One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band Read Free

Escorts and then the Allman Joys. The music evolved rapidly, and by spring 1965 the Escorts had cut their own respectable versions of R&B hits like Bobby Bland’s “Turn On Your Lovelight” and Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say.” Young Gregg was still struggling to mimic his heroes, but he was already seizing his vocal identity.

    Duane (left) and Gregg Allman, Seabreeze High.

    “At first, we were playing what everyone else was—the Ventures and other surf music. You know, Surfer Joe stuff,” Gregg says. “Then we met up with a group of black guys in Daytona Beach, including Floyd Miles, one of my best friends to this day, and they turned us on to so much great music and it was clear right away that [the surf music] just didn’t have near the substance of the rhythm and blues stuff.
    “When I was thirteen or fourteen, Floyd started taking me over across the tracks—literally. Blacks lived on the other side of the railroad tracks in Daytona. And it wasn’t cool for either of us. It wasn’t cool for me to be hanging out with him and going to that neighborhood and it wasn’t cool for him to bring me there. We both caught hell from our friends and families, but we didn’t care. He took me over there to this place, which was a convenience store/drug store/record store. I think you could have bought a car in there. And they had this big bin in the middle of the store just full of records. And he said, ‘This is James Brown and this is B.B. King and this is Sonny Boy Williamson and this is Howlin’ Wolf.’ I’d get whatever I could afford. Every time I’d get two dollars I’d pedal my bicycle over there with Floyd, grab me a record, and get the hell out as quick as I could.”
    Back home, Duane was digesting the records his little brother brought home and learning to play the licks. By the time Gregg graduated in 1965, the brothers were already established as the best, most adventurous band on a burgeoning and competitive circuit.
    “Duane was so confident we could make it and he always wanted me to drop out so we could just play all the time, but I was the Doubting Thomas,” Gregg recalls. “I’d say, ‘We’re never gonna make enough playing music to pay the rent.’ The Beatles had just come out and everybody had a band, so there was a lot of good competition out there. I wanted to finish school and become a dentist; I had my goal set to be a dental surgeon. And I was already accepted to college in Louisiana, so I figured I had that to fall back on. I graduated high school and thought, ‘I’ll give it a year. I’ll go out and play these clubs and then I’ll go on to college.’ But after a year, I was so far in debt from trying to buy amps and guitars and everything else, that I had to do another year.”
    The brothers expanded their touring throughout the Southeast and began spending a fair amount of time in St. Louis, where they had established a following. The other members of the band changed with some frequency. By the spring of 1967, the group included two Alabama natives who would remain associated with the brothers for decades—drummer Johnny Sandlin and keyboardist Paul Hornsby. This group was playing a month-long gig in St. Louis when the fledgling Nitty Gritty Dirt Band came to town. Their manager, Bill McEuen, happened upon the Allmans and was wowed, hearing tremendous potential in the blond brothers.
    “He wandered into that bar and was so taken with them,” recalls Bill’s brother John, a founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. “I’ll never forget how excited he was after seeing them the first time.”
    Recalls Gregg: “We were playing a filthy little place and this L.A. manager happened to be in town and he came in and was impressed by what he heard—enough that he wanted us to come west. He actually said, ‘Come to Hollywood and we’ll make you the next Rolling Stones.’ We laughed because this was the shit you see in the movies: ‘Aw, c’mon with me, chickadee,