While there are a few songs in their catalog that fit easily alongside “Free Bird”, “Can’t You See”, and other pickup truck anthems, the Allman Brothers Band were foremost a blues outfit that used jazz and psychedelia to color and expand the twelve-bar, three-chord format. Their self-titled debut demonstrates this ably on song after song.
The opening blast of “Don’t Want You No More” works as something of an overture, beginning with one door-slamming theme into another groove, and just when you think the vocals might kick in, it slows and shifts into the next track. “It’s Not My Cross To Bear” introduces the growl of Gregg Allman, not yet 22 but already spinning reels of sound from both the Hammond organ and his own throat. (Duane Allman gets most of the accolades for his slide guitar work, but some of the most exciting parts of the album are when he and Dickie Betts combine for harmonic riffs and solos.) “Black Hearted Woman” is another basic blues, except that the intro’s in 7/4 and most of the chords are complicated ninths. The Muddy Waters classic “Trouble No More” gets a definitive reading, with even an acoustic guitar expertly mixed in the sound picture.
“Every Hungry Woman” begins side two with a funky riff, before getting dangerously close to generic blues. Thankfully, it’s also a decent demonstration of the two drummers, and the next two songs lift the band above boring anybody. “Dreams” is a psychedelic shuffle in waltz time, spinning over the simplest ideas like the stream the boys are shown posing nekkid in on the gatefold. But the true climax is “Whipping Post”. Berry Oakley’s bass establishes the riff in 11/8 for the band to follow. The verses follow a standard meter, but it’s the instrumental parts, the real architecture, that make this such a mesmerizing performance that would only grow onstage.
At only 33 minutes, The Allman Brothers Band can seem occasionally slight, but each of the tracks succeeds, as if they’d been playing together for years. The album has a vibrant, live sound that has us thinking that it was recorded that way. We sure hope it was, as that would only add to the mystique.
The Allman Brothers Band The Allman Brothers Band (1969)—4
Good write-up. To this day the Brothers don't like the "Southern rock" tag because of the jazz, blues, gospel and soul influences they display whenever they play. IMHO, theirs is the "Cosmic American Music" that Gram Parsons strived to achieve.
ReplyDelete"Cosmic American Music"... you nailed it. Thanks, Tony.
ReplyDeleteBrutal takedown of Kid Rock. If totally accurate.
ReplyDeleteI also had very little use for the “redneck rock” scene back in its 70’s heyday (although I did hold a soft spot for The Outlaws, mainly because their lyrics stayed away from the usual topics). As the ABB made sure to point out whenever they could, this was different. Betts trying to tag themselves at one point as prog rock (!) was, to say the least, a stretch. After listening to these first two albums (on the “Beginnings” set, of course), I got to thinking of them as the Santana of the South. Which means that they were able to combine all sorts of influences into a blues rock context, much as Santana took those same ideas into a Latin rock context.
I was surprised to learn that these first two albums weren’t popular when they were first released. It seemed that I heard “Dreams” and “Whipping Post” all the time on the radio. I got sick of Molly Hatchet’s inferior cover of the former quickly, but this original is a classic. “Whipping Post” is indeed the showstopper. I did get to like everything else, too. Pulling out an obscure Spencer Davis cover, of all things, points back to when they were doing psychedelic pop songs. Gregg sounds 40 years older on “It’s Not My Cross to Bear” and “Trouble No More”. "Every Hungry Woman" passes me by, but it’s short.
A 4 is right. It must have looked like the group had a very bright future at the time.
"Santana of the South" -- excellent.
DeleteIf I'd known 13 years after writing this that Kid Rock would be besties with the president I'd have committed myself to a lobotomy.