The Allman Brothers Band

This was the band's tribute to Duane Allman, who died less than a year before its release. Listening to him scale the fret board on the 33-minute long "Mountain Jam" is almost an album unto itself. And of course the sweeping "Melissa" and bouncy strut of "One Way Out" also helped make this album a tried and true classic.

Sometimes it all seems to come down to the question of survival–and learning to live with
loss. Rock and blues have lost a lot of people in the past five years, but the death of an
artist always diminishes the music more than the death of a "star"–and Duane Allman was an
artist. He lived for and in music, loving it with the kind of possessed passion that sometimes
leads people to believe that bluesmen have traded their souls to the Devil for the... More >

Side three is a magnificent testament. It opens with Gregg doing Sonny Boy Williamson justice, wrenches through some of the most formally intense accompaniment Duane ever played, skips into a high-spirited Dickey Betts tune, and provides a coda for a whole sensibility in one two-minute acoustic duet. Side one sandwiches two subordinary Greggeries around an instrumental excursion that sounds like Dickey OD-ing on Live/Dead. And sides two and four comprise thirty-four minutes with an all-too-relaxing theme by Donovan Leitch. I know the pace of living is slow down there, but this verges on the comatose. And all the tape in the world isn't going to bring Duane back. (Grade - B)