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Gregg Allman, whose bluesy vocals and soulful touch on the Hammond B-3 organ helped propel the Allman Brothers Band to superstardom and spawn southern rock in a career also marred by tragedy and drug abuse, has died at the age of 69.
Key points:
- Allman idolised his older brother and band partner Duane, who was killed aged 24
- He wrote a string of hits as The Allman Brothers Band's lead singer, keyboardist and a key songwriter
- A rapacious thirst for cocaine landed him in trouble with the law
"It is with deep sadness that we announce that Gregg Allman, a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Georgia," a statement on his official website said, adding he he had "passed away peacefully" on Saturday (local time).
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, the rock star known for his long blond hair was raised in Florida by a single mother after his father was shot to death.
Allman idolised his older brother Duane, eventually joining a series of bands with him. Together they formed the nucleus of The Allman Brothers Band.
The Allman Brothers Band was started in Macon, Georgia, in the late 1960s.
Duane became the band's guiding force and was one of rock's most revered guitarists before he was killed in a motorcycle accident at age 24.
In its heyday, the band was a staple on radio stations and released albums ranked among the best in rock history.
Gregg was the band's lead singer, keyboardist and a key songwriter as it put out a string of hits. He wrote several of them — It's Not My Cross to Bear, Midnight Rider, Ain't Wastin' Time No More and Melissa — while others were renditions of old blues songs, including One Way Out and Statesboro Blues.
The band was an early progenitor of what became known as southern rock.
In addition to blues, the band also was known for its crystal guitar harmonies between Duane and Dickey Betts, jazz influences and a free-wheeling approach that sometimes led to 20-minute songs. Rising above it all was Gregg's voice.
Tributes flowed on Twitter from artists such as his ex-wife, Cher, who wrote: "IVE TRIED.WORDS ARE IMPOSSIBLE GUI GUI FOREVER, CHOOCH".
Melissa Etheridge said her "southern-rock heart is breaking" and country music great Charlie Daniels noted "Gregg Allman had a feeling for the blues very few ever have, hard to believe that magnificent voice is stilled forever".
$20 Guitar
Gregg and Duane spent their early childhood in their birthplace, Nashville, Tennessee, listening to a blues radio station.
The brothers showed little interest in school but were passionate about music and often fought over the $20 guitar that Gregg had bought at Sears.
"Duane and I caught it like an illness," Gregg told Southern Living magazine. "We didn't eat, we didn't sleep, we didn't think about anything except music."
As teenagers, they began playing a series of bands, including racially integrated ones, a rarity at the time in the south.
When they first went on the road in 1965 with a band named the Allman Joys, the name was borrowed from a popular candy bar called Almond Joy.
After unfulfilling experiences with the music industry in Los Angeles, Gregg and Duane ended up in Macon, Georgia — hometown of Little Richard and Otis Redding — in 1969 and brought together the Allman Brothers Band.
They were a scruffy-looking, denim-clad assemblage and Gregg stood out with his long golden-blond hair.
The band members developed a family-style relationship, bonding while hanging out at Macon's Rose Hill cemetery, with Duane in what Gregg said was the father role.
The band's first three albums — including At Fillmore East, considered a ground-breaking live recording at the time — made them stars, but shortly after that, Duane had his fatal motorcycle crash in Macon in 1971.
The rest of the band was stricken but carried on and put out another well-regarded album, Eat a Peach. Then 13 months after Duane's death, bassist Berry Oakley was killed in a similar motorcycle accident only a few blocks from where Duane had been killed.
They were buried next to each other in Rose Hill.
Cocaine on a bar
The band carried on but fell into the trap of rock star excess. Drugs became so prevalent that the first time they entered their new private plane, they were greeted by the words "Welcome Allman Brothers" spelled out in cocaine on the bar, Allman wrote in his memoir, My Cross to Bear.
By the mid-1970s, the cloud over the band grew darker as Allman became a heroin addict and Betts assumed leadership.
When Allman's valet, Scooter Herring, was arrested for drug dealing in 1976, Allman, then married to singer-actress Cher, accepted immunity and testified to a grand jury against the man who acquired drugs for him.
What had once been a familial group split up over what was seen as Allman's betrayal. He would go on to a solo career, as well as taking part in reformations of the Allman Brothers before bringing down the curtain on the group in 2014 with a four-hour show in New York that included original members Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson.
The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 but Allman said in his book that he was too drunk to enjoy it.
Allman had five children from five different relationships.
Topics: music, arts-and-entertainment, drug-offences, drugs-and-substance-abuse, drug-use, united-states
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