Gregg Allman, Influential Force Behind the Allman Brothers Band, Dies at 69 -
By BILL FRISKICS-WARRENMAY 27, 2017
Gregg Allman, a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, the incendiary group
that inspired and gave shape to both the Southern rock and jam-band movements, died on Saturday at his home in Savannah, Ga.
His death was announced in a statement on Mr. Allman’s official website.
Duane also worked as a session guitarist in Muscle Shoals, Ala.,
and New York, recording with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, the saxophonist King Curtis and other artists before talking Gregg into becoming the lead singer for Mr. Trucks’s band.
The band’s lead singer and keyboardist, Mr. Allman was one of the principal architects of a taut, improvisatory fusion of blues, jazz, country and rock
that — streamlined by inheritors like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker Band — became the Southern rock of the 1970s.
The group, which originally featured Mr. Allman’s older brother, Duane, on lead
and slide guitar, was also a precursor to a generation of popular jam bands, like Widespread Panic and Phish, whose music features labyrinthine instrumental exchanges.
“Low Country Blues,” Mr. Allman’s sixth studio recording as a solo artist, was nominated for a Grammy Award for best blues album in 2011.
He taught me to be absolutely sure of every note you hit, and to hit it solid.”
Mr. Allman also enjoyed an enduring, if intermittent, career as a solo artist, both while
a member of the Allman Brothers Band and during periods when he was away from the group.