wilson drove his Chevy Silverado all over the mayor of Englewood's front lawn with a loaded shotgun in his lap and pretty much got away with it.