The Allman Brothers Band - Idlewild South
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 23.09.1970
“They had to go out and play shows to make a living. They worked 300 days a year. So they would simply go into the studio, record a few songs and move on to the next show,” producer Tom Dowd recalled.
Dowd was in demand by “The Allman Brothers Band” to produce their debut album, released at the end of 1969, but fate had it that he was busy then producing the soul film “Soul to Soul”.
The film documented the “Soul to Soul” concert in Ghana, a celebration of African music and culture. It featured a wide range of leading American soul and funk artists, including Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles and Tina Turner.
The Allmans did not waste time. A few months later, Dowd produced their second album, “Idlewild South”, released on 23 September 1970.
Because of the band’s packed schedule, the album was recorded gradually over five months in different cities, including New York, Miami and Macon, Georgia, the band’s adopted home.
The material presented on “Idlewild South” was written during that period and tested on the road. The album’s title came from the nickname the band gave to a rural cabin they rented for rehearsals and parties.
It was something like a hunting cabin. At the back of the house was a porch built above an artificial lake of perhaps five or six acres. The Allman Brothers used it as a rehearsal space and as a place to take a break from recording.
Roadie Kim Payne recalled: “There was a pact made around a campfire, everybody for one and one for everybody. Everyone believed in the band one hundred percent.”
According to Linda Oakley, bassist Berry Oakley’s wife, the band held a New Year’s Eve party before 1970, where they joined together in a chorus of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” at midnight. “It was a defining moment, and a testament to love,” she said. Much of the material on the album came from the cabin.
The album contains two of the band’s best-known songs, “Midnight Rider”, written by Gregg Allman, who shared the credit with their roadie Robert Kim Payne for the line “And the road goes on forever”.
The two ran from the band’s equipment-storage room to the nearby studio to try to record their new ideas on tape. They actually had to break in because no ladder could be found and the room was locked.
Thus, the first demo of “Midnight Rider” featured only Gregg Allman, Payne, Jai Johanny Johanson and Twiggs Lyndon on bass. Oakley arrived later and recorded backing vocals, while Duane Allman, who was playing alongside Eric Clapton on “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs”, later completed both “Midnight Rider” and “Revival”, written by Dickey Betts.
“He lit a fire in everyone he worked with,” Butch Trucks later said of Duane Allman. “And that’s what he did to us. He really was a kind of messiah.”
Duane Allman and his younger brother Gregg grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida, after moving there from their birthplace, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1959. Duane and Gregg befriended a young Black man named Floyd Miles, and the three spent their time in local rhythm and blues clubs, where they joined jam sessions with several bands.
Miles later recalled: “Gregg was a long-haired musician, so he was a freak. And I’m Black. We both knew what it was like to be discriminated against, and that is probably why we got along so well. We had each other and we had the music.” The brothers formed and performed in several local rock groups, including “The Escorts” and “The Hour Glass”.
Duane returned to develop a career as a studio musician in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, while Gregg remained in Los Angeles, bound by contractual commitments with Liberty, which believed he could pursue a solo career. The two separated but gathered again in Miami, recording an album-length demo with “The 31st of February”, a band that included drummer Butch Trucks.
At FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Duane became the principal session guitarist, recording with artists such as Aretha Franklin and King Curtis. FAME signed Duane to a five-year recording contract, and he put together a band that included drummer Johnny Sandlin and keyboardist Paul Hornsby. Duane added Jai Johanny Johanson after hearing him play drums on a demo of Jackie Avery’s songs, and the two moved into a house on the Tennessee River.
Allman invited bassist Berry Oakley to play with the new band. The two had met at a club in Macon, Georgia, some time before and quickly became friends.
There was immediate chemistry in the band, and Duane’s vision of a connected, synchronized group that could change tempo, style or key in the middle of a song almost blindly, with two lead guitarists and two drummers, began to come true.
Meanwhile, Phil Walden, who had managed Otis Redding and several other R&B acts, was looking to expand into rock. Rick Hall, owner of FAME, was frustrated by the band’s recording methods and offered their recorded songs and contract to Walden and Atlantic’s Jerry Wexler, who bought them for $10,000.
Walden intended the new band to be the heart of his new Atlantic-distributed label, “Capricorn”. Duane and Johanson moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in early March 1969. He invited anyone who wanted to join jam sessions that gave birth to “The Allman Brothers Band”.
Dickey Betts, leader of Oakley’s previous group “Second Coming”, became the band’s second guitarist, while Butch Trucks became the second drummer of the new group.
“Idlewild South”, now regarded as a high point of Southern rock, heralded the arrival of the figure who would save “The Allman Brothers Band”.
Gregg Allman wrote most of the songs, and the distinctive guitar of band leader Duane Allman gives the album its unique sound. But “Idlewild South” also marked the moment Dickey Betts emerged as the band’s next songwriter, including “Revival”, which opened the album and gave the band its first charting single.
His emotional “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” offered a soulful moment, while the band’s reworking of Muddy Waters’ classic “Hoochie Coochie Man” was originally evidence of bassist Berry Oakley’s collaboration with Betts before the Allman Brothers era, in a band called “Second Coming”.
All this was a foundational moment for Betts, who assumed a central role in keeping “The Allman Brothers Band” together after Duane Allman’s death in a motorcycle accident.
The title of “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”, Betts said, came to him during one of his regular writing sessions in a cemetery in Macon, Georgia, where he noticed the name of the late Elizabeth Reed.
He used the name from her gravestone as the song’s title because he did not want to reveal who it was really written about, a woman with whom he was having an affair and who was dating singer Boz Scaggs.
Duane Allman and Berry Oakley are buried in the same cemetery as Elizabeth Reed Napier. It was the Allman Brothers Band’s first original instrumental.
After the recording process, Duane was invited to join Eric Clapton and his new band, “Derek and the Dominos”, in recording their debut album, “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs”.
Clapton later formally invited Allman to join the band, but he declined, expressing his loyalty to the Allman Brothers members and to the musical concept that gave birth to the group.
About a year after the release of “Idlewild South”, Duane Allman set out on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a ride from which he did not return, less than a month before his 25th birthday.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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