It began like a blues lyric: Gregg Allman hustled up a paper route and used the money to buy a $21.95 Silvertone guitar from Sears. He and his brother, Duane, fought over it until their mother quieted them with a second one. Duane could play like lightning, which meant Gregg, despite a voice of scrape and rasp, was going to have to sing.
“My brother, Duane, could not sing,” Gregg told The Chicago Sun-Times in 2013. “He said, ‘You have to learn to do something.’ So I started to sing. I have a reel-to-reel tape recording of my third night attempting to sing. It sounded atrocious.”
Those early recordings were the seeds that would help send the Allman Brothers Band to prominence with a hard-churning brand of soulful Southern rock that rattled the 1960s and ’70s. The brothers created a brash, uncompromising sound that exploded into a blend of wild-living, jazz and blues that would influence groups such as the Marshall Tucker Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Gregg Allman died Saturday at 69. A statement posted on his official website said Allman, who had canceled concerts and entire tours in recent years as he battled a variety of health issues, “passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Ga.”
With Allman as the frontman, Duane on slide guitar and two drummers, the group was a kinetic live band, often improvising versions of songs like “Midnight Rider,” “Whipping Post” and “Stormy Monday.” Tinged with country and owing allegiance to Southern black blues, their music sounded as if it had bloomed from bogs and red clay. Allman’s voice matured with sadness, scowl, heartbreak and roadhouse redemption.