My introduction to this profoundly gifted musical band of six men was in October 1971. I - a seventeen year old college freshman, a hippyfied Holden Caufield* - ducked into a record shop on Ventura Boulevard somewhere in Encino to escape a sudden thunderstorm. When I stopped in my tracks just ten feet from the front door, I was wet enough to refrain from touching any merchandise. I chose to look hands-free at the most curious album in my experience as a four- or five-year veteran of buying rock and roll albums.
Setting at a sixty-degree angle and gazing up to me from its wire stand was the first album in the store I laid eyes on - the first LP cover I'd ever laid eyes with black and white photography. And drawing me in further were the six men facing the camera directly. They were not as much a group as a gaggle; a gaggle of long-haired, hard-looking, biker-type dudes with not long hair, but copious amounts of facial hair. Goatees, Fu Manchu mustaches, mutton chops.. you name it and it set one one of these guys' mugs.
I then deduced that this musical group must be called "The Allman Brothers Band" judging by the large white painted letters stenciled across five or six massive black steamer trunks proclaiming the four-word name. With my mouth surely wide open, I continued musing about the cardboard cover and what kind of music might be contained therein. I concluded that the trunks the size of fully grown black bears held this Allman Brothers Band's musical instruments, microphones, electronic amplifiers, and whatever else rock bands needed onstage to put on their shows.
Since only eight words "The Allman Brothers Band - Live at Fillmore East" populated the front side, I flipped the cellophaned black, gray, and white square over and saw six more men - also long-haired, but tougher even than the crew on the other side. Their names were above each of them - all with nicknames - identifying them as road crew for the band. These even scruffier, rougher men epitomized the old saying about someone looking like they were "rode hard and put away wet." A group ridden any harder or put away any wetter I'd never seen. These dudes were clearly badasses, Southern boys that would fight and talk to you as a man would. All half dozen could've easily joined a motorcycle gang such as the infamous Hell's Angels (and perhaps already had).
"Wow," I whispered. "Wow."
I swallowed hard and flipped back to the front cover. I don't recollect how long I stayed in that warm, cozy record store but I do recall the only purchase I made that day was this black & white DOUBLE! album priced as a single album. AND, an album recorded live at the legendary Fillmore East!
Somehow, regardless or because it was unheard of - a live DOUBLE album by a band that hadn't yet become known to most rock-and-rollers - I decided to part with several of my hard-earned dollars. (By hard earned, I mean I earned merely one dollar and thirty-five cents an hour to wash dishes, bus tables, and sometimes even cook at a Mexican restaurant close to my college.)
So, even though - as I learned yesterday while reading "One Way Out" - "Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East" was a double album priced as a single-record album, it was - for me - a substantial investment nonetheless. The record still cost me six or seven hours' wages, with the discount, but it felt like the best investment I'd ever made - and I hadn't even listened to it yet.
The tough, independent, yet carefree demeanor of these musicians and their roadies' similar, yet harsher looks told me - loud and clear - that whatever sounds were contained inside this plastic-wrapped cardboard square featuring nothing but a brick wall, leather-attired hippies and toughs, and stenciled steamer trunks must be worth more than just a single listen.
As soon as I returned from LA to the Mojave Desert town where I lived, I pulled out the first of two records and played the first cut on side A - "Statesboro Blues."
Preceded only by the announcement of "Okay... The Allman Brothers Band," a wall of sound colored like the blues proceeded to march out of my family's roll-top desk, turned turntable in our living room decorated in all its Seventies glory of green, gold, and orange and located on a street named after a desert bush.
The TWO lead guitars, TWO drummers, a bassist who played his instrument more like a regular guitar, and the smokey, bluesy vocals of the B-3 organ player all made their presence known to me from note number-one. And by the time I'd played the entire album - just seven lengthy songs in all - I was in musical Kismet. But! I couldn't figure out what their music was - all I knew was it was unique, yet oddly familiar. It was as though a country band, a blues band, and a jazz band had a baby and made it play rock. I can't think of any other way to describe this musical phenomenon known as The Allman Brothers Band. And sadly, their musical and spiritual leader - Duane Allman - perished that very month, in October '71 from a motorcyle - truck accident in his hometown of Macon, Georgia. And so, even though this talented, unique band carried on for the next forty-two years and produced more classic tunes in their inimitable blues, cum jazz, cum rock fashion, they just weren't quite the same band without their beloved Brother in Duane Allman. And despite Duane's extremely brief three-year tenure with the band he founded, he did greatly inspire, teach, and support not only his five bandmates, but the entire road crew of the band's. In short, all 12 men were Brothers; brothers of all colors, shapes, sizes, and mothers, but brothers just the same.
And that, my friends, is how I became introduced to the greatest and most loved album in my music collection for the past forty-eight years. Musical Kismet, indeed.
