Guitar World celebrates the timeless music of the Allman Brothers Band with this comprehensive overview of their 25 all-time greatest songs. For the rest of our ABB...
Guitar World celebrates the timeless music of the Allman Brothers Band with this comprehensive overview of their 25 all-time greatest songs. For the rest of our ABB tribute, be sure to check out Gregg Allman 1947–2017: Bidding Farewell to a Southern Rock Legend[1].
25. “STORMY MONDAY”
At Fillmore East (1971)
The Allman Brothers Band were essential in bringing classic blues music to a worldwide audience in the late Sixties/early Seventies, and their masterful rendition of the T-Bone Walker classic “(Call It) Stormy Monday,” from At Fillmore East, introduced the song to a new generation of listeners.
Duane and Gregg had been playing the song for years as it was a staple in their set with the Allman Joys, basing their version on Bobby “Blue” Bland’s cover. Here, Duane and Dickey display their complete mastery of the blues idiom.
“My biggest blues guitar in uences would be T-Bone, B.B. King and Albert King,” said Betts. “A big part of Albert’s signature style was his use of extremely wide bends. He would bend notes all over the place while staying on one string at one fret; he could get four or five different notes out of one single position! Albert sounds sort of like a trumpet player on licks like these. On the Fillmore versions of both ‘Stormy Monday’ and ‘Whipping Post,’ you can hear examples of Albert’s influence on my playing in terms of using wide bends such as these.”
24. “HOT ‘LANTA”
At Fillmore East (1971)
Made famous as an impeccably recorded live performance at one of the legendary 1971 Fillmore East shows, this cookin’, jazzy instrumental, an ABB compositional collaboration, features a brisk swing groove in 3/4 meter—a “jazz waltz”—that recalls the feel of “Whipping Post” but is