The Brothers were taking a lot of people on their journey: Women and children, friends and fellow musicians all had a stake in what they were doing, and that pressure rested squarely on Duane’s shoulders. He was their driving wheel, and their connection to Phil Walden. Duane wanted to push through every impediment, and if you didn’t have something positive to add, if you couldn’t see the big picture and get on board, he wanted nothing to do with you.
Sometimes, they found support in unexpected places, like at Twiggs’s favorite restaurant in Macon. The H&H was housed in a former filling station, just a few tables and a window you could walk up to from the street side, named for the proprietors, Mama Louise Hudson and Mama Inez Hill. Mama Louise passed them plates heaping with fried chicken, collards and rice with gravy, corn bread, biscuits, and black-eyed peas. One plate could hold two grown men all day. As money dwindled, the Brothers tested that theory, bringing everyone in the band to gather around the two or three plates they could afford, and when it tightened further and they stopped coming, Mama Louise noticed those skinny little white boys had gone missing and told them never to stay away for lack of money. They were so polite and warm, she had taken a real interest in their welfare. She kept a running tab for them, and they made good on it eventually.
Gregg was more productive as a songwriter than ever before. Words and melodies came to him, easy and often, as if the seeds of songs were carried on the Georgia breeze. He’d bring his lyrics to rehearsal, and throw down the tune, and soon it rose from the glowing glass tubes in their amplifiers to fill the room. First one player then all would find their way in and meet you there in the flow. Something was tried—Duane breaking off in a spree of joy, a melody that loops around Gregg’s like an embrace, followed by a countering wave from Dickey, another voice weaving in, yes, you all could see at the same time where he was going, and you go in together, six abreast, shoulders squared, strutting fine. Gregg had a different sensibility than the rest of them, preferring the tight arrangements of traditional songs to the free-form jams that the guitar players were driving, and it wasn’t always easy for him to accept the changes they wanted to make to his tunes. Songs he imagined as ballads became driving rock epics and three-verse blues became twenty-minute-long journeys. It wasn’t comfortable for Gregg to push back too hard, and Duane was more than confident in the direction the songs were taking.
In the middle of a jam, Duane heard Butch holding back. When things became unfocused and started to bog down, he looked over and saw Butch hesitating and saw his brow knitting and Duane glared at him, a look as strong as a slap upside his head. Butch was indignant and kept on. Duane tore into a little lead, an aggressive pitch to the center of Butchie’s chest, and then he did it again, until Butch could feel the heat rising through him; he was getting pissed-off. Duane was trying to call him out in front of everyone. What an asshole, he thought, and Butch started hitting like he was hitting Duane back. And in the instant that he was really giving it to him, Duane’s face bloomed into a huge smile. He nodded and pointed at Butch, and cried out, “There you go!”
With Jaimoe, it was about totally valuing and trusting whatever he was doing. Dickey needed respect and praise sometimes, but Duane could get after him a little, too. He was about the only one who could. Dickey was changeable, with weather of all kinds, and when he was winding down Duane could say, “Hey, Hoss Fly. Something eating you?”
Berry was usually in a deep groove of his own and he played happy, all the time, a wiggle in his hips, one toe patting, a wild knee rising and a smile as big as the world. Sometimes Gregg just needed to be chewed out like a kid, and Duane didn’t hold back. But Duane also listened to Gregg seriously and believed in him completely; he just wanted him to stay focused and give everything. Everyone wanted to keep pace with Duane. They were doing the best work they had ever done, and in some way, it was for him.
Duane believed as he always had that if they pleased themselves, they were on the right track. If they played as if every show could be their last, nothing and no one could stop them. He could articulate his confidence, not just in words but also in the ferocity of his playing, and when he played strong, no one could deny him, and all of their excitement built.
In addition to the songs Gregg was bringing in, they were riffing on several old blues tunes. In the blues, the strongest man would lay himself bare; the kind of man who would never let you see him hurting was welcoming you in. Duane wanted to be that naked and honest. He sought his tone in jazz horns and in the rawest blues singers who would tear themselves up for you, unafraid to look ugly or sound desperate. He wanted it: the heart torn out and still beating in his hand to offer up.
The hard heel of Duane’s boot knocked out rhythms on the floorboard, calling on the many players before him, thumping and strumming, moaning out their words in an endless incantation of longing and betrayal. The Brothers knew the debt of inspiration they owed the bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta and Chicago, black players whose influence could easily be erased by white musicians covering their songs. When it came time to play songs like “Stormy Monday” or “You Don’t Love Me,” Duane would announce the artists’ names out loud into his microphone before they played their songs at every show: Elmore James, T-Bone Walker, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Blind Willie McTell, Muddy Waters. It was the very least he could do, giving credit where it was due. As Gregory said to me, “Music is all fathers and sons,” songs passed hand to hand, bridging divides in time, place, and race.
Duane’s slide playing was a kind of haunting ventriloquism; he made his guitars speak in a human voice. When he moved glass against steel strings, it felt like conjuring, like a magic trick. Jo Jane said the first time she saw Duane make that ghostly sound, he was pressing a water glass against the neck of the guitar in a hotel room while they sat and talked. She thought he had invented this brilliant technique, and he didn’t disabuse her of that notion. Duane played to pull people in close, and he had hooked her with those moaning melodies unlike any she had ever heard.
The earliest slide players wanted to do something their fingers wouldn’t do, so they found an ingenious way to use a tool to carry them over the frets of their guitars.
Craftiness was born of their need to express pain, and it made use of objects that could have been weapons in a bar fight—a knife, a broken bottle, a bone.
Duane was a curious and hungry young man who tapped into an aspect of the culture in which he was raised. White culture seemed to offer only escapism and denial in the form of pop music. Duane’s quest led him to the other side of town, to black culture, where a deeper communication was happening. White artists like Duane have been relying on black artists to lead the way forward, always. Creativity isn’t born out of comfort and ease; at its best and most moving, music is a means of survival. Blues artists understand that best. Duane needed to play. He played to live, and you can hear him living in every note he ever played.
On breaks from long hours of practice at their warehouse space, the guys drank wine and took mushrooms, listened to records while mesmerized by the flashing trip light in the College Street apartment. They were living in each other’s pockets, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, riding motorcycles down country roads, swimming at the quarry. They were never apart, and they easily built a shared vocabulary they could rely on, while they told tall tales and made each other fall down laughing.
They invented a game of cork ball. It started as a game they played in the crash pad when they were too high to venture out, and eventually they moved to the patch of grass in front of the yellow house on Orange Terrace where the Oakleys and the Truckses lived. They would take a cork from the hardware store and rest a penny on its narrow end. You had to keep the coin still while you bound it down with tape, making a small tight ball that felt solid and unbalanced in your hand. Then you’d get yourself a pool cue, cut it down to the length of a bat, and hit that ball with the business end. Gregg described the game in great detail, miming the shape of the cork and t
urning it invisibly in his fingers before pitching it away. “It was a precision game, a musicians’ game … you know, with no running! No way! We stuck wire signs in the ground and they were set spaced at a good distance, labeled one, two, three, and ‘H’ for home run, and you scored by distance hit. Duane was a great hitter, and I must say, I had a great pitch.”
While Linda was still in Jacksonville recovering from the birth of her daughter, Brittany Anne Oakley, and getting ready to move, Berry rehearsed in Macon and he wasn’t always alone. A young Mercer College student knocked on the apartment door at College Street, and stood shyly in the hall in front of Donna.
“Is Berry here?” she asked. Donna let her in and watched Berry’s face light up. Duane coaxed Donna back into the bedroom, saying, “Let’s give them some space.”
Just as he was closing the bedroom door, Donna saw Berry kissing the girl. She was so shocked, her face flushed hot and her eyes welled up.
“Duane, how can he do that? He has a new baby! Linda is so beautiful!”
“Well, he’s a man, honey. He’s up here alone now and he’s lonely. A man needs company sometimes. Let’s mind our own business.” Donna made up her mind to tell Linda as soon as they were together again. She had a right to know.
Phil Walden soon rented a furnished apartment on Bond Street for Duane and Donna so they could have a little privacy, and so could everybody else.
Duane wrote a letter at this time to Holly Barr, who was married to Ralph Barr of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. For some reason Duane nicknamed her Polly. The letter is a perfect snapshot of this time in Macon.
May 16, 1969
Dearest Polly,
I hugged your letter for about ten minutes when I got it. I was just laying on my old bed and somebody came into my crib and says “Mail call Mail call” and I got it!
I LOVE YOU
I’m really happy here in old Macon, Georgia. The country is beautiful and the air is clean and the old magnolias are a-bloomin’ and I got a Les Paul of my very own and my old lady whom I love more than anybody is gonna have a baby this coming November and Gregg’s here gigging with me and I got about the greatest band I ever did hear together and a Marshall amp and two drummers and I quit taking speed and I been going swimming nekkid in the creek.
I quit my session job to get into this group thing again and we’ll probably be moseying on out to California in a month or so. I even bought a car and a box guitar a Gibson Heritage and it sounds real pretty but I can’t do the things ya’ll do with it. The name of the band is the Allman Bros. and we mostly play music to fuck by and it’s too loud but it’s sure fun. My old eyeballs are drooping down so I’m gonna go to bed, but write to me real soon and God bless you and yours. My address is
309B College St.
Macon, GA
Oh yeah! I got to take Zelma Redding (Otis’s widow) motorcycle riding last weekend. She’s really great.
Love Always,
Duane
I had a picture of me I was going to send you but I can’t find it. I’ll send it next time. My best to lucky old Ralph Barr.
Duane didn’t have all that much time for cork ball and fishing. He was still taking on session work and the offers kept coming. On May 5, just after the Allman Brothers’ College Discotheque gig, he returned to Muscle Shoals to record with Boz Scaggs, a member of the Steve Miller Band who was coming from San Francisco.
Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, was producing Boz’s first U.S. solo album, and he took him to Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records, who suggested recording in the South. They had a choice of studios: Stax in Memphis, Phil Walden’s studio in Macon, or Muscle Shoals Sound, a new studio founded by the rhythm section from FAME Studios. Boz and Jann listened to everything that was coming out of those studios and they soon knew they wanted the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, and they wanted Duane.
His playing really stood out to Boz.
Boz visited Memphis and Muscle Shoals without declaring who he was. He soon found out that Duane had left Alabama for Macon, so Jann called Phil to see if Duane could take a break from Allman Brothers rehearsals to make this record. They were depending on Duane to make the record what they wanted it to be.
The core men of the rhythm section at FAME had struck out on their own and opened a new recording studio at 3614 Jackson Highway, in the neighboring town of Sheffield. Boz’s album would be the second project recorded there; Cher’s album 3614 Jackson Highway was the first.
Boz didn’t know a lot about Duane’s background, but he got a good sense of his stature by spending that week with him at Muscle Shoals Sound. Duane’s work with Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin had preceded him, but Boz was most struck by who Duane was to the players at the studio. They lit up when Duane walked in the room; their respect for him was clear.
Talking to Boz, I was struck by the lasting impression my father had made on him. It was still fresh and detailed.
“Duane had a profound effect on that album. One of the real revelations to me was Duane’s character, seeing him in the South hanging out with those guys. In his appearance, he looked like he was from New York or L.A., with long hair. It was a brave statement in itself in redneck America. You could get in trouble just driving around in his car. It was an occasion, and a homecoming. They held him in very high esteem. He was the dude. He was the natural leader, and he made everyone laugh. It was a side I didn’t see in Macon, where he was much more serious and focused.”
Boz described the week for me.
At ten o’clock in the morning, they started rolling in: David Hood, Roger Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson, and Barry Beckett, and they went straight to work.
“You’d go through a song, no rush but no wasted time. Beckett was the leader. They had their unspoken communication. It ran like a top. Very focused and light but serious, pitching in and making suggestions, songs they would like to try. It was a camaraderie, very comfortable,” Boz said.
They had a control room and one main recording room, and an additional sitting room with a Coke machine and a small bathroom; they used every bit of space. It wasn’t built to be a studio, and from the outside, you couldn’t tell what was going on inside. They all understood the acoustics and the eccentricities of the rooms. They’d modify the sound by moving the baffles, or they’d pad a corner and experiment with mics, and once they got each instrument sounding the way they knew it could, they could get to work.
“Then you can arrive like it’s your office,” Boz said. By midweek, they were ready for overdubs, and horn players and background singers arrived as the rest of the players were going home for the night like a second shift.
Boz was open to including additional songs, and Jimmy Johnson suggested a song by Jimmie Rodgers, “Waiting for a Train.” Johnson called in a fiddle player from the local barbershop, and he was great. It seemed the quiet Alabama town was full of world-class musicians.
Boz took great care to describe the recording of the crown jewel of his album, the song “Loan Me a Dime.” They knew they wanted to break into a jam at the end of the song. The idea was just to let it slowly fade out, but once Duane started to solo, it began to build with an internal groove that no one had anticipated, and as Barry Beckett started soloing with him, everyone followed them in and it just kept growing.
Boz said, “Rarely do they come back in to listen to the playbacks. I mean those guys have been in the studio for years and they don’t have to go back into the room to listen; they know what they’ve played. But they all came in to hear what they’d played, and while they were listening to it they were looking at each other and going, ‘God, man,’ and grinning at each other.
“The first time we did it, it lasted twenty-five minutes and everyone thought it was such a gas, they trouped back in and did it again and we ended up with about forty minutes of ‘Loan Me a Dime’ and we wanted to use at least twenty minutes of it, but we had to use the shorter version, but that music is in the can somewhere in Muscle Shoals, and Duane w
as really rockin’ out.”
I was there in my mind, down in the bathroom with my father, his preferred spot so he could really crank up his amp without bleeding into the other mics in the room. He was in his zone, the sound of him ringing off the walls of the tiny room, his mouth moving with his hands, his foot tapping.
“Loan Me a Dime” is one of the truly astounding performances of his life, and I can only imagine how Boz must have felt, hearing that song played back for the first time. Duane elevated the whole process, the vibe and the music. He and Boz had formed a fast friendship.
Kim was enlisted to drive Duane down to Muscle Shoals in the Dogsled for the session, because Duane didn’t have a valid license just then, for reasons that Kim wasn’t privy to but might have had something to do with speeding. Kim spent much of the sessions in the room with the players, sitting on the floor listening, which was unusual. You usually had to stay in the control room, but it was too full, so he had an incredible vantage point. When the horn players really hit their stride, it blew his hair back.
After a few days, when they were ready to head home to Macon, Kim got back behind the wheel. A couple of hours down the road, Duane got a thirst, and although Kim did his best to dissuade him, he finally put his foot down and made Kim pull into a market for a six-pack of tallboys. By the time Duane had polished off a couple, he had another great idea.
“Lemme drive.”
“Duane, you don’t need to be doing that,” Kim said.
“Pull over and let me drive. It’s my car, now pull it over!”
There was no point in trying to argue. It wasn’t but a mile farther down the road when they got pulled over and busted. Duane was arrested and put in jail, and the police said Kim could leave only if he left something of value behind as collateral. So Kim took Duane’s Fender Twin amp out of the Dogsled and left it with the cops. He headed back to Macon to let everybody know they had to bail out Duane. When he told Callahan what was up, Michael said, “Man, Duane can stay down there, but we sure as shit need the Twin back!”
Please Be with Me: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman Page 20
